In the public service, there’s a belief that being too successful sets you up for retrenchment/redundancy. It’s called sticking your neck out.
Amazingly, people still do it.
The latest case is ABC’s Radio National. RN always had great programs, but they were niche, succinct packages for very specific audiences: Religion Report, Sports Factor, Media Report and others. Excellent investigative journalism, fascinating subjects and importantly a reasonably impartial critical approach. But speaking personally, I just couldn’t work my life around the times these shows ran, and that was broadly true for the programs’ listenership. They were on a trend to increasing irrelevance.
RN radically reversed this slide with program podcasts, which now make up a significant wedge of the ABC’s 2 million podcast downloads per month. It’s been trumpeted across Australia, and internationally, as a model for public broadcasting, but last night I got word that a raft of RN’s best shows, including the above mentioned, as well as Short Story, Street Stories, In Conversation, the Ark, Perspective, had been axed.
And, get this, they’re getting rid of these shows to make room for more “consumer focussed” and “multidisciplinary” programs.
The ABC Board’s responsible. If you’re not happy, write/phone.
c/o ABC Secretariat
GPO Box 9994
Sydney NSW 2001
(02) 8333 5312
board@your.abc.net.au
Yes I heard this morning it’s appalling. This is what I wrote to the board:
Dear members of the ABC board
I must protest using the strongest of terms the axing of these shows and others from Radio National. As a daily consumer of Radio National, I expect it to be different from all other radio stations, including the usually disappointing Local Radio (in my case, Brisbane) which is practically indistinguishable from commercial radio. Each morning at 8.30am I was always glad to get introduced to a topic, including interviews with leading world experts, in areas where I have no personal expertise.
I don’t require “consumer” information or “cross-disiplinary” shows. There are plenty of the former everywhere – they are nothing but weasel words for “dumbing it down”. The latter term is again just more managerial blather for shows about nothing in particular. A mile wide but an inch deep. That is what you are doing to the once-mighty ABC Radio National.
The fact of the matter is these specialised shows appealed to this non-specialist – I am neither a lawyer, nor do I work in the media, and nor am I religious. However these areas are immensely topical for modern society and changes that are being wrought on us all; I consider it both a duty (as an informed citizen) and a pleasure (as an individual) to learn of new topics and ideas in wholly new areas I had not previously considered.
If the ABC wants to remain a credible broadcaster, you have to maintain this so-called “high-brow” radio. It is one thing to have some populist channels and shows – it is entirely another to have *only* populist channels and shows. In the latter lays irrelevance and death. Without your specialism – the reason you exist as a separate entity from all others – you are just another static filled noise-machine undifferentiated from all the others crowding the electronic spectrum.
Sack all management who suggested or supported this appalling idea. Such jargon-laden ratings-driven weasel-word-infested time-wasters are precisely the people you don’t need in your organisation.
Please immediately reinstate these shows.
Comment by scot — October 15, 2008 @ 8:02 am
Well said Scot.
Crikey picked it up this afternoon here.
ABC replied to Religion Report presenter Stephen Crittenden’s extraordinary opening comment this morning with:
But the story actually appeared last night, courtesy of twitter.com/abcpool. Interestingly it’s now been deleted.
Comment by matt — October 15, 2008 @ 9:50 am
And Media Report founding presenter Andrew Dodd.
Comment by matt — October 17, 2008 @ 5:51 am