By Michael Koziol & Jennifer Duke
Asked about the chaos unfolding at the ABC last week, former prime minister Paul Keating was dismissive. Musical chairs at head office were a "side play", he said, and "not central" to the key questions facing the public broadcaster.
Keating has been critical of the ABC for some time. Two years ago he blasted the network’s news coverage as parochial and outdated, with undue focus on trivia such as truck crashes. He said the flagship 7.30 program had become a "news magazine" that ran "too many hard-luck stories".
Former prime minister Paul Keating has been critical of the ABC for some time.Credit: Daniel Munoz
When the dust settles from last week’s dramatic upheaval, and the ABC finds its new chair and managing director, it will not mark the end of the broadcaster’s turbulence. New leaders will meet old problems: fights over funding, clashes over content and the unending battle around what Aunty’s purpose should be.
The government already has in hand a document that seeks to clarify that question. In March, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield established a review into whether the ABC and SBS enjoy unfair advantages in the marketplace due to their public funding. The "competitive neutrality" review had been agreed to many months before, in a deal with One Nation to pass the government’s media ownership reforms.
Media companies seized the opportunity to formalise the many grievances they have aired at the ABC in recent years while their budgets were squeezed by the internet's disruption to traditional advertising models. Newspaper publishers News Corp and Fairfax Media (owner of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) have been especially vocal about the ABC's "aggressive expansion".
In submissions to the review, both publishers slammed the ABC for paying millions of dollars to Facebook and Google to boost traffic, and questioned the need for the public broadcaster to be in the business of online news and entertainment in the first place. "The ABC is taking money out of the system," Fairfax boss Greg Hywood has said.
Similarly, Commercial Radio Australia - representing stations such as KIIS FM and the Hit network - complained the ABC’s lack of profit imperative meant it could "bombard listeners with adverts for its own content". By contrast, commercial radio stations could not afford to sacrifice advertising space to plug new products such as podcasts - putting them at a disadvantage, the industry group said.
Television lobby group Free TV, whose members include Seven West Media, Nine Entertainment Co and Ten Network, voiced a particular gripe with SBS’ expansion into food programming and other areas "not aligned with the charter". It presented research suggesting more than half of the top 50 programs on SBS did not align with its charter obligations.
Recently-departed SBS boss Michael Ebeid conceded some shows had "absolutely nothing to do with our charter" and were "entertainment programs" designed to attract a broader audience.
Industry group Screen Producers of Australia wanted the government to ensure "fair contracting" between producers and broadcasters, possible local content quotas on public broadcasters and an extension of local content obligations to streaming services, such as Netflix and Stan (a joint venture between Nine and Fairfax).
It’s not yet clear which - if any - of these gripes will curry favour in the review, which was headed by retired economist Robert Kerr. Fifield, who received the report last week, is keeping it under wraps for the time being. Kerr declined to comment on Friday.
Communications Minister Mitch Fifield is keeping the competitive neutrality review under wraps for the time being.Credit: AAP
A key matter for the government will be managing the ABC's advance through the digital age. This was a major flashpoint in former chair Justin Milne's falling-out with former managing director Michelle Guthrie. Milne was especially keen on a $500 million project called Jetstream to digitise the broadcaster's archive and create a single platform for its post-television destiny.
In a sure sign of the ABC's focus on its digital future, the board has asked its 12-person Advisory Council to access content only through the iView app for a number of weeks. The council's chair, Andrea Hull, is unapologetic about the broadcaster's headlong march into the digital world.
"The ABC was on the front foot regarding that, and quite frankly the print media wasn't," she says.
Lobbed into the middle of the competitive neutrality review was an announcement in July that two of the public broadcasters' most vocal commercial critics - Fairfax Media and Nine - plan to merge. The biggest media deal in Australian history, it would have profound consequences for what is already one of the most concentrated media markets in the world.
Axel Bruns, a professor at the Queensland University of Technology's Digital Media Research Centre, says the likely merger makes the ABC's presence in online news even more important.
"If the merger means there is a reduction in staff [or] there’s a reduction in journalist activity ... then clearly it would be the task of the ABC to address the repercussions from that," he says.
Professor Bruns rejects a key argument of the commercial players: that the ABC deters or hinders new entrants - and therefore more diversity - in the market. He points to the success of players such as Buzzfeed and The Guardian - and also to iView, which was a leader in television streaming.
"It did really push the market along and the industry along in that kind of space," Bruns says.
The competitive neutrality review is not the only mystery facing the broadcaster. ABC sources speculate its release could be delayed to coincide with a separate inquiry into how efficiently the ABC and SBS are spending taxpayers’ money, due for completion this month. Former Foxtel boss Peter Tonagh, who is leading that review, recently told Fairfax Media the current leadership vacuum at both broadcasters would allow him to be more "creative" in his approach.
Meanwhile, the competition regulator is undertaking a separate inquiry into the impact of the digital giants on traditional media companies and advertising revenue, with a preliminary report expected in December.
Respected journalism academic Margaret Simons has seen efficiency reviews come and go, and says it is well established that the ABC is already "a pretty lean operation". On the other hand, she says the competitive neutrality inquiry "has the potential to open up fresh areas of attack".
But Simons warns the government it is playing with fire, particularly in the lead-up to a contentious byelection and a general election, if it goes after the public broadcaster.
"I think any side of politics attacks the ABC at its peril," she says. "It is one of Australia’s most trusted institutions, no matter what the cultural warriors think."