ABC promotions, advertising spend costs taxpayer $44k plus a day

“Why isn’t this a topic for Q&A?” Critics have blasted the eye-watering figures spent by the national broadcaster plugging itself.

The taxpayer funded ABC spent $5.4 million in just four months advertising and promoting itself - working out at a whopping $44,460 a day, according to new Freedom of Information documents.

The soaring cost of flogging Aunty have been laid bare by a detailed FOI request seen by The Daily Telegraph.

Over a four-month period, from December last year to the end of March, the ABC averaged $299,500 a week on advertising, promotions and audience research. In the month of January, $928,846 was spent just on advertising alone.

The year before, the equivalent spend for the three categories over four months was $4.9 million.

Money spent touting the national broadcaster has grown substantially in recent years.

ABC Sydney staff at its Ultimo headquarters staging a walking in May over the exit of Q+A host Stan Grant. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

Back in the 2018-19 financial year, $9.7 million was spent across an entire year on those three categories, working out at a cost to taxpayers of $26,575 a day.

Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance president Brian Marlow says the subject of the “ABC’s waste of money” should be set as topic of debate on its Q&A program.

“You won’t hear them talk about it on Q&A,” he said.

Brian Marlow of the Australian Taxpayers Alliance says “time and time again we find out the eye-watering amounts of money the ABC are wasting”.

Daniel Wild of the IPA says a 2020 survey they ran found that fewer than one-third of Australians believe that the ABC represents the views of ordinary Australians.

He said his organisation would write to all federal MPs demanding it face harsher restrictions on advertising budgets.

“A lot of taxpayers often wonder how the ABC can cost over $1 billion per year to run given how poor a lot of the content is,” he said.

“The idea that our national broadcaster needs to spend $300,000 a week on advertising is ludicrous.

“They’re not getting a return on investment for this.

“The entire process is not only a waste of time but a waste of money - our money.”

The Institute of Public Affairs think-tank, which closely tracks the cost of the national broadcaster, says the spend is a sign of how out of touch the staff are.

Deputy executive director Daniel Wild said if the ABC was more connected to its local communities there would be no need for such waste.

“Having to spend millions of dollars to work out who its audience is clearly demonstrates of how out of touch the inner-city elites that populate the ABC offices in Ultimo, Southbank and Canberra really are,” he said.

“It really is no wonder that the ABC’s ratings are collapsing, and Australians have every right to ask why they are continually forced to fund a broadcaster that is out of touch, biased and does not represent mainstream Australia.”

In 2018 it was revealed at a senate hearing that the ABC paid $440,000 for Google keywords and had spent $2 million promoting its content on Google and Facebook.

An ABC spokesman said the changes in expenditure reflected “significant cost increases” for data research which were affecting the entire industry.

“Industry data costs for video, audio and digital have all increased over the past year as the industry seeks to make improvements to measurement,” he said.

“Separate to this, the ABC’s marketing budget is small and targeted compared to others in the industry. Our marketing spend for ABC iview for example is less than two per cent of the VOD (video on demand) advertising category spend.”