ABC snub a blunder of Olympic proportion
The ABC’s decision not to cover the Tokyo Olympics is a slap in the face for Australian athletes, sports and supporters, argues Mike Colman
Olympics
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Hey Ita, I want my money back.
Not all of it. Not the entire $40 a year that I, like all Australian taxpayers, fork out to keep the ABC on the air. Just the $1.54 for the two weeks of next year’s Olympics will suffice.
Not that I’m entirely happy with the way you spend the rest of my money mind you, it’s just that I firmly believe you should be covering the Olympics and if you stick with your decision not to, I don’t see why I should pay for whatever it is that you feel is more important.
Because, quite honestly, I can’t see what could be more important.
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Now I get that the ABC does a lot of great work. I appreciate that they cover stories and issues that no-one else can afford to, especially now that the internet has drained advertising revenue from non-government funded news organisations.
And I don’t even get too upset when they use taxpayer funds to produce programs that are blatantly biased towards certain ideology.
I simply don’t watch, and besides, I figure that having Q&A is the price we have to pay in order to have Australian Story. Each to their own.
That’s the thing see. We live in a diverse country; a country divided.
We can’t even agree on Anzac Day or Australia Day anymore.
But there is one thing that brings Australians together for two weeks every four years: the Olympics.
For that fortnight more Australians are united than at any other time, and that’s why it is so important that the national broadcaster is there.
Three years ago I interviewed Queenslander Charles “Chilla” Porter who won silver in the high-jump at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne following a mammoth day-long competition that ended at 7.30pm.
Of all the memories Chilla, then 80, recalled of that magical time, one that stood out was of a long-distance lorry driver telling him how he had followed every moment of the ABC coverage on his truck radio. It got so exciting he had to pull over.
I’ve heard other stories of farmers listening to ABC commentary of gripping Olympic events on transistor radios in the cabins of their tractors, and nobody who heard it will ever forget Norman May’s “Gold, gold for Australia, gold …” call of the final of the 4x100m medley relay at Moscow in 1980.
But it’s not just the memorable medal-winning events that the ABC has taken around the country over the past 67 years – not just the well-known athletes either.
The Olympics is a sometimes once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for some of Australia’s lesser-known sports and lesser-known sportsmen and women to have their moment in the spotlight.
They have worked their entire lives to get to the Games. Surely it is duty of the ABC to tell the country about it, not just in the capital cities, but in the more remote areas where commercial networks don’t reach.
Just as it is surely part of the ABC’s charter to cover one of the few major international sporting events where men and women receive equal billing.
And a slap in the face if they don’t.
Apparently the decision not to cover the Tokyo Olympics was made because it would have cost $1 million.
Is that all? It would seem to me that if the ABC can’t come up with that amount of money to cover the world’s biggest sporting event then someone should have a good look at how the organisation’s $1 billion-plus annual budget is being allocated.
I mean it’s not as it if crept up on them. They’ve been on every four years since 1896.
But hey Ita, if it’s just a matter of money, you can put me down for another $1.54.
Originally published as ABC snub a blunder of Olympic proportion