ABC has walked away from the arts, says industry leader Michael Lynch

A former ABC board member said he was ‘appalled’ and ‘pretty bloody distressed’ by a steep fall in cultural programming on the broadcaster’s flagship channel.

Former ABC board member Michael Lynch, who is critical of a sharp drop in arts content being screened on ABC1. Picture: John Feder

A former ABC board member said he was “appalled’’ and “pretty bloody distressed’’ by a steep fall in cultural programming on the broadcaster’s flagship television channel, and has accused it of breaching its charter and “walking away’’ from the arts as the industry reeled from COVID-19 shutdowns.

Michael Lynch, who served on the ABC board from 2009-11 and is a former general manager of the Sydney Theatre Company, Australia Council and ex-chief executive of London’s South Bank Centre, said the decline in dedicated arts content on the ABC’s ­primary channel was “even worse than I thought’’.

Mr Lynch said the decline was “to a significant extent an abrogation of their responsibility under the charter … There’s no real justification for it. They probably saw it that the (federal) government doesn’t care much, so we’ll just piss off a lot of arts-goers and arts players and old people, because the government’s not going to take any notice of them.’’

Analysis of the ABC’s annual reports by The Australian reveals that new arts content on the main television channel, ABC1, has fallen off a cliff over the past decade: In the 2008-09 financial year, 87 hours of first-release Australian arts content was broadcast on the channel, and this plummeted to 14 hours in 2018-19.

In 2008-09, ABC1 broadcast 27 hours of new cultural programs from overseas. Ten years later, it screened just one hour of such programming. The ABC’s annual ­reports ­reveal that in both 2007-08 and 2008-09, ABC1’s cultural programming, including repeats, exceeded 300 hours. By 2018-19, the channel’s annual arts output had more than halved to 122 hours — 106 hours of which were repeats.

ABC1’s axed First Tuesday Book Club host Jennifer Byrne, centre, with Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger.

While arts programming on ABC1 has shrunk dramatically, ­entertainment programs, including sketch comedies, have exploded from 1317 hours in 2008-09 to 2050 hours a decade later.

The ABC’s charter requires it to “encourage and promote the ­musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia’’.

Mr Lynch, one of the nation’s most accomplished arts administrators, also accused the ABC of “getting rid of the last few people who were waving the flag for the arts … I just feel that at the board level, there is a lack of concern.’’ He was referring to the expected loss of 50 jobs from the ABC’s ­entertainment and specialist unit as the broadcaster grapples with an $84m funding shortfall.

“I understand all the pressures on them, but I think that the ABC has to a significant extent walked away from the arts. It’s incredibly disappointing,” he said.

“It’s doubly disappointing that the ABC seem to have walked away even before the government came in to deal with the issues (caused by COVID-related closures) with some of their rather skimpy packages of support, bearing in mind the ABC knows the performing arts is in the worst state it’s been in my 50 years of ­involvement.’’

An ABC spokesman said it was “simplistic and misleading’’ to judge the broadcaster’s arts output by what was broadcast on the main channel, because such programs were broadcast and streamed across multiple TV channels and platforms, from iview to Radio ­National and Facebook.

“No media organisation does more than the ABC to promote and provide a forum for the arts,’’ the spokesman said.

He added that the 2019 annual report’s arts figures did not include documentaries Namatjira Project and China’s Artful Dissident, or regular programs Anh’s Brush With Fame and Rage. He said that in 2018-19, ABC iview offered more than 17 hours of arts content, and recently “launched its biggest-ever on-demand catalogue’’ of performances from Australian arts companies.

He also said the broadcaster had set up digital and music funds to support independent artists during the COVID crisis.

Mr Lynch responded: “We all accept the game is changing with social media and digital, but if the arts doesn’t have a significant presence on ABC1, then it’s not being seen as something that is ­important and relevant to broader society.’’

He claimed that during the COVID-19 crisis, the ABC had been “somewhat culpable in how governments could significantly ignore the arts, because they have significantly ignored them’’. He said the only new arts program broadcast on ABC1 was music program The Sound, launched last month.

Mr Lynch was surprised ABC chairwoman Ita Buttrose had not tackled the arts decline. “I don’t see a strong sense of the issue from ABC management,’’ he said. “I’m pretty bloody distressed at a time when you would hope that you would see the ABC waving the flag (for the beleaguered arts sector), that it’s just almost absent.’’

Another former ABC board member, investment banker and cultural philanthropist Simon Mordant, tried to bolster the broadcaster’s cultural coverage during his recent term (2012-17). But Mr Lynch said Mr Mordant’s attempt — including commissioning an unreleased report urging a greater commitment to arts programming — “got lost in the ­Michelle Guthrie debacle’’.

The ABC axed long-running programs The First Tuesday Book Club, hosted by Jennifer Byrne, in 2017, and At The Movies, hosted by critics Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton, in 2014. Neither has been replaced.

Half-hour weekly arts show The Mix is primarily broadcast on the ABC News Channel and a well-placed source said it was produced “on the smell of an oily rag’’. It gets half the airtime allocated to the defunct Sunday Arts program, which was co-hosted by Virginia Trioli on ABC1 until it was dropped in late 2009.

The ABC spokesman said federal government cuts had reduced the broadcaster’s operational funding and “will have an unavoidable impact on our services and content across multiple areas, including the arts’’.