$3m for ABC Life website despite cost cutting
ABC Life focuses on recipes, sex and relationships, travel and fashion.
The ABC expects to spend $3m on its lifestyle website ABC Life, which has a team of 21 staff, this financial year, even as the public broadcaster looks to cut costs and jobs under its new five-year blueprint.
ABC Life, which competes against a raft of commercial lifestyle websites run by Seven West Media, Nine Entertainment, News Corp Australia and soon-to-be shut BuzzFeed's Australian site, attracts "just under 2.2m monthly active users", according to the ABC.
In its response to questions put on notice during Senate Estimates in March, the taxpayer-funded broadcaster said the ABC Life team represents about 0.5 per cent of its overall workforce.
The ABC noted that the 0.5 per cent figure compared to 6.6 per cent of ABC staff working on its capital city radio network and 12.6 per cent of staff across its regional and rural operations.
ABC Life, which was established in August 2018 with funding from the ABC Content Fund, focuses on recipes, sex and relationships, travel and fashion. It brings together content from ABC TV, ABC News, ABC regional and local, Triple J, Radio National and podcasts.
Ahead of ABC Life's launch, publishers and commercial broadcasters voiced their opposition to the platform.
The ABC, which has an annual budget of more than $1bn and just over 4000 full-time staff, has been lobbying the Morrison government to reverse a freeze in indexation funding.
ABC managing director David Anderson mid-March informed staff that the broadcaster's five-year blueprint, which was slated for the end of that month, had been delayed as it focused on staff welfare and news reporting on the coronavirus pandemic.
The plan was expected to include the loss of about 200 jobs following a major review of its TV, radio and online operations, aimed at plugging an $84m budget hole.
Last month, the ABC launched a $5m fund to provide “urgent and critical support” to the creative industry during the coronavirus crisis.
The economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis is wreaking havoc on the commercial media industry, which has seen a double digit fall in ad revenue during recent months. The sector, which was facing weak ad revenue prior to COVID-19, is slashing costs and jobs, as well as temporarily suspending the printing of newspaper sections, as well as regional and local mastheads and magazines.
The Australian is published by News Corp.
More Coverage
BBC apologises to staff over Russell Brand sex complaints
Some employees had stayed silent about the behaviour of the comedian and actor because they believed he ‘would always get his way’, a BBC director said.
Questions about ABC platforming ‘radical fringe Jewish voice’
Jewish groups have questioned why the national broadcaster has chosen to platform and ‘mainstream’ a Jewish ‘radical fringe voice’, in its coverage of anti-Semitic events in Sydney.