ABC breaks silence over push into lifestyle publishing

The ABC is touting its new lifestyle website as advertisement-free in a shot across the bows of commercial rivals.

ABC Life will feature content from Craig Reucassel‘s TV series War on Waste.

The ABC is touting its new lifestyle website as an advertisement-free service in a provocative shot across the bows of commercial rivals as the organisation breaks its silence on plans to compete with them in areas not key to its charter.

Two days after the organisation’s plans to ape digital publisher BuzzFeed leaked in reports, the organisation said ABC Life will launch on Monday.

A dedicated team will produce content traditionally associated with women’s magazine’s and commercial publishers in verticals including: “work and careers, health and wellbeing, finance, relationships and family”.

The ABC said the content will be “free from commercial agendas” and “free of advertiser interests” in comments that will stir anger in the commercial sector, which increasingly views the national public broadcaster as an imperialist conqueror in the digital landscape.

ABC Life will also aggregate content from the organisation’s sprawling online platforms as well as the television, news and radio divisions.

Content includes material from ABC programs including The War on Waste and Gardening Australia, as well as online money saving series The Pineapple Project and Ladies, We Need To Talk — a podcast for women “that isn’t afraid to dive head first into the tricky topics we often avoid talking about” such as body image issues and sexual relationships.

ABC Life will be led by Scott Spark, who said: “ABC Life builds on the tradition of the ABC tapping into the everyday topics, issues and stories that matter to people. It will look and sound like Australia now, and be free of advertiser interests.”

Staff at the new site include Osman Faruqi, who was hired after leaving commercially funded youth website Junkee.

Neil Ackland, the chief executive of Junkee Media, told The Australian that the market the ABC is entering is “well serviced by the existing commercial publishers” raising questions over why the ABC is replicating a plethora of ad-funded digital services.

ABC Life is being funded by the new ABC Content Fund, one of managing director Michelle Guthrie’s new digital media initiatives.

The value of the fund, which sources ideas from staff, was pegged at $20 million in the 2017 financial year, rising to $50m per annum.

It comes after publishers and commercial broadcasters joined forces to attack ABC Life as an inappropriate use of the ABC’s public funding. The ABC receives $1.1 billion annually from the federal government.

A spokesman for Communications Minister Mitch Fifield ­indicated that the launch of ABC Life was relevant to the federal government’s inquiry into the competitive neutrality of the ABC and SBS.

Reports earlier in the week said ABC staff were talking about ABC Life as a “BuzzFeed page for the ABC”. A spokeswoman for the ABC said the organisation does not endorse these claims.