ABC dumps decision to have one 7pm Sunday night bulletin after ‘audience feedback’

The ABC has reversed its controversial decision to introduce just one Sunday 7pm national bulletin after listening to ‘audience feedback’.

ABC managing director David Anderson and chair Ita Buttrose. Picture: Ryan Osland.

The ABC has reversed its controversial decision to dump its state-based 7pm Sunday news bulletins and replace it with one national bulletin after “listening to audience feedback”.

On Wednesday the ABC’s managing director David Anderson conceded that the decision was problematic and management had decided to shelve the plans that had previously been met with intense criticism including from SA premier Peter Malinauskas and WA premier Roger Cook.

“After listening to audience feedback, it is clear that there are some members of the Australian public who continue to rely on the local Sunday night state bulletin,” Mr Anderson said in an email to staff.

“As a result, we will not be proceeding with this current proposal.”

News boss Justin Stevens also emailed ABC employees to explain that the public broadcaster had “decided to not proceed with the national 7pm bulletin”.

In the correspondence he did not reveal the reasons behind the decision to abandon the idea but said digital transformation remained a focus of the taxpayer-funded organisation.

“This won’t affect our ongoing work to shift more of the journalism resources in our state and territory newsrooms to serving the huge audience seeking local news on our digital services,” Mr Stevens said.

The decision to drop state-based news bulletins on Sunday nights and replace it with one centralised bulletin was met with widespread criticism and last month the ABC published a statement on its website explaining that the Sunday 7pm bulletin “would be up-to-date in all markets across time zones”.

Mr Malinauskas applauded the ABC’s decision to abandon the national Sunday night bulletin and wrote on Wednesday on social media site X, formerly known as Twitter: “A strong democracy depends on competitive local news coverage, so this is a good outcome”.

In June the ABC announced a new five-year plan that set out to ensure it remained “relevant” in order to serving the changing needs of viewers its audience.

Mr Stevens also said in his email to staff that appealing to all audiences was vital.

“Digital first is not about choosing one audience and neglecting another – it’s ensuring we correctly align our effort and output to the needs of our audiences and fully incorporate that into our planning, commissioning and distribution,” he said.

“As I’ve said previously, all our journalism is now digital, and we distribute it to different audiences in different ways according to their needs – via a combination of scheduled TV and radio, on the website or ABC News app, or on-demand on ABC iview, ABC Listen and third-party platforms.”

A spokesman for Communications Minister Michelle Rowland would not comment on the changes by the ABC but said in a statement: “The Minister sought a briefing from the ABC to understand the impact of the five-year plan, and maintains a constructive relationship with the public broadcaster”.