ABC News 24: when too much non-news is never enough

The advent of a non-stop news channel has been a shambles, and dragged taxpayer dollars from programs the ABC is good at.

ABC Managing Director Michelle Guthrie inherited a 24-hour news channel. Picture: AAP

While we contemplate the tragedy that has befallen the once great party of Billy McMahon, let us also consider what’s on Bill Shorten’s to do list today. Pop into the office late, check emails, go to question time, make merry, flip through soft furnishing brochures, have a long lie down.

That’s pretty much all Bill Shorten has to do right now. I would add Labor’s tactics yesterday to suspend Question Time and bring forth a vote of no confidence in the Turnbull government were terrible. It would have been a better exercise to drag up Liberal frontbenchers who had voted for the challenger, Peter Dutton, and asked them questions of the “Does the current Prime Minister enjoy your full support?” type. Almost certainly the questions would have been ruled out of order, but it would have made for great theatre.

Look, it’s not all bad news. At least Malcolm Turnbull won a poll for the first time yesterday in what, 18 months or more.

Leadership spills for the party in government have happened so frequently over the last decade that we should use them as a sort of mnemonic for other more important things in our lives that might otherwise be forgotten, like changing the batteries in the cordless mouse and making dental appointments.

For now, it is enough to know that voters hate what they are seeing. The next Newspoll promises to be such painful reading for the Liberal Party that the numbers may just as well have been toted up by the Marquis de Sade. Thank you, Sir. May I have another?

In times of great tumult, if you are like me you will turn not just to print and online reports but to television for that additional sense of immediacy. I have followed the travails of the Liberal Party, leading to this reckless act of self-destruction on Sky News because it offers the best political coverage on television bar none. It does so without ostentation. It is political news done on the smell of an oily rag. The team led by David Speers is well connected, often reporting on SMS communiques received from members of the beleaguered party in real time.

Bear in mind, this is the same Sky News the Victorian government sought to eradicate from its railway stations.

The only serious competitor is ABC 24, the national broadcaster’s spoiler to Sky News.

I am not by nature anti-ABC. Indeed, I am a supporter of the national broadcaster with certain caveats. I occasionally appear on the ABC with my old mate Mike Bowers on Talking Pictures or with another good friend, Richard Fidler, on his popular radio program, Conversations.

Ske News Australia’s David Speers.

But the advent of a 24-hour news channel has been a shambles and has dragged crucial revenue from other more important sectors of the organisation, like something the ABC can be rather good at, the production of local television drama or children’s programming.

On the rare occasions I do pop into Harris Street, Ultimo, rarer since my surgery and possibly rarer even still after this column is published, I gravitate to chatting with the grunts of the organisation: the cameramen and soundies lugging their gear to all parts of the country.

These are the people who have the best gossip and I find them good people to speak with for that reason alone. It is these people who firstly lost their desks and work spaces to make way for the studios of ABC 24 and many, in time, lost their jobs to accommodate it financially.

The genesis of an ABC 24-hour news channel began after criticisms were made of the national broadcaster over its coverage of the 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The hard number crunching of ratings back then showed audiences turned instead to Channel 9.

ABC 24 came into fruition during Mark Scott’s time as Managing Director and the reasons for it were not to lift the broadcaster’s image as a reliable news network. There is no doubt that the ABC decision to create it was a direct challenge to Sky News. Once rolled out conceptually, money needed to be found not just from within the news budget but elsewhere within the organisation. A great many people lost their jobs to make way for this shiny, new news edifice that doesn’t quite do what it says on the tin and when compared to the work of Speers and Co. on Sky, comes in second.

What has transpired is a series of news reports put on a loop, updated too slowly and sometimes not at all, read out by a series of news presenters, combined with dreary panel shows and assorted meaningless vox pops. More importantly, it is a piecemeal news service that invariably comes up short in terms of that one crucial reason people might switch to it: immediacy.

Indeed, at or just after its creation, there was a view from within the top echelons of the ABC news directorate that its 24-hour channel could skate by essentially covering press conferences as speakers drawled on ad nauseam with no narrative or analysis in the hope this might one day pass for news.

Press conferences are almost by nature boring, formulaic and difficult to watch or even listen to, given that those asking the questions are not mic-ed up.

To some extent the preponderance of press conferences continues to be ABC 24’s stock in trade but some days are slow while others are replete with pressers from across the country. On these occasions, ABC 24 dips into one presser, then switches to another, then switches back, while ignoring a third presser altogether. Viewers need a compass and a sextant just to keep up.

Of course, when we speak of a dedicated 24-hour news channel, ABC 24 buys in late night-early morning news packages from Al-Jazeera and the BBC. In terms of homegrown product, ABC 24 should probably be renamed ABC 18.

Let’s be clear here. The ABC should be in the news delivery business. It has many fine journalists capable of doing so. The point is, ABC 24 is not the best vehicle for delivering its television news. It is expensive, clunky and unnecessary.

Sky News is coming to free-to-air soon through the Channel 10 network and then we will have a real competition on hands. I would expect Sky News to take a significant share of the ABC 24 audience, especially during daytime. While it would be incredibly difficult to unravel ABC 24, it will become clearer the news channel should never have been created and the ABC would have been better for it.