Media Diary: No imminent staff cuts for ABC

Staff at commercial media groups are sharing the pain with their employers, but there are no similar plans for ABC in 2020.

ABC Managing Director David Anderson. Picture: AAP

The new global financial crisis last week forced Australia’s three commercial free-to-air networks, Seven, Nine and Ten, to variously make unprecedented announcements about redundancies, the slashing of staff wages and forced leave to cope with a near-immediate collapse in advertising.

Over at the ABC, there’s no such ad revenue worries. But given that staff at commercial media groups are sharing the pain with their employers, are there any similar plans for ABC staff to share the burden with the government, and ultimately, the taxpayer?

That moment could still be as much as two years away, according to ABC managing director David Anderson.

Anderson confided in an interview with one of his own staff, ABC Radio Melbourne’s morning host, Virginia Trioli, last Thursday that the broadcaster’s $1bn a year budget would ensure there were no staff cuts this year — or for that matter, it seems, in the year to June 2021.

While other media companies are battening down the hatches just to survive the coming weeks, Anderson told Trioli he was “worried” he would have to cut jobs in the futuristic world of the 2021-22 financial year. That’s because of what he described as “$100m of savings” that he needs to find that year after the government’s well-publicised pre-coronavirus freeze on ABC funding. “For this year, I think in budget terms, we’ll be alright. This is year one of the triennium. I do worry about year three (2021-22) though …. I don’t know how we are going to hit that amount of money by year three without there being a reduction in staff.”

Anderson said now was “not the right time” to be focused on downsizing. “Now is the right time to be focused on making sure we continue our essential services into Australia.” So that particular ABC cost-cutting can has been firmly kicked down the road.

Meanwhile, there’s another piece of good news for all ABC staff. Before the world blew up, they managed to negotiate a 2 per cent pay rise from July 1 this year. Wonder how that’ll go down among essential service workers taking pay cuts at other media companies.

Read Nick Tabakoff’s full media diary on Monday, in the paper and online.