ABC on holidays as big news breaks

Tonight the ABC’s showpiece news shows, Four Corners, Q&A and Media Watch, return after an 11-week break.

ABC hosts Emma Alberici and Tony Jones are on extended leave.

Tonight, the ABC’s showpiece current affairs programs, Four Corners, Q&A and Media Watch, return after an 11-week summer break since November 21. Lateline, once the ABC’s best current affairs program, returns after breaking on December 2.

Barrie Cassidy’s Insiders, surely a cheap show to produce, does not return until next Sunday February 12.

Nice work if you can get it, many journos would say. No loss at all, wrote critics of the ABC’s leftist cultural vibe responding to last Wednesday’s story by The Australian ’s Stephen Brook reporting Q&A and part-time Lateline presenter Tony Jones was taking a year off and Lateline co-presenter Emma Alberici was on long-service leave until May.

Journalists work to an award that provides six weeks and three days annual leave. They are expected to work public holidays and often weekends.

And keen-eyed regular viewers will be aware that as well as their nearly three-month break, some key presenters also manage to take time off during other school holiday periods and may be away from the camera more than 15 weeks a year.

Senior ABC insiders say the summer break is used as a budget saver. Not only are programming costs saved for cheaper repeats such as the best of Four Corners, holiday balance sheet accruals allow large wages savings to the ABC budget bottom line during the break. An ABC spokesman explains it another way: “ABC News budgets for a certain number of programs each year according to available funding.”

But this can mean crucial stories are not covered as well as they would otherwise be. Think the Sussan Ley travel scandal in the new year or the worldwide political turmoil following the election of Donald Trump as US President last November and his inauguration a fortnight ago. Both would have been brilliant fodder for Lateline and Q&A, let alone Cassidy’s Insiders, still in summer slumber.

This year the ABC ran a proper 7.30 each weeknight and Stan Grant did a good and balanced job, especially on Trump. But the simple fact the ABC shelved its old 7.30 Summer approach is an admission viewers who pay for the ABC through their taxes deserve better. In previous years, enormous stories such as the 2004 Indonesian tsunami and the 2011 Grantham floods dominated during the long ABC Christmas hibernation.

Commercial media also offer reduced news and current affairs programming in the silly season and newspapers run smaller editions. The season is used in commercial media to wind down leave accruals and save on weekly wages budgets. But in the commercial world it is a simple process for an editor or news director facing a big news event to crank up to a full service. No one ever makes that decision at the ABC.

The Australian’s media editor Darren Davidson reported last week that the corporation is thinking of breaking down its different radio and television divisions. Anyone who watches Sky News — and remember Guthrie came from 21st Century Fox’s pay-TV cousin Star TV in Hong Kong — will know exactly why the new MD is frustrated.

During the five-hour drive from Port Macquarie to Sydney on the day of the US presidential election, ABC News Radio broadcast parliament. Afternoon 702 hosts James Valentine and Richard Glover, embarrassed none of the ABC’s multiple radio assets were broadcasting the riveting election count, could only urge listeners to find the excellent coverage by ABC-TV’s News 24. Not if you are on the highway like many radio listeners.

It would have been simple to change ABC News Radio’s programming by channelling News 24’s coverage. Sydney radio 2GB often does exactly that, running a Sky News feed.

But even though the MD is ­supposed to be the editor-in-chief, no one at our ABC ever makes these decisions. And they are what makes jour­nalism a fun business. Like when this newspaper scrapped its first edition and started again after 7pm with a leaked copy of Fightback 25 years ago, producing an eight-page wraparound from scratch for first editions printed at sites in every state.

Sky News will always ditch regular programming for a big story. Brilliant political editor David Speers and correspondent Kieran Gilbert still talk about June 23, 2010, when they switched to live coverage of the challenge against prime minister Kevin Rudd by his deputy, Julia Gillard. The possibility of a challenge was flagged the previous Saturday in this paper by Dennis Shanahan, but the first to break the news that night was ABC political editor Chris Uhlmann. The 7.30 Report essentially debunked the story and no one decided to let the ABC’s vast political staff in Canberra have their head.

The ABC is a huge organisation, with more than 4100 staff and a budget of $1.1 billion a year. Its extravagantly produced annual report claims that, taking account of inflation, real funding has fallen from $1.184bn in 1985-86 to $838m plus broadcast and transmission fees in 2015-16. That would, of course, be a ­fraction of the real cuts faced across the commercial media world. As former communications minister and now Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull always used to say, the board has to make tough decisions like boards in the corporate world do.

In my view Guthrie appears to be on the right track. If news and current affairs swallows up $200m of $1.1bn then management must make some tough calls. Perhaps it is time to let stuff go that can easily be provided by normal commercial media operators.

Most Australians would expect the ballooning ABC management class that expanded willy-nilly under Guthrie’s predecessor Mark Scott to make sure the best and best paid among the corporation’s journalists are actually earning their money. After all, six weeks and three days from November 21 ran out in early January. What have staff been doing since then?

A spokesman for the ABC said “staff who remain at work are assigned to other programs”. But he would not discuss how the shortfall between the 11-week hiatus and the six weeks and three days annual leave was accounted for.

In my view, management must make staff accountable internally and to the taxpayer shareholders. A month’s break at Christmas should be the maximum and other cuts should be made to pay for the extra programming and wages.

These are the sorts of decisions editors take throughout their ­careers. The editor-in-chief’s role is not an internal popularity ­contest. Maintaining political balance and insisting on quality and effort are the minimum requirements of the job.