Any takers for green-left leaning, bloated broadcaster?

Business opportunity? The Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday:

The Liberal Party’s peak council has voted almost 2:1 to privatise the ABC in a call that was swiftly rejected by cabinet ministers amid warnings it would be “total madness” to act on the call … Council delegate Mitchell Collier, the federal vice-president of the Young Liberals, said he had enjoyed ABC programs such as Bananas in Pyjamas during his childhood but said there was no economic case to keep the broadcaster in public hands. Mr Collier won the vote on the floor of the council … (Treasurer Scott) Morrison quipped that some Australians “may think the Labor Party already owns it” but the government had no plans to sell the ABC.

Dangerous for whom? ABC political editor Andrew Probyn, ABC TV’s Insiders, yesterday:

(Malcolm Turnbull has) talked with worry about the new (uncurated) media landscape. I would make the point that perhaps at a time like this the value of a national broadcaster is even greater … (and antipathy to the ABC in Liberal ranks) can be very dangerous for the Coalition.

Destructive, even? The Australian, May 1:

The ABC’s new political editor has been chastised by (the regulator) ACMA for breaching impartiality standards in a controversial report about former prime minister Tony Abbott. Andrew Probyn … described Mr Abbott as “the most destructive politician of his generation”.

But what’s the ABC worth? Not all comments on the Fairfax Media coverage prize Aunty as a national treasure. James Taylor, Saturday:

Offer it to the staff for $1. They will then have to make their own way in the world. From a taxpayers point of view it is not worth anything because it costs us more than $1B to run and brings in zero income.

Privatisation makes no cents, according to ABC chief economics correspondent Emma Alberici, Twitter, yesterday:

Putting aside the fact that @abcnews is never going to be sold, worth remembering that if the ABC disappeared today, our commercial rivals would not generate one extra cent of revenue. We don’t take their revenue.

Tell that to Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood. SMH, May 17, 2017:

Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood has hit out at the ABC for using taxpayer money to boost the profits of multinational corporations such as Google and encroaching onto the terrain of newspaper companies … Hywood said he was not “anti-ABC” but was concerned about the public broadcaster “using taxpayer money to drive traffic” to its news websites by paying to boost its Google search results. These tactics make it harder for online readers to find news articles from companies such as Fairfax that rely on advertising revenue to support journalism, he said. Mr Hywood said the ABC was aggressively competing for online audience with companies such as Fairfax, which is creating additional commercial pressure for traditional newspaper companies.

But it costs us so little! The Guardian, February 9, 2018:

The ABC now costs every Australian just four cents a day, half what it cost in 1987 when the famous “eight cents a day” campaign was launched … “We’ve learned to do a lot with our few cents a day,” (says) the ABC’s chief financial officer, Louise Higgins.

OK, but how many of “us” actually tune in? ABC 2017 annual report:

Average weekly reach for radio (35.2 per cent of the country), TV (metro 52.5pc), ABC Online (38.8pc).