My week listening to ABC radio: no wonder ratings are in free fall
Having read about the ongoing ratings failures of ABC local radio programming around the nation, I decided to make an enormous sacrifice on behalf of an ungrateful nation.
Having read about the ongoing ratings failures of ABC local radio programming around the nation, I decided to make an enormous sacrifice on behalf of an ungrateful nation and investigate – by listening.
My findings are clear: ABC radio is failing because it is broadcasting dross – endless, humourless, predictable, sometimes batshit-crazy views at odds with mainstream sensibilities.
My ABC radio diet for years has consisted mainly of Radio National Breakfast. It is a niche product (some would say becoming increasingly niche), but since my time working in the Howard government it has always served as a reasonably complete distillation of where the green left is coming from on all the major national and international issues of the day.
Flicking the dial to local ABC radio, especially in the Sydney-Melbourne-Canberra triangle, has most often led to amazement and frustration at the dreariness of a largely ideological and painfully politically correct offering. (Except when the Test cricket is on – cricket broadcasts must be the one golden thread of ABC excellence from the Don to the Smudge.)
The current malaise has not always been the case. There have been times when morning radio presenters in the major capitals have helped set the news agenda and engaged vibrantly on the issues of the day, leading to compelling broadcasts and healthy ratings. So, what has gone wrong?
Tuning in to Sydney’s 702 Mornings program on Wednesday, the real world seemed to be dispensed with right at the outset as host Sarah Macdonald created a fantasy land of hermetically sealed opinion. Within seconds of sharing the weather report about a typical Sydney autumn day (22C heading to 27C with humidity and a bit of rain) Macdonald flicked the switch to climate catastrophism.
“Big news on major climate of the world this morning,” she started. “I mean look, you know it’s changing, we’ve got the hottest seas on record, the least sea ice on record, every major global climate record broken.” If you were about to back out of the garage you might have turned off the car and gone back inside to call in a sickie.
The excuse for her alarmism was an annual UN report, where they routinely mix science and rhetoric in a never-ending effort to crank up the fear and drive people to their preferred policy approach.
While informed scepticism and analysis of such fearmongering seem to escape the ABC, mainstream people have inbuilt bulldust detectors. I am certain this report was not the focus of cafe conversations. As parents hurried their kids off to school, they would have been more focused on making sure the umbrellas were in the schoolbags.
“Let’s talk about climate,” Macdonald insists, reading a message from a listener. “Yep, climate change, it’s close to the end of March and I’m still sleeping with just a sheet.” Seriously. Trust the science.
Of all people, Macdonald brings in the member for Mackellar, Sophie Scamps, identified as a “NSW independent” – no shades of teal mentioned – who will be speaking at a climate conference in Canberra. “At least we’re all agreeing it’s happening now,” Macdonald says, noting that Scamps “and the other independents were very much elected, one of the reasons, was climate change and action needed”. Yep, all those other independents. No mention of any teal grouping.
Scamps says they have “changed the conversation” – “they” being these independently elected independents, presumably. “We have all these natural resources, we have the wind, we have the sun, we have storage capacity,” says Scamps. “We have the opportunity to set ourselves up for a really prosperous future.”
The whole thing sounds like a Chris Bowen daydream – Electric Teal. Macdonald laments that climate interest may have gone “off the boil” because of “cost-of-living pressures”. Oddly enough, there is no mention of how climate policies have increased power prices and fuelled cost-of-living pressures.
Scamps suggests the solution may be governments spending more money to help people “electrify their homes and make them more energy efficient”. She also says new vehicle emissions standards “will save people money”.
Macdonald says climate change is linked to cost of living because insurance premiums are going up and food is more expensive because of natural disasters and weather events. Scamps says the Climate Council (Tim Flannery’s outfit) has a “pathway” to net zero and “we know that the technology is there”.
Nothing is challenged. Nobody mentions that the International Energy Agency says half of the emissions reductions for net zero will have to come from technology that is not yet in operation. No one mentions how the renewables push has driven up power prices, the same prices the Labor government promised to reduce. Nobody mentions that natural disasters have always been with us and there is no evidence they have become more frequent. Instead, we are told environmental protection laws are an “abysmal failure” and “there’s extinctions happening, the ecosystem’s at the brink of collapse”. And the reason we do not have tougher laws to fix this is the “outside influence from lobbyists”.
This is batshit-crazy stuff, fact-free, uninterrogated, uninformed and uninteresting – and completely divorced from the daily concerns of streetwise listeners. If I had been in solitary confinement for a month, denied the sound of a human voice, I might listen to this for a minute. But only a minute.
Next, Scamps is invited to talk about how she intends to build “greater integrity into our democratic institutions”. She does this with reference to another “independent”, Monique Ryan, and still another “independent”, Kate Chaney. All these “independents” from across the land, working in amazing synchronicity, yet not a mention of the teal colour-coding, while demanding integrity from others.
Asked about the prospects for nuclear energy, Scamps recoils at the impracticalities. We would “need to change the law”, she protests, perhaps forgetting she is a lawmaker. Macdonald does not remind her. The whole exchange is more like satire than reality. Is this Frontline or Curb Your Enthusiasm? The final punch line could have been written by Larry David.
In the closest Macdonald gets to a challenging question, she wonders whether Scamps would accept wind turbines off the coast of her electorate on Sydney’s northern beaches. “Wherever is best suited,” Scamps says, before suggesting “there’s areas that are traditionally industrialised, like the Hunter and down south”.
Yep, the millionaires of the northern beaches can vote teal, proclaim their virtue, demand a renewable energy experiment and perhaps listen to the ABC. But the wind farms can go just off the coast from where those working people live, Newcastle and Wollongong.
This is not enlightening listening, it is not illuminating or informative, it is not enjoyable or amusing. It is ignorant, insular and infuriating.
You would expect just a modicum of intellectual engagement from a public broadcaster. I want to cancel my subscription, but I cannot. It is funded from the tax I pay.
We get a taste of foreign policy when Geraldine Doogue pops on to plug her podcast. She mentions US politics and Donald Trump. “If he were elected,” Doogue says, “heaven forbid.” No doubt Kevin Rudd would share that sentiment, but he is hardly likely to be listening from Washington. Doogue also does not think the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, meeting former prime minister and Beijing apologist Paul Keating is much of a story. “The Australian is panicking,” she declares. Maybe she is right and there is no diplomatic mischief at play, Yi and Keating just share an interest in French clocks.
In Melbourne around the same time, Mornings host Rafael Epstein is sceptical. Not about climate catastrophism or climate action. No, he doubts whether youth crime is quite the problem some suggest.
“Are you concerned about youth crime,” he asks his listeners. “It is something some in the media, commercial media, love to shout about and talk about a lot … but how big is the problem?” Epstein seems to think using ankle bracelets to track juvenile offenders on bail might be over the top.
He interviews the Attorney-General, who says young offenders are committing serious crimes while on bail. The next day official statistics will confirm how bad the problem has become, but live to air, ABC listeners provided a reality check. Messages insist youth crime is a “real problem” and they are “very worried about home invasions”. They urge Epstein to “stop making excuses and denying crime is occurring”.
Emily from Ivanhoe says she was the victim of a home invasion last year. The “kids” stole cars and the police found them. “We didn’t want them to go to jail but they were charged and given bonds, and they reoffended very quickly.” Unfortunately for Epstein’s narrative, Emily says ankle bracelets for minors on bail “is an excellent idea”.
The arrangements for Melbourne radio traffic reports are alarming when you consider the most dramatic traffic crisis in Sydney in recent months has been the shambles created by the multi-billion-dollar Rozelle interchange. The ABC Melbourne traffic reports come from a spokesperson for “the Department of Transport and Planning.” Presumably the Transport and Planning Department will never get anything wrong.
Next Epstein tackles climate protesters or, rather, goes in to bat for them. He seems unconvinced the activists who blocked the West Gate Bridge, delaying 13 triple-zero calls, three paramedic calls and forcing a mother to give birth on the roadside, should have had their sentences doubled. The rest of us were rejoicing.
So, to ventilate this issue, who do you think Epstein would call? A lawyer, an emergency services expert, or someone involved in the daily operations of the city? Nope. He interviewed former Greens leader Bob Brown. I kid you not. Being arrested in these circumstances, according to Brown, is “part of the risk of an increasingly punitive system which wants to go on burning coal, opening more coal mines, more gas fracking, burning forests, heating the planet … this is an existential crisis”.
This is hard going. Brown seeks to downplay the concerns of the roadside birth by quoting statistics about more than 100 triple-0 births annually. Epstein wonders if stopping traffic helps the climate cause: “Does it persuade anybody?” Brown retorts, “The question is what will?” And Epstein replies, “Good question.” This is not talkback broadcasting or current affairs radio. This is two activists discussing tactics.
And listeners are the last people they have in mind. Brown says, “The huge corporations which have politics in their thrall want us to stand ineffectively by the side of the road holding banners as their coal trucks, their gas trucks, their log trucks and so on, drive past and keep heating the planet, and heating the planet, killing people, in particular babies and old people.” It is that loopy, and it is happening with your tax dollars.
Brown rants about “widespread killing of not just human beings but other wildlife around the planet”. Tune in again tomorrow, “other wildlife”.
It is true that the further away you get from Ultimo and Southbank, the more mainstream the ABC becomes. But this random sampling of ABC radio is revealing.
Epstein plays a clip from UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres: “Fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts.” Something is off the charts all right. Our ABC radio host then says, “So that’s the UN’s assessment, it’s up to you to judge.” Well, I think the people are judging. And we see the results in the ratings.
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