Aunty suddenly fills the air, and it's a real shame

THE ABC gets bigger all the time, but it should stick to areas overlooked by the private media.

SUPPORTERS of the ABC have always struck me as having a psychopathology similar to Collingwood supporters: one-eyed, enthusiastic, irrational and rabid. But while there is a strong anti-Collingwood AFL fan base, ironically known as ABC - Anyone But Collingwood - those who are not particularly keen on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation simply switch off.

So what is the point of the ABC?

Even to pose this question will be an affront to those many enthusiastic supporters of the ABC. But given the annual allocation of taxpayer funds to the public broadcaster - more than $1 billion - and in the context of the changing technology and media landscape, it is reasonable to ask whether there is still a role for it.

In recent weeks Stephen King, an economist and former commissioner of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, has put the case that with the internet undermining the traditional role of public broadcasters, it may be time to pull the plug on the ABC.

Should taxpayers be funding the ABC to compete against private providers who both want to and can do everything that the ABC can do?

However, the reality is that there is little chance, now or into the future, of the plug being pulled on the ABC, including its privatisation. After all, the evidence does suggest that the Australian public has a strong general attachment to the ABC.

But there is a real alternative to outright privatisation that potentially would save a great deal of taxpayer money.

This is to restrict the activities of the ABC to areas where the private sector clearly fails to deliver adequate services.

This may require a redrafting of the charter under which the ABC operates.

The example of the BBC is informative in this respect: it is vacating some fields and confining itself to core areas of public broadcasting.

Looking back at my involvement with the ABC - I was deputy chairwoman for several years - I recall an organisation that produced much to admire but had a strong tendency towards self-congratulation and sense of superiority over the private media.

Whether this sense of superiority was really justified was rarely addressed. Money would be spent on market research using Newspoll, asking members of the public a series of leading questions about the ABC and whether the taxpayer money spent on the ABC was good value.

But respondents were never confronted with the opportunity costs of their opinions: would you prefer your hip replacement operation or more money spent on the ABC, for instance?

Complaint handling was an area undertaken very badly by the ABC and always in a self-serving manner.

The board would be regularly informed that a very high proportions of complaints had been investigated and rejected - often more than 90 per cent.

The complaint-handling process has all the usual hallmarks of a self-satisfied organisation: treat the complainant as a dimwit using a patronising tone; refer obliquely to the matter raised but respond that all approaches to journalism are equally acceptable; assure the complainant that the matter has been thoroughly investigated; and quote the internet address of the editorial guidelines for the complainant's edification.

It is not surprising that this approach yields very high rejection rates. The complaints that are accepted are almost always trivial and refer to some factual error made by a journalist.

According to the charter of the ABC, the functions of the corporation include providing, within Australia, innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard and broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain. Now, clearly, these words can be interpreted in different ways, particularly innovative and national identity, but I am strongly of the opinion that the ABC cannot fulfil its charter obligations unless it produces and-or commissions Australian television dramas.

In this regard, the ABC's performance has been absolutely woeful. In fact, a casual perusal of the weekly TV guide will reveal that the commercial channels are the ones showing original Australian dramas, not the ABC.

Since I left the board, one of the most significant developments has been the sheer growth of the ABC's activities.

There have been two new digital TV channels put to air, making four in total, new digital radio stations and an extensive expansion in the ABC's online presence, particularly the new The Drum website.

Whereas the BBC is pulling in its horns and reducing its presence, particularly online, the operations of our ABC are becoming more expansive and intensive. Clearly, none of the senior management in the ABC is keen to acknowledge the market failure argument for public broadcasting: that the ABC should concentrate its activities on areas of the media where there is clearly insufficient or deficient private provision. The attitude within the ABC seems to be that there is no media nook or cranny that should not be filled by the public broadcaster.

So what should the future hold for the ABC? In these times of straitened fiscal circumstances, it is worth asking whether several hundreds of million dollars could be better directed elsewhere.

There are some gaps that probably would not be filled by the private media. But the expansion of the ABC into areas that are clearly more than adequately filled by the private sector raises issues of unfair competition and wasted taxpayer funds.

In this new media age, the case for the continuation of the ABC in its present form is much weaker. Instead, the government should give consideration to altering the charter of the ABC to narrow the focus of its operation and reduce the organisation's funding accordingly.

Judith Sloan is a professorial fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne. She was deputy chairwoman of the ABC from 1999 to 2005.