You won’t have the ABC to kick around any more, because this is our last bulletin

Get ready for the test pattern where once you watched the national broadcaster in all its glory. Crikey, Wednesday:

Community and Public Sector Union ABC section secretary Sinddy Ealy told Crikey that staff were devastated by the announcement (of budget cuts) — a follow-up to years of cuts and redundancies. “It has long been our view that the ABC cannot survive another term of the Turnbull government and last night’s budget announcement proves it.”

Whoa. Just how much is that fiendish Turnbull cutting? Mark Day in The Australian yesterday:

The ABC funding freeze — withholding a total of $83 million in previously indexed funds — is a drop in the corporation’s bucket. Michelle Guthrie presides over a guaranteed annual gift of more than $1.1 billion provided by the taxpayers, whether they are viewers or not. This round of reductions is small change — just $14m in the year ahead. That’s just more than 1 per cent — a rounding error in the monolithic machine that is the ABC.

Really? Someone must have given the wrong spreadsheet to ABC chief Michelle Guthrie. More Crikey:

The government’s cuts to ABC funding in yesterday’s federal budget have left managing director Michelle ­Guthrie “disappointed and concerned”, she said in an email to staff last night. “This decision will make it very difficult for the ABC to meet its charter requirements and audience expectations,” she said.

Would that be the charter requiring the ABC to take account of “the broadcasting services provided by the commercial (sector)”? Now there’s a mob that can tell Ms ­Guthrie about cuts. The Guardian, May 4:

Australia has lost about 3000 journalists’ jobs since the growth of digital platforms escalated about 10 years ago, according to the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance submission. The job losses have come at a significant cost to media companies — Fairfax Media, publisher of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, has spent $490m on redundancies in the past 10 years. It now has 3917 full-time journalist positions compared with 7126 a decade ago.

No sign of the ABC taking account of the mauling of commercial media. Quite the opposite. The Sydney Morning Herald, 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 on to the terrain of newspaper companies.

Maybe Ms Guthrie had in mind the ruinous cost of maintaining the ABC’s fame for impartiality? Or perhaps not. 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”.

Even the ABC media watchdog Paul Barry (whose skint employer pays him $190,000-plus for a weekly presenter role) ticked off the broadcaster over Probyn’s breach of the code that stipulates impartiality in news. Media Watch, May 7:

... the ABC hasn’t even bothered to report the ACMA finding ... Had Probyn made his comment on a chat show like Insiders, or in a discussion on The Drum, he might have got away with it.

But he delivered it on the 7pm news as the ABC’s political editor. And we agree that was a step too far.