ABC axes regional radio and TV outposts and sheds 400 jobs as budget cuts hit home

So what was all the fuss about? And can we please have details of the cost reduction in non- production staff such as middle managers?

The fuss is the loss of jobs (400+) and resulting decline in coverage.

Lindsay: have another look. There is very little that impacts coverage. The regional cuts are about real estate, not editorial staff. Lateline is shifting channels. The weekly 730 Report state edition is obviously just a way of making the govt feel it a bit. And I refer you to Louise Evans’ column in the SMH today.

The job cuts and programming changes are purely being done to put political pressure on the government. I know a few insiders from the ABC who’ve all expressed that the cuts can easily be made without affecting programming but management won’t go down that path. Instead their ploy is to actually get a bigger slice of taxpayers money at the next change of government by creating uproar in some sections of the community by cutting staff/ programming.

Huh? 400 jobs gone. Obviously there will be an impact on coverage. Cutting or moving programs will impact on coverage. Less staff will impact on coverage. Every cut will have an impact.
As for Louise’s story in the SMH, she had a top job at the ABC and for some reason (she chose not explain) she failed to address what she thought were problems. One thing she complain about was staff wanting to inspect emails. As she should know, emails are used by all staff and freelance journalists as their main line of communication. Story ideas and information come by email. People who may or may not be used in programs supply responses by emails. Not looking at emails would be a problem worth addressing.

I used to work in Haymarket in Sydney and drink in a local pub and got to know a few of the ABC staff. They openly admitted that (despite modest salaries) the place was a monolith, no one did more than about 30 hours a week work, it was absolutely everything that was bad about the public service and they only worked there for the 25 per cent superannuation (or whatever it was, I can’t actually recall the number.) This article in The Age sounds like it absolutely nails the place: http://www.theage.com.au/comme.....1rtki.html

Of course you could run the ABC more efficiently if you just closed down every production facility and ran the joint out of Sydney and Melbourne. But regional broadcasting is an important element to the ABC’s charter and why shouldn’t tax payers outside Sydney or Melbourne have on air coverage? Closing and selling Lancely Place in Artarmon is problematic. It was maintained because it houses the ABC helicopter, multiple sets and wardrobe, two sound stages and ABC outside broadcast vans and maintenance. Ultimo is already too small to store sets and they are struck and shipped after recording at the Ultimo sound stages. The ABC will need to replicate this site by buying another within a reasonable drive from Ultimo.
The reality is the ABC should never have sold the Gore Hill site and was forced to do so by previous government cuts. While I am often a critic of ABC programming and its bureaucracy it is an institution worth defending. The Coalition has never defended it and the political backlash to these job cuts and rationalisation will damage it. Perhaps Tony Abbott should bother to inquire why Margaret Thatcher never really challenged or slashed the BBC. She realised the electorate loved it warts n all. But then again Thatcher had what Abbott lacks, brains and political acumen.

Why can’t ABC focus more on BBC & PBS like strategies to build on their already great services to make funding lost through overseas markets??

I sympathise for the staff loosing their jobs. We have all been through it other sectors of the media industry, myself included.

I firmly believe we have a world class product with a world of people wanting to see it!!

Nice one@ Huh? and @Bruce. 400 people lose their jobs and you wonder what the fuss is about? 400 jobs and you think services will remain the same? Not sure where you work but glad to hear that it is a bloated organisation where you could lose 10% of your staff with no effect on the business – nice work if you can get it I guess.

I have no doubt there are some time wasters as there are everywhere and hope that they are the first to go.

Bruce – I have no idea who you are talking to at the ABC but if they are working 30 hours a week (bearing in mind they are paid to work 35) that is a problem. 5 hours a week that they are not working is significant overall. I don’t know anyone at the ABC (admittedly TV not radio) who does a 30 hour week – not even close!

From memory, I think the super is 13%. Bear in mind that higher super is usually a compensation for lower wages so it should not necessarily be seen as unreasonable,

@Lindsay: again, I invite you to have a good look. Or even ask someone who works there.

When you have a public servant CEO who pays himself over $800,000 a year, no wonder they have cost problems.
Efficiency starts at the top.
If Mark Scott had enough integrity he would scale back to $150,000 a year starting now, to more accurately reflect his capabilities.

It feels like Mark Scott has a ‘Vice’ CopyCat vison in his mind for the digital future. Can’t wait to see how that turns out.

Louise Evans’ SMH article seems strangely timed. Assuming her descriptions are correct, why didn’t she go public in a big way when she left the organisation? Also, she apparently threw in the towel rather than confront the ‘problems’ head on while occupying a senior ABC position. Obviously it was a wasted opportunity.

That RN requires a shake-up can’t be denied. Figures like Philip Adams and Geraldine Doogue have had an extraordinarily long run. The organisation should try to find a Larry King.

The implication of Scott’s response is that cuts need to be/can be made – um, isn’t that a key criteria of his position at the best of times?

Don’t give a fig about the internal culture; the organisation should be judged on output, & its best is world leading. Cut the bureaucrats; being over-managed & demonstrably poorly managed is a shitty business model, no matter how many cents or who’s paying.

The National Party just signed their political epitaph.

@Huh?, I’ve looked and talked with people who work there. I still think if over 400 people are cut from the ABC then content will be affected. If you move a program from a late time slot to an earlier time then content will be affected. Dropping the State 7.30 shows will not only affect content, it will eliminate it altogether. If a region office is not there then it will be very hard for the people who worked there to do the job they used to do. You cannot cover a country town from a big city.

@Lindsay: Kate Torney says 100 editorial jobs will go in the cuts. At the same time 70 new jobs will be added in digital. Net reduction: 30 across the whole ABC team. And I reckon management must have wanted that cut, because it’s a number they could easily get from the admin side.

Lateline deadlines will be advanced because of the earlier time slot. That will probably mean that some crafty politicians will be let off the hook. By slotting Lateline earlier, it may also mean that the program will compete with 7.30. Has this new model really been thought through?

@Huh? the total number of lost jobs in over 400, not just 100. Massive changes to the number of staff on many programs, and you still think there will little effect on content. Even removing clerical staff has an affect on content because the journalists then have to do two jobs. It is just not possible to be doing back room things and be out chasing stories at the same time.

I agree that many of the ‘defenders of the ABC’ are out of touch. Yes there is entrenched workplace and legal practices that makes doing anything at today’s modern pace difficult.

But the people who are really out of touch are the one’s like Mike who thinks that the CEO of the national broadcaster should be paid $150k per annum.

What planet, decade or century are you from?

FFS my plumber is $600 a day and he’s on the cheap side. That’s $3k a week or $156k per annum. Really? Plumbers to be paid more than the ABC CEO?

Park your neo-con bias. Admit that Menzies has gone and it is no longer the ’50s. Get in step with the modern world – at least Aunty was in the late ’90s or early ’00s.

I think Scott and his team has actually handled a pretty nasty situation, sprung on them after the biggest set of lies I can ever recall any politician telling, and achieved the cuts with the minimum of damage and will result in a smaller, nimbler, leaner ABC. Fortunately only a few of those cuts that they were forced to make put them close to breaching their charter.

Anyone who expects the same quality of radio, television and digital broadcasting and content after Turnbull’s cuts simply has never worked in the media and knows nothing about it.

No amount of self-serving rhetoric – a malaise on both sides of the political spectrum which is damaging this once proud and fine country – can undo the damage just done.

Pretty transparent strategy by Scott and predictably very lazy. Ignore the inefficiencies under his stewardship and blame the politicians which will wind up the easiest people in society to fever pitch… the almighty slacktivists. Fromnow until the next election the moral outrage and portrayal of Tony Big Ears as a cat stroking Bond villain will go into hyperdrive. The ABC has needed more than this shake up for decades