By igniting the commercial debate, new ABC boss Guthrie fails her first leadership test
The next managing director of the ABC will be Google executive Michelle Guthrie. Her first public appearance was unimpressive, argues Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes
This week, we got our first look at the ABC’s new boss Michelle Guthrie when she sat down for a live interview on News 24.
It was hard to tell who was more nervous – Guthrie, or her future employee Joe O’Brien.
This is really the result of journalists who know full well that the ABC can’t run ads on tv or radio writing stories that don’t make that clear. She’s talking about iview, online or perhaps paying for old material that’s currently not available.
She was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.
ill equipped, ill conceived & badly executed.
OMG!
The neoliberalisation of the ABC has begun …
She had all the talk and displayed none of the understanding of what a public broadcaster is all about.
Ads? Don’t be crazy, that is the last thing the commercial stations or other media (ie News and Fairfax) will accept for ABC “old” media or digital.
But keep talking about it as a real prospect and watch the government reduce its funding using the excuse. A bad time to be MD coming up.
And where were the editor-in-chief concerns when Russel Balding, a pure bureaucrat was MD – and did an excellent job calming and re-organising the ABC after the Shier nightmare.
wow just watched it. how disappointing.
loved mark scotts tenure – he did brilliantly
People with no idea about the future imbue those who work at Google with some form of superpowers rather than seeing them for what they are: sales reps for AdWords. Seems the ABC is the latest to fall victim. Welcomes to Jonathan Shiers the sequel.
Yes, not a good start.
Michelle Guthrie may lack media training, but I doubt that she was fulminating: (“to complain loudly or angrily, to send forth censures or invectives; from Latin, to strike with lightning”).
Give her a month or two in the job, and perhaps she will fulminate the immortal lament of one of her predecessors: “I’m supposed to be runnin’ the joint!”
Guthrie is surprisingly inept. Scott is a good politician/bureaucrat. What the ABC desperately needs a a really strong creative leader. To get the picture, just imagine its schedule is a few years, when BBC content is OTT/VOD and there has been no hard work done on the ABC output. In journalism its strengths are shrinking, exemplified by the fact that The Bicycle Thief is in any way prominent. Its drama is too often lame and much of the comedy is tired. Documentary is virtually non existent and in general it produces very little beyond kids programs that achieve value internationally. Scott put no creative pressure into the place. In fact news24 and the digital plethora are both indulgences. His diminishment of rural and regional and special interests, especially in radio, is the opposite of good strategy for a digital world.
Guthrie’s first steps suggest nothing of clear priority and hint at a messy future.
Hardly fulminating, more like fanning the flames if the hand movements were anything to go by.
To many, Google seems to be the new holy land, the centre of all that is wise and innovative.
This appointment may be a mistake, it may be a potential disaster; one thing is an almost certainty, it will be of little or no benefit to the ABC or the future of Australian Television.
I saw that interview… it was cringe worthy. Is the fact that she used to work for Murdoch have anything to do with her appointment. A swing to the right perhaps for Aunty?