SPAA weighs in on ABC commissioning debate
The Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) this afternoon weighed in on the debate of ABC’s role in commissioning independent productions that rose in the wake of network redundancies and cuts to programming.
In a statement, Geoff Brown, SPAA Executive Director said, “SPAA believes that a commissioning model is the most efficient approach for the future with the digital revolution escalating costs, as it best leverages the taxpayer’s dollar to attract funding from other sources, thereby maximising the amount of independent Australian programming that can be made and shown on the public broadcaster.”
SPAA also believes that employment levels will not be affected as independent programs will employ hundreds of freelance technicians and artists and that “commissioning programming from the independent sector does not threaten the ABC’s independence as the ABC maintains editorial control over those commissions.”
ABC staff nationally have voted to begin a campaign that will inform the public and politicians about the cutting of in-house productions, preferring independent productions after production staff were offered redundancies in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne.
Maintaining advocacy for a properly funded and resourced independent ABC for years, the statement said “In the lead up to the most recent ABC triennial funding submission, SPAA was extremely active in Canberra in proposing the ABC receive additional funding to support increased levels of independently produced Australian programs. The Government pledged an extra $70 million to the ABC over three years for this purpose in the 2009 Federal Budget.”
Quentin Dempster, in an opinion piece in The Age yesterday called for a public enquiry into ABC outsourcing and “into the siphoning of taxpayers’ funds to the commercial sector to establish the facts about the compromising of the ABC’s public purpose.”
Dempster said: “At last the hidden agenda has been exposed. The outsourcing of ABC television production to the commercial sector now covers all drama, documentary, natural history, most feature programming and, increasingly, studio-based light entertainment… The destruction of the ABC’s creative independence has a long history. When the Hawke and Keating governments slashed funding, the management and board began a regime of co-productions in drama. By the mid-1990s, the ABC no longer produced any drama in-house.”
On ABC News Breakfast radio, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said of the ABC, “They had a three-year funding package put in place. It’s coming up for a new round of funding into next year but as far as I’m aware, there’s been absolutely no cuts in funding at all from the government to the ABC.” Conroy intends to speak with ABC managing director Mark Scott about the claims that financial strain has been put on programming.
SPAA, in its statement does support the ABC maintaining in-house production facilities where appropriate to its core function and believes that the fear of commercialisation, or erosion of independence creeping into the national broadcaster is uncalled-for. “Commissioning programming from the independent sector does not threaten the ABC’s independence as the ABC maintains editorial control over those commissions.”
