Expect for the next six months or so, right up to election day, for the Murdoch hacks and serfs to carry a big stick and give the ABC a right royal paddywhacking on a regular basis, as if they were roused by listening to Barry White records and imagined that they were in the Simpsons' episode about snake whacking (oh Fox, you've done it again).
For the last couple of weeks, Mark Day has been flailing away in his ineffably polite away about the evils of the ABC becoming too large an empire, and ruining the commercial prospects of all the key players in Oz. Which is to say Chairman Rupert, oligopolist and aspirational monopolist in the Australian old media news marketplace.
Here's how the tap dog routine goes. First of all sing loudly the praises of the ABC:
I have long been a supporter of the ABC, and believe Scott has it in a sweet spot at the moment.
Because it's always right to praise Caesar before you give him a good knifing and bury him. It's the decent thing to do. Then start throwing around the adjectives, like imperial dreams and visions and teats - always with the teats and the breast feeding fixation - and maybe throw in a red herring
But that shouldn’t prevent us from questioning Scott’s imperial-sounding plans for the future and debating the right mix between commercial media organisations and those that rely on the public teat. Are we prepared to underwrite more and more media services by ever-growing amounts? How valid is a system that gives the ABC a billion to compete with the commercial networks and then gives the commercials $250m to survive against growing competition?
Que? What's the beef here? The government flinging largesse at the ABC and the commercials is a problem? Well of course it is if you have a commercial interest in Sky Television and pay TV.
Which is why in his first outing, ABC's role as niche provider needs to be redefined, Day spent starts by whinging about the $250 million gift, and explaining how broken newspapers under a technological tsunami aren't getting any tax breaks or handouts. Before hastily noting "Nor should there but, but it illustrates the point that nothing is untouched by the digital revolution".
Then it's on to whining about the ABC having a website and developing regional hubs, and soon enough Day trots out APN honcho Brendan Hopkins having a whinge about the hubs, and then he drags in Fairfax sobbing about public funds building empires, and then rounds it out with poor old Sky News battling the evil empire, unable to compete fairly for Australia TV channel.
It seems the ABC's proposed 24/7 channel is a sin because it will drag eyeballs away from Sky News and drain ad revenues. To which the simple answer might be for Sky News to produce a decent product which stops the eyeball drain, but don't you know, in the world of oligopolists, competition based on quality and desirability and viewer appeal is a definite no no.
That's why the ABC is suddenly a threat. People might be watching!
And then Day dares to dream that a Commonwealth Bank or a Qantas move might just be around the corner:
Politically, it is probably impossible to flog it off, but the government has in the recent past got out of businesses such as banking, telecommunications and airlines. Does it really need to be in media?
To which one cruel correspondent replied:
Without the ABC or SBS Australian television would be at as low a standard as television in Berlusconian Italy. Not worth viewing.
Yep, you can rip the remote control out of my cold dead hands, but damned if you'll get me subscribing to pay TV, paying for News Ltd content, or come to that, watching commercial television. Except when I'm recovering from root canal work because then it's the lesser pain.
In his second outing, Day led with A leaner ABC will better fit its mission, and spends an unseemly amount of time gloating about the way the BBC has recently been forced into pre-emptive surgery in fear that an incoming conservative government will deliver even bigger blows.
Day doesn't have anything fresh to add by way of insight or complaints, he just wants to gnaw at an old bone, or tear apart a boot, and explain why Mark Scott should tear the ABC apart, and downsize it BBC-style.
Choosing his own version of serendipity, Day insists that the situation of the BBC and the ABC is the same, never mind that he estimates that the BBC gets about three times the ABC's budget on a per capita basis. And never mind the political situation the BBC finds itself in, hounded by the Murdochs, disliked by the wounded, failing Labor party, and thought a juicy target by the Tories if they hit an election home run.
Even Rupert's up-market UK rag The Times could see a political point to the Beeb's manoeuvres as it contemplates cutting a couple of youth orientated radio stations, reducing spending on US programming, and hacking into the pages on its website, as leaked in a strategic review at the end of last month:
The report is being considered by the corporation’s governing body, the BBC Trust, and is due to be made public next month. (and is now here in pdf form).
It was drawn up by the corporation’s director of policy and strategy, John Tate, a former head of the Conservative policy unit, who co-wrote the party’s 2005 manifesto with David Cameron. It will be seen as an attempt to show a potential Tory government that the BBC understands the effect the deep advertising recession has had on commercial rivals and that it does not need outside intervention to get its house in order. (here).
Naturally The Times saw through it in a flash: Big, bloated and cunning Proposals for ostensible reform of the BBC are nothing but a smokescreen. The corporation must stop empire-building and get back to doing what it does best
Ah yes, the deadly embrace of Chairman Rupert is so much sweeter. Such a nice caring stranglehold. Empty that purse or wallet now, and send unmarked bills to the subscription division.
On rages The Times:
The real giveaway in the proposals is that the BBC seems to have no plans to give anything back to licence-fee payers. The public wants the BBC to continue to make beautiful dramas, powerful journalism and terrific entertainment. It does not want or need a BBC that tries to do everything. The best way to make that happen would be to make a substantial cut to the licence fee and give money back to people to spend as they like.
Licence fees? Who can remember the radio licence fee introduced in 1932 to fund ABC broadcasts, topped up with television licence fees in 1956, only to be abolished by the devious and cunning Whitlam government in 1974? The United Kingdom has a quaint relationship to public broadcasting via its licence fees, which provides another significant difference in the way Australians relate to our public broadcaster. In the old days you could get dobbed in if you didn't have a licence, there were inspectors, and it was all a little bit fraught. These days it's still a tax, but it's a hidden tax, not like forking out £142-50 a year, and it's not such a hearty slug as the Beeb cops.
Never mind, Day knows how to sing righteously from the same song book as The Times:
The BBC report explains the benefits it hopes to achieve from the reduction of some services, including two digital radio channels. The money saved—close to a billion quid—will go towards more and better program making.
It then concludes: “The BBC’s mission is as relevant today as it was nearly 90 years ago: to inform, educate and entertain to fulfil its public purposes at best possible value to the widest possible audience. This strategy is intended to deliver a BBC focused on high-quality content within clearer limits, keeping open a digital public space for all. Not a BBC in retreat, but a strong and confident BBC capable of living up to the expectations of an increasingly demanding audience.”
Scott may do us all a favour by embracing that philosophy, rather than arguing that things are different down here.
It then concludes: “The BBC’s mission is as relevant today as it was nearly 90 years ago: to inform, educate and entertain to fulfil its public purposes at best possible value to the widest possible audience. This strategy is intended to deliver a BBC focused on high-quality content within clearer limits, keeping open a digital public space for all. Not a BBC in retreat, but a strong and confident BBC capable of living up to the expectations of an increasingly demanding audience.”
Scott may do us all a favour by embracing that philosophy, rather than arguing that things are different down here.
Huh? but if they make more and better programming, won't they thrash the hell out of the commercial broadcasters? Unless the proposition's that Oz viewers have no taste and more and better programming will be wasted on them, visual pearls before down under swine.
Of course not. It's just Mark Day and News Ltd code for telling the ABC to get out of Sky's turf, and get out of the news game, and make more and more shows featuring Kerry Armstrong having a sea change in some god forsaken fictional town called Rainbow's End. Oh the humanity, oh the horror of Bed of Roses, now in its godforsaken second series.
Oh, and if you don't mind auntie, stay off the intertubes.
But what happens when, as it will in the next decade, the intertubes becomes a key mechanism for delivering old media digital content down the pipes? Sorry, leave that playground for Chairman Rupert and his chums.
But why am I nervous about Chairman Rupert and his chums and their oligopolistic ways?
Well why not have a read of Coulson comes under fresh scrutiny over News of the World activities.
As tabloid journalism, the staple diet of News Limited and rags like News of the World, gets sleazier and sleazier - hard to imagine, but they manage it - about the only show I like to check out is Media Watch as it unveils some fresh horror - say a Herald Sun newspaper photographer chasing a six month pregnant woman up the stairs to get a snap to illustrate a story about identity theft.
If you follow that logic, you end up in the same lounge chair as one of Day's correspondents:
Is it at all surprising that the local News Ltd media should start a campaign against the ABC after their masters launched a similar one against the BBC? Whilst I believe columnists are entitled to their own views, it is only too clear that The Australian has been running a substantial number of pieces critical of the position of the ABC recently. This may be presented as being out of concern for having a diverse media landscape, but seems all too clearly to be driven by commercial interests. Indeed, it makes a very good argument for why we need an independent, non-commercial broadcaster, just like the ABC!
Surprisingly, Day's second coat-trailing column didn't get the response of his first trawl - maybe the trout had tired of the game - and the few that bothered were negative:
Murdoch employee echoes boss’s views on media! Sun rises in the east! Whatever will they think of next?!
Hmm, thinking. Thinking hard.
How about instead of an ABC whacking day we declare a whole season?
With a jolly good result for the mayor, I mean the Murdoch:
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