Judith Sloan, the supercilious superior cardigan wearers, and Murdoch loving time ...

(Above: ah me droogies, it's no time for an appy polly loggy, it's chumbling chepooka time, and creeching at the ABC, and any other eegra you care to play, here).

There's something so impeccably charming about this logic that I just had to revisit it, even though it's days out of date, as Judith Sloan explains how the ABC should be restricted to save money:

... there is a real alternative to outright privatisation that potentially would save a great deal of taxpayer money.

This is to restrict the activities of the ABC to areas where the private sector clearly fails to deliver adequate services.

This may require a redrafting of the charter under which the ABC operates.

Uh huh. Happily are there areas where the private sector clearly delivers adequate services? Perhaps in drama?

Why of course:

In this regard, the ABC's performance has been absolutely woeful. In fact, a casual perusal of the weekly TV guide will reveal that the commercial channels are the ones showing original Australian dramas, not the ABC.

Uh huh. So that means the ABC should vacate the arena? Leave the expensive Australian dramas to the commercial networks and to pay?

Don't be silly:

According to the charter of the ABC, the functions of the corporation include providing, within Australia, innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard and broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain. Now, clearly, these words can be interpreted in different ways, particularly innovative and national identity, but I am strongly of the opinion that the ABC cannot fulfil its charter obligations unless it produces and-or commissions Australian television dramas.

Yep, it's what we used to call a virtuous circle of complete illogicality. The ABC spends too much money, so let's cut back on the ABC, but first and foremost, the ABC should spend large amounts of money on the most expensive budgetary item - namely drama. Anyone for Bed of Roses five?

It almost goes without saying that whatever shape the ABC is currently in, it's no thanks to Sloan's time on the board, as deputy chair from 1999 to 2005.

Sloan started at the same inauspicious time as Jonathan Shier started his wretched reign, before saying farewell in October 2001 after eighteen months or so in the chair (ABC head resigns). The last we heard of Shier he was toddling around Vaucluse and Woollahra in fine style back in 2005 (Driving ban and fine for former ABC chief Shier).

Sloan has trotted forward now to join in the standard Murdoch chorus about the ABC, renting her clothes and wailing into the air as Aunty suddenly fills the air, and it's a real shame.

The tone makes you wonder exactly why Sloan stayed so long a part of an organisation she apparently detests. Those who like the ABC are described as one-eyed, enthusiastic, irrational and rabid. Oh and Collingwood supporters to boot.

Rabid magpies? Isn't that rabid dogs? One bite and you froth and foam at the mouth ...

As usual, it's the intertubes that's changed everything:

In recent weeks Stephen King, an economist and former commissioner of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, has put the case that with the internet undermining the traditional role of public broadcasters, it may be time to pull the plug on the ABC.

Uh huh. Never mind that the ABC was first out and best dressed with catch up TV and other ways of delivering innovative programming via the intertubes, whether sourced from radio or television, while both FTA and cable lagged behind.

What's passing strange in this notion, is if the internet has undermined the traditional role of public broadcasters, then what's it doing to FTA and cable? What does it say about undermining the traditional role of newspapers?

Ssssh, we don't want Mr Murdoch to get any more loopy or agitated than he currently is ...

Naturally this kind of ritual examination of the entrails wouldn't be without a decent quota of Australian-certified silly comments:

Should taxpayers be funding the ABC to compete against private providers who both want to and can do everything that the ABC can do?

Private providers want and can do everything the ABC can do? Including a certain genteel dullness and polite ratings that see it settled somewhere middle of the field in television, and usually towards the back of the main pack in radio? Coming to you from commercial television the whacky world of librarians in a sitcom full of zany tea trolley jokes ...

And of course there needs to be outrageous comparisons made, couched in the guise of the ABC suffering a superiority complex, as opposed to an inferiority complex sustained by years of abuse from Murdoch and Fairfax hacks who nonetheless show an astonishing familiarity with the content on the ABC, and who sometimes go to work for the place (in much the same way as you need a stick to ward off the swarms of locusts and commentariat commentators to be found in plague proportions at Ultimo):

Whether this sense of superiority was really justified was rarely addressed. Money would be spent on market research using Newspoll, asking members of the public a series of leading questions about the ABC and whether the taxpayer money spent on the ABC was good value.

But respondents were never confronted with the opportunity costs of their opinions: would you prefer your hip replacement operation or more money spent on the ABC, for instance?

Uh huh. Could we phrase that another way? Would you prefer your hip replacement operation paid for by Medicare, or perhaps instead by Judith Sloan refunding her six years of ABC board fees, or perhaps by having her useless professorial fellow position at the University of Melbourne abolished so that her salary could be turned over to hip replacement operation financing?

You know, if you want remarkably meaningless asinine comparisons. A very real and practical choice, and so we thank her for her generosity.

There is also of course a standard Murdoch type bleat about the ABC's expansionism. It seems that the areas most offensive at the moment are four digital channels making it to air, along with new digital radio stations and an expansion online, 'particularly the new The Drum website'. Yes, the one where opinions are allowed, and sometimes, shockingly, opinions that don't conform to the Murdoch world view ...

Yes it would be so much simpler and better if the ABC had remained in the analogue world for television, and ignored the government's desire to encourage digital radio, and simply gave up on the intertubes, involving as it does simply far too much in the way of nerdish modernism.

Perhaps we could go back to the good old days of 2BL (insert local call sign as desired).

There are some gaps that probably would not be filled by the private media. But the expansion of the ABC into areas that are clearly more than adequately filled by the private sector raises issues of unfair competition and wasted taxpayer funds.

Which conveniently we needn't specify, since we all know it's terribly unfair to Chairman Rupert, and any taxpayer funds not forwarded directly to Chairman Rupert's wallet are clearly and utterly wasted ...

In this new media age, the case for the continuation of the ABC in its present form is much weaker.

Yes, ever since Fox News has shown the way forward, especially the joys of Glenn Beck, so that locally we can look forward to ever greater news services in this new media age. And by golly for sheer feral repetitive loonacy, The Australian's doing its very best to host antipodean Becks on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, the joys of commercial television in this country are already so abundant, I weep each day with gratitude for forking out a little more on each cornflakes packet just to make it so ...

Instead, the government should give consideration to altering the charter of the ABC to narrow the focus of its operation and reduce the organisation's funding accordingly.

Excepting of course that it needs to spend a shitload more on drama.

Well it's a great thing that Sloan is no longer near the ABC, and it's a measure of Mark Scott's clap happy success that he continues to irritate the Murdoch hacks and the neo cons.

The Australian did condescend, in its usual superior way, to publishing a refutation today, by David Salter under the header Adrift in a neo-con fantasy land.

Salter takes Sloan's piece seriously, and picks it apart with rational arguments, but in the process rather destroys the charming loony quality of her piece.

Hypocrisy in the service of ideology or rather the Packers or Murdoch is a nice line, but instead we'd rather just find Sloan guilty of a rabid rant, and sentence her to six hundred hours of community service.

Second prize is twelve hundred hours watching Today Tonight, and its rival, A Current Affair, with at least a minimum of twenty per cent of viewing consisting of morning television ( 7 or 9 count as time and a half), and another twenty per cent forced listening to Jackie O and Kyle. We can program in other monstrosities and beastialities according to daily schedules ...

And nil listening to or watching the ABC.

Should there be reluctance or trepidation, we will not shy from Clockwork Orange tactics ...

Finally, for a closer, we'd like to draw your attention to a piece by Ms Tory Maguire, Recording a moment in history or self indulgence?

As if a moment in history can't be self-indulgent at the same time. But actually we only wanted to refer to Ms Maguire so and thus because according to Hitting journos where it really hurts, it drives her insane:

I can put up with most forms of abuse but when a commenter calls me “Ms Maguire” it makes my head explode. The people that do it are usually trying, and succeeding, to be incredibly condescending.

The whole tone of addressing me this way is designed to let me know they’re smarter than me and I should listen and learn.

Or perhaps Ms Maguire should join the ABC?

Sheesh, who would have thought that Ms could contain so much by way of meaning. Must remember to refer to her in the future as Manuscript Maguire ...

(Below: nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, commercial television will get you in the end, and all thanks to the changed status in the world produced subliminally by the full to overflowing intertubes).