The Australian's anonymous editorialist, the ABC, and not another bloody useless inquiry ...

(Above: was it only two years ago that the ABC wanted respect to spread in the world? Click to enlarge, or visit First Dog here).

Reading The Smithsonian's list of The Top 10 Books Lost to Time, the pond was reminded that a number of books of the bible have gone missing.

Sometimes the term ("lost books") is used to describe ancient Jewish and Christian writings that were tossed out of the biblical canon. But other books are lost in the true sense of the word. We only know that they existed because they are referenced by name in other books of the Bible.

The Book of Numbers, for instance, mentions the “Book of the Battles of Yahweh,” for which no copy survives. Similarly, the First and Second Book of Kings and the First and Second Book of Chronicles names a “Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel” and a “Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah.” There are over 20 titles for which the text is missing.

This seems a damned careless way to treat the word of the long absent god.

Couldn't she or he have worked out how to keep the holy writ safe, instead of joining lost works by the likes of Homer (Margites) and Shakespeare (Cardenio).

Have crucial bits of theology been lost for all time, or at least until the rapture? Are shellfish made safe in the missing texts?

Second thoughts, perhaps it's better if a few things get lost along the way, but why oh why have we lost all these books of god, and yet are full to the brim, like a giant three minute goog, with the book of Rupert, otherwise known as The Australian?

There wouldn't be a week go by that in some way The Australian doesn't distort climate science, or bash the ABC.

ABC bashing, rather like eel bashing, is a popular sport, and the pond likes it as much as the next person, especially in these clap happy Mark Scott times when The Drum seeks to go lower than The Punch, resources are spread too thinly over too many areas, and right wing members of the commentariat frolic in talk shows like an infestation of cockroaches in the average Sydney dwelling.

All the same, much of it is gratuitous, or meaningless, as in this day's offering in the book of Rupert, the anonymous editorialist's Sticking to the script at Aunty.

First up, the anon edit acknowledges the fundamental truth, that there's a hit and miss element when it comes to commissioning content.

You win some and you lose some, and you can only be wise after the event. One person's loathing for At Home With Julia (oh yes, feel the seething loathing) might be another person's loathing of The Chaser (ah those Chaser boys, always good for a giggle, especially when doing songs that get up the nose of charities).

Anyhoo, content can be all kinds of things to all kinds of people, you win some, you lose some, and you need a balance of diversity and tradition and a weather eye on the demographics of a brand built up over many years (don't forget the cooking and the gardening and the collecting and the gadget shows!)

But how can you respond to blather? Like this:

Allowing for some variation in quality and popularity of individual programs is not the same, however, as giving ABC managers carte blanche to do as they please with taxpayers' money. The broadcaster's charter requires it to be an entertaining showcase of creative Australian talent and gives it considerable freedom to decide what that means in practice. What it has meant in recent times, is a lack of distinction and differentiation from commercial television.

At a time when there is a distinct and different feel between the ABC and commercial television, at a time when Australian content is dropping off the twig in the multi-channel environment, at a time when international content prices are soaring as the commercial networks seek to stock the larder with product, this kind of comment is beyond risible.

Put it another way. The ABC has successfully branded and differentiated its multi-channel offerings from the commercial networks. There's a kids channel, a news channel, a quirky alternative second channel for the hipper demographic (with stand up, live acts, more exotic foreign and movie products - dear lordy, even Arthur Penn's Mickey One), and the staid main channel.

True, the second channel goes kids' shows during the day, and the main channel goes repeats and schoolies, but even then, there's no mistaking the product offerings - unless they happen to feature UK product the Seven network is itching to run as it apes the ABC.

Compare that to the Irish stew of the SBS multi-channel environment. Compare that to the Ten network's failed attempt to get a sports channel up and running, now a queasy mix of American product and sports events, compare that to the relentless recycling of syndicated old rope by the Nine Network on GEM and GO!

Could anyone hope to match the Seven network's efforts on its two multi-channels to dig up crap from the vault, recycle it endlessly, throw in endless loops of American Dad and Family Guy, and hope no one notices the whiskers and the mould?

Well each to their own. We happen to like Family Guy, and we only watch the ABC news channel when the meerkats at the UK's House of Commons turn up for a live broadcast, but since the Murdoch scandals and riots in the street happen only so often, our exposure to the channel is limited.

The point is this. It's fundamentally stupid and intellectually dishonest to say that the ABC hasn't spent - and doesn't keep spending - considerable time thinking about ways to differentiate, itself and make its product distinct, when compared to the commercial networks.

Then the anon edit gets even sillier:

As Graeme Thomson, the ABC secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, told a parliamentary inquiry, ABC TV has lost its way. Unlike Mr Thomson, we do not blame this mainly on the outsourcing of production but we agree with him that there is a lack of clarity about the ABC's mission.

Uh huh. So he's wrong, but he's right, and on this tenuous gossamer thread the anon edit builds exotic, ill-defined charges against the ABC, which shows if nothing else they understand well how to deliver words with a complete lack of clarity.

For starters, outsourcing is a complete furphy when it comes to content (let's hear it again for Frontline). The ABC has been indulging in joint ventures and co-financing and co-productions for a long time, as a way of coping with the costs of drama, and these days it relies heavily on joint ventures with another government funded body, Screen Australia (as do the commercial networks. Underbelly financing anyone ...?)

Take a walk back in time to 1989, and you'll find Crawfords making the soap This Man ... This Woman for the ABC (oh yes, you'd completely forgotten that clunker, and there are a lot more clunkers hidden in the co-pro closet).

Truth to tell, you can understand why Thomson's coming from where he's coming from, but it's a lost cause. Outsourcing is the go for all expensive drama production, and even that most reliable producer of in-house dramas - the Seven network - has run up the flag. At least Thomson's looking after his shrinking membership base, whereas the anon edit is just looking at cheap point scoring:

In drama, as in news and current affairs and the arts, there is often a lack of public purpose in ABC decisions. Too often, it has confused substance with form and spread itself too thinly as it tries to compete with, rather than complement, private operators.

Well if anyone can explain what public purpose there might be in making drama decisions at the ABC, please let the pond know.

It sounds dangerously like Mosfilm, with programs made for the common good and public purpose. Perhaps this sort of drama is best sorted by committee, with due consideration to the number of public purpose messages that can be embedded in the content. You might end up with Battleship Potemkin, or you might end up with heroic messages in favour of Stalin and the motherland (and did you know that Mosfilm has its very own user's channel on YouTube, here, whereby you can watch for free many make benefit glorious products of USSR).

Perhaps the most risible notion is that the ABC shouldn't try to compete with private operators, but somehow complement them.

Is this because the private operators are inept, incompetent bungling fools, so that the ABC should go about its business with one arm tied behind its back? Possibly, since it's hard to imagine a more dire case of "rush to the bottom, mud feeding flathead" television than that offered by the commercial operators, but more to the point, it's incredibly cheeky for the Murdoch press to say that when it comes to culture, ideas or programming, the ABC should just sit on the sidelines, ineffectually wringing its hands, rather than being a robust presence in Australia's cultural life.

So where's all this heading? Well in a pathetic, tit for tat, payback kind of way, The Australian - which along with the rest of the Murdoch press has bleated long and loud about the way there's going to be an inquiry into the media - suddenly thinks that an inquiry is a jolly good thing. Only it should be an inquiry into the ABC.

First there has to be a bit of ritual chest-beating:

Like all media, the ABC faces challenges in responding to changing audiences and exploiting new technologies such as the internet.

Uh huh. Please explain why they should bother exploiting new technologies in a competitive way, rather than acting like complementary wimps? Could it be that the ABC led the way with internet offerings, and with catch up television, and the hidebound conservative commercial networks, stuck like a FTA stick in the mud of old ways, were completely hopeless at responding to the challenge?

Now on with that resounding call for an inquiry:

But it has an additional challenge because of its unique role as our largest cultural institution. The ABC deserves support but it also deserves to have its role clarified at a time when media has exploded thanks to new technologies; a dramatic reduction in barriers to entry; and global access to information. Ad hoc parliamentary inquiries such as that now under way into outsourcing are worthwhile but not enough. We need a comprehensive, independent review along the lines of the Dix inquiry held three decades ago, in order to find a new vision for the ABC in a digital age.

A new vision for the ABC in the digital age? What pious hypocritical cant, what humbug, what a stench of payback and stupidity.

Yet another bloody government inquiry.

What was that response again by the Murdoch rags to the inquiry into the media? If you can be bothered, you can read the righteous indignation of the Sunday Terror in Questions about media inquiry, or the anon edit rabbiting on in the usual way about greenies and middle class inner city boomers in Fight it out at the ballot box, not at media inquiry, or Mark Day getting agitated in Inquiry already a mine of non sequiturs.

Now is there anything hypocritical and interested in the demand for an inquiry?

Well yes, because Murdoch land has long fancied its chances in content delivery by forming a gigantic quasi-monopoly in a land where everyone must pay a little slice to the Chairman.

Paranoid? Fanciful? Why not have a read of the grand vision unfurled by Mark Day in There's nothing unusual in News Ltd evolution:

Bundling of services has yet to be tested in the world of News. Just as Telstra offers discounts to customers who have all their home, mobile, online and pay-TV services on a single account, it makes sense for News to bundle its soon to be paywalled websites with, say, Foxtel subscriptions. If Foxtel and Austar get together, there's a subscriber base of more than two million to offer an online pass for an extra couple of bucks a week.

The marketing power of this kind of move, incidentally, was one of the main reasons why competitors so vigorously opposed parent company News Corporation's full takeover of BSkyB in Britain -- a $12 billion transaction that had to be abandoned because of the hacking scandal.

At the time Day was mainly whinging about Crikey scoring a hit by leaking a comical document outlining strategies for re-branding and unifying of News Ltd product offerings, and he goes on to point out how a Pinky and the Brain grand 'take over the world' bundling has many problems in its desire to drive synergies for Chairman Rupert.

But it suggests the real reason for the call for an inquiry - yet another futile, wasteful, ineffectual inquiry - into the ABC, apart from vindictive payback "we've got an inquiry, so why haven't they got one too mum?", all hung out to dry on the strength of a few fitful remarks by the largely irrelevant Graeme Thomson.

The ABC is a major problem for pay television, which would dearly love to get hold of its audience.

Pay TV has already collared government funding for documentary and drama programs.

In what is an ongoing, rarely noted scandal, Screen Australia - funded 100% by Australian taxpayers - funds dramas and docs that end up behind the Pay TV paywall, so that, if punters want to see their tax dollars at work, they must join the one third of taxpayers behind the paywall, spending even more money to see their money do its content thing, or spend money on dvds (after any window has expired) to catch up on their original outlay ...

It's called double dipping, or in quainter words, privatising your profits, and socialising the onerous costs of production ...

Okay, so let's have an inquiry into the scandalous monopolistic world of government-supported Pay TV, and the ambitious plans of the Murdoch empire to leverage this world to their financial advantage.

We keed, we keed. Another useless bloody inquiry? When, to paraphrase Mark Day, there's nothing at all unusual about the ABC's evolution, thanks to a management keen to stay in touch with its audience, and using diverse content and product offerings in touch with the digital age as a way of doing it ...

Just remember if you pay for the pleasure of going behind the News Limited paywall - coming soon to the intertubes at a portal near you - all you'll be is funding anonymous editorialists scribbling frivolous screeds demanding more useless bloody inquiries into the media as a kind of blood sport payback ...

(Below: so can we have a Fuckofftober for the anon edit at The Australian?)