background briefing 4 ..................5

Creeping commercialisation in your ABC

The public broadcasting culture of the ABC is being supplanted by a marketing culture from the Board down to program making level. I Inside the ABC, staff have expressed concern, as has this journalist, that our Aunty is quietly repositioning herself on the commercial broadcasting-marketing slippery slide.

John Millard, ABC producer

In the struggle to find funds for program-making, the 'non-commercial' ABC has been lured on to entrepreneurial quicksands that may prove as dangerous as the murky waters of sponsorship and advertising.

First there is the question of the ABC sponsoring products. What is the difference between a commercial network taking money from a company to advertise its product on air, and the ABC lending its name and the name of its gardening program to a commercial nursery?

In his reply to a letter from Queensland FABC president Elisabeth McClement in which she questioned the ABC's endorsement of 'seedlings, seeds, pots, gardening accessories and fertilisers', Brian Johns said:

"All licensed products are subject to rigorous product approval systems and are only authorised by contracts issued by ABC Enterprises. Agreements ensure appropriate quality control, editorial control and approval rights in relation to packaging and advertising material."

In other words, the ABC is saying that these are blooming good products that you should be buying.

The outsourcing of television programs has pitfalls. When program productions are outsourced, the ABC cannot exercise the same editorial control which it has over its own productions. The door is left open for backdoor sponsorship which is difficult for the ABC to detect. One correspondent to Background Briefing complains, for example, of prominent product placement in outsourced drama.

There is a danger that the ABC's need to raise funds to supplement inadequate government funding may also compromise programming decisions. For example, the idea and the initial funding for the very successful A Gondola on the Murray came from ABC Enterprises. Good on them, you may say. But if the ABC begins to make programming decisions based on commercial imperatives rather than creative considerations, it is on the way to becoming a commercial enterprise.

Marketing man Terry Maloney, who was responsible for Gondola on the Murray, has recently been admitted to the ABC's senior management forum, the ABC Executive.

'Insiders are linking Moloney's apotheosis with Shier's appointment and complaining that even before the new MD sets foot in the building, marketing is being given equal billing with program making in the ABC's list of priorities.'

Jonathan Este, The Australian, 25/11/99

Commercialisation is not the solution to insufficient funds. The very reason the ABC is what it is, is because it is independent.

ABC program makers, dependent on commercial operations, will be increasingly subordinated to the money makers within and outside the ABC. And if the public broadcaster cannot distinguish itself from the commercial alternatives, it weakens the argument for its very existence.

Commercialisation is also unlikely to solve the ABC's funding difficulties. As the ABC's capacity to raise funds increases, government will correspondingly withdraw from its responsibility to fund the national broadcaster.

Rather than undermine the ABC's independence, in the longer-term interests of public broadcasting it would be best to let the public know that the Government is starving their national broadcaster by leaving our screens blank for some hours each day.