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The Australia Television fiasco

Australia Television is the network that broadcasts by satellite into SE Asia. It was a service developed by the ABC in 1993 and sold off to commercial television interests in 1997 on the recommendation of Bob Mansfield following his review of ABC services.

It was reported in February that the Seven network was 'poised' to win $50 million from the Howard Government to run a revamped Asia Pacific television service. Seven already runs ATV, acquired from the ABC in 1997. The service has been ridiculed by Australians overseas. It has been broadcasting just ten mostly very old programs, repeated four times a day, to Indonesia, Burma and 34 Asia Pacific countries - Australia's answer to the UK's BBC World Service.

THE STORY OF ATV is a sorry and senseless one.

The service was set up under ABC Managing Director David Hill in 1993 with funding from the Keating Government. Professor Rodney Tiffen of the University of Sydney wrote in protest at ATV's projected sale in 1996:

After a faltering start and amid chronic uncertainty, [the ABC's ATV] has carved its own programming strategy and increased its distribution with significant success in recent years.

A sale now would be a classic case of taxpayers' money subsidising a favoured corporate bidder. They would be buying the distribution, expertise and goodwill the ABC has built up, securing a privileged commercial advantage built with public money.

The Australian, 6/12/00

It was said at the time of the sale that the price paid by Seven - said to be only $5m - was a ridiculous return for the amount of set-up funding provided by taxpayers.

For some time ATV continued to use the ABC's news and current affairs services, with a federal government subsidy of $3m a year. That news was prepared in and broadcast from Darwin. Much effort was put into making it relevant to the broadcast region, using Asian material that didn't get into domestic bulletins. The ABC news reader in Darwin, Rosemary Church, was widely respected and indeed achieved celebrity status in Indonesia and other countries into which the service was beamed. She is now a leading presenter on CNN.

When the government subsidy was removed in 1999 Seven discontinued the ABC news service. It began to provide its own news service into the area, and by all accounts ATV hit rock bottom in audiences and public esteem

It is, then, with disbelief that we learn that the Howard Government's likely solution to the problem is the throwing of good money after bad - no less than $50m over five years - at Seven in an attempt to improve the service.

How long before public money is given to Nine to cover national events or to make programs for the ABC, as Mr Shier suggested as a possibility in his salad day at the ABC?

See also Gladys