Emma Alberici on the ABC. You wont read this in The Australian. Quote: Let me dive in to the murky waters of commercial media and clean them up for you. These were once rivers of gold where the likes of Fairfax Media and News Corp ambled uninterrupted by as much as a clown fish. Then, about 20 years ago, the sharks began to circle. First it was Realestate.au (1995) then Carsales.au and Seek.au (both 1997). Each of those businesses is now worth more than Fairfax, publisher of The Sun-Herald. Australias newspaper and magazine industry doesnt have a problem attracting readers. The challenge is to work out how to make money out of journalism now that they no longer enjoy a monopoly over the distribution of information. The same is true of the commercial broadcasters. Advertisers wanting to reach mass audiences were once beholden to Channels Seven, Nine and Ten. Today, theres Skype (2003) Facebook (2004) YouTube (2005) Twitter (2006) and Instagram (2010). Theyre all chasing those same banks, insurance companies, retailers and fashion houses that used to have little choice but to pay newspaper companies and television networks to run their ads. Now, at minimal cost, they can access global audiences. Meanwhile Australias newspapers and TV networks are clinging desperately to business models that are broken and blaming the ABC for their woes. Even if the ABC collapsed tomorrow, that wouldnt solve their revenue crises. Each commercial media company has much more to fear from Michelle Phan and Bethany Mota than from Peppa Pig. Together, Phan and Mota reach 14 million young people every day through their YouTube channels. Phan teaches them how to wear make-up while Mota provides fashion and lifestyle tips. Phan makes $5 million a year from cosmetics companies. Nineteen-year-old Mota just signed a fashion branding deal thats estimated to be worth $50 million. Then theres 19-year-old Perth actor Troye Sivan. Youve probably never heard of him but 12 weeks ago the millions of followers of his YouTube channel helped propel his debut album to number one on the iTunes charts in 55 countries. Time Magazine has listed him as one of the worlds most influential teens. The media advertising apocalypse has nothing to do with the ABC. Estimates by Deloitte Access Economics suggest there are now 200,000 people employed in online-related companies in Australia. Less than 1% of them work at the ABC. The other 99% spend the bulk of their time trying to wrest advertisers away from traditional media companies and move them into the digital space. During her address to the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival in 2012, Rupert Murdochs daughter Elisabeth (chairwoman of Shine Group) praised the BBC for being furthest ahead in recognising that the new world demands new ecosystems. Unlike her brother, James, she isnt threatened by a strong public broadcaster committed to putting viewers, readers and listeners first. They no longer want their news on their desktops. Increasingly they want to consume news on their tablets and phones. More people are now reading the news on their smartphones than anywhere else and, far from it being a young persons trend, the fastest growth is coming from the 55-69 year olds (53%). After making an unequivocal public promise to quarantine the ABC budget during at least its first term, the Federal Government shut down the corporations international broadcasting arm and subjected the ABC to an efficiency review as a pretext for further cuts of $254 million over four years. Presumably the report makes no mention of the $50 million thats been saved and reinvested over the past five years. Cast your mind back to 1987 when the ABC consisted of just one TV channel and triple j was only available in Sydney. There were just 38 local radio sites plus two national networks (Classic FM and Radio National). Twenty five years later there are five ABC TV networks including iview, five million pages of ABC Online, ABC Open with the national ABC NewsRadio and Triple J along with digital cousins Double J and triple j unearthed. Local radio is now produced at 60 sites. More than 30 smartphone and tablet apps with around two million users each month further serve our audiences. Over that quarter of a century weve undoubtedly done more with less as staff numbers dwindled from 6500 to 4000. The ABC review was carried out by former Channel Seven finance executive Peter Lewis. In his analysis, Lewis acknowledged that it was impossible to make a direct comparison between the ABC and any commercial broadcaster. In no other newsroom will you find a journalist producing radio news, radio current affairs, TV news stories and online commentary on the same day. The public broadcaster tells Australians stories from seven locations around the world. The commercials generally have staff in just two. In the case of Lewiss former stable, the Seven Network, it operates in five locations across Australia versus the ABCs 60. Seven CEO Tim Worner earns $3.5 million a year, which is four times more than the ABC Managing Director Mark Scott ($805,392). Its probably not worth mentioning Nine Network chief David Gyngells quip to Scott recently that his tea lady makes more money than him (Gyngell collected $19.5 million last year which was 24 times Scotts salary). The ABCs staff budget has sent one of the Corporations loudest critics into a frenzy. At 46% of its costs, it sounds excessive measured against commercial, free-to-air equivalents at 10.7% but that figure is wildly misleading. All the FTAs outsource the bulk of their programming to the independent production sector, which means staff costs are embedded in the overall program price. Shine Australia, for example, charges Nine circa $25 million for The Voice and a further $20 million to pay the four celebrity judges. That expense is conveniently excluded from Nines wages bill. Also missing is The Project on Channel Ten, which is made by Roving Enterprises and also costs $25 million pa. It hires as many as 67 people. Consider if you will that The Drum on ABC1 is made by six people for less than $1 million including wages. The ABC produces more original content than any other network. The results of the Lewis review will be released publicly on Monday. Instead of trying to maim the competition, it would surely be better for commercial media to concentrate its efforts on emulating the international companies that are enjoying success. Buzzfeed, The Atlantic, The Guardian and the Daily Mail have all taken a global view. And perhaps its wise to heed the words of Elisabeth Murdoch. I fear we spend far too much time fighting over crumbs when we should be baking a bigger cake. Emma Alberici is the presenter of ABCs Lateline. SEE smh.au/comment/abc-not-to-blame-for-commercial-broadcasters-loss-of-revenue-20141129-11w8po.html
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 09:42:01 +0000
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