Big shifts afoot in ABC programs and platforms… But will I still love Aunty?

Kay Nankervis, a Charles Sturt University (CSU) academic, says it’s clear television and radio will lose out further to digital online platforms in the latest round of restructuring at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Management at ABC has been accused of some clunky smoke and mirrors work in unveiling its latest restructuring. Even the word “restructuring” is a glossing-over, “moving-forward” way of announcing lots of people near the bottom of the food chain getting the chop. But the ABC media release is using even shinier words than that. Its “new strategy and transformation program” has a name: “Investing in Audiences” (which apparently is different from what the ABC has been doing with its budget up to now).

However, emerging from the mist is one piece of unspoken clarity: TV and radio will lose out further to digital online platforms in this latest reimagining of the national broadcaster’s operations.

ABC Managing Director Ms Michelle Guthrie is determined to hold onto (and capture) audiences who are shifting from traditional platforms to new digital ones. It was the change she was hired to make, and that is mainly what last week’s job cuts are about. So the axing of 200 jobs is being framed as a way to pay for more jobs in digital content and, as an added positive, in the bush. But at this point, it’s not clear how the ABC’s digital space and the regions will benefit until programming and content changes are made in response to the budget shifting.

What we do know is this: Michelle Guthrie and her senior management team say the savings will go into a $50 million fund for developing new digital content. It will be managed by Leisa Bacon, the ABC’s audience and marketing director since 2014. Her ABC page notes that Ms Bacon has “20 years of marketing experience in entertainment and consumer goods businesses from Coca-Cola to Village Roadshow Entertainment”. Leisa Bacon now heads the new “Audiences” division at ABC (the Corporation, as part of last week’s “transformation” is reducing its main divisions from fourteen to eight). Ms Bacon’s expanded role – within her bigger new “Audiences” division – ties content development and expenditure even more closely to marketing research and audience-counting at the national broadcaster. So, given that the Managing Director says audiences are drifting from traditional platforms in droves, we can expect fewer resources for radio and TV programming (unless the money is spent on integrating them more tightly into new digital, interactive, and social media platforms).

Shifting to support roles

While the ABC’s announcement of “middle management” job cuts might be vague about who lost their jobs last week, MD Guthrie is not hiding that big changes could be afoot for ABC programs. She confirmed the day after the restructure announcement that all ABC programming is up for review: a clear indication that some old favourites will go by the wayside or be radically changed. According to ABC staff Ms Guthrie often says “My daughters don’t watch these programs”. It’s likely ABC audience research says the same thing: large sections of ABC TV and radio audiences are as old as I am (55, but planning to live another 30 years). If the ABC wants to capture younger audiences, then I probably don’t matter anymore; I was born in an ancient year when arrivals of slow-thumbed baby boomers were just ending and the gen-X births era was starting. I’d confess to feeling abandoned by the new direction of the ABC, my favourite Australian broadcaster (and just one of my online providers), but if I do… well, I’ll be seen as just another loyal ABC consumer who’s…  55 years old. So I can’t have that happening. The ABC has warned me and other viewers and listeners that resources are shifting to new platforms so we must move with them (and stop really liking the old radio- and television-appointment-viewing, news and current affairs program-of-record made-by-smart-informed-wise-experienced-people paradigm.)

But while I’m dealing with that I can’t quite let go of the ABC’s initial framing of its 200 job cuts as a pruning of excess middle management. The later media release hints at where the jobs are really going (my italics): “The ABC aims to reduce management by an average 20 percent across the Corporation, with support areas to absorb a higher percentage of that cut. There will also be a process to address duplications across support roles… It is expected that across these three exercises, 150 to 200 staff will leave the ABC by 30 June 2017”.

It’s emerging that at least a third of the positions being axed are people who make programs, including technical and camera staff.  So support roles are strategic vague-speak for people actively involved in collecting and making programs. Many of those programs people were told early last week that they are being made redundant. So it’s not surprising that some staff say ABC management is being disingenuous about the “restructure”. One ABC staffer has posted on a site for former employees that the entire field camera department, which films vision and records sound for programs including Landline and Gardening Australia, were made redundant last week. He said staff have no idea who is going to shoot and catch sound for these programs now. Another ABC staffer has told me all production managers, directors assistants and production assistants are being cut from television news and current affairs programs (and maybe other programs as well): reporters are going to have to do more for themselves including arranging travel, equipment, studio booking and managing budgets. This ABC person described the ABC job cuts as a case of getting rid of people on lower wage brackets and making better-paid content makers and reporters work a whole lot harder (and under more stress).

But this phenomenon of making content with fewer people – especially without technical staff – continues a trend across television networks. For more than ten years news and current affairs reporters at ABC are sometimes required to shoot their own stories. They are their own sound recordists now that TV news crews are mostly one-person. They’re expected to at least do the first “rough cut” of their stories (a job that used to be done pre-2013 by designated, skilled vision editors). The thinking is that digital equipment and software don’t need technical or artistic specialists crucial in the days of analogue program-making. Added to that, under the One-ABC model brought in more than a decade ago, reporters are filing to multiple platforms. More recently they are Tweeting through the day while they gather information, interviews, vision and sound for their multi-platform stories. (The converging of these tasks into fewer people has been imposed for some time at commercial TV networks too – as they’re squeezed by the exodus of advertising revenue to new media platforms.)

But these debates about how hard reporters and other content makers in radio and television at ABC are being made to work with fewer technical and support staff every year is perhaps a moot point. What MD Michelle Guthrie calls “inter-content” will now be central to ABC operations: “TV” and “radio” broadcasts will, in this new vision, retreat at accelerating rate to the periphery.

Digital content

The good news is for post-millennial generation Z: the ABC, and media organisations everywhere, want you – as both audience and staff members. They want you clicking on their digital content. And they want you, young media graduates coming out of journalism, multimedia production and communication courses with your fresh digital native literacies and adeptness at relentless, fast content making. Me, I still like to hear from people who’ve been around almost as long as I have, but that’s not how it is going to be from now on… Speed and volume are the measures of content value – along with what the analytics (that measure clicks and reader demographics) say.

Meanwhile that other good news story the ABC is spruiking: jobs for the bush. Michelle Guthrie has promised to create 80 new ABC positions in the regions, roughly the same number axed from program staff – er, I mean “support roles” – in last week’s announcement. Ms Guthrie says regional investment will “provide more reporters and content makers, better tools and increased video and digital output. The ABC will recruit up to 80 new content roles in regional areas within 18 months.” What that means for regional services won’t be clear until those new positions are implemented and we can see what the additional ABC people in rural locations will be doing.

These promises of new rural-based jobs come not that long after a restructure of regional offices in the final phase of then-Managing Director Mr Mark Scott’s tenure. Some regional stations were closed and a ‘Regional’ division in the ABC was created – with staff based in Ultimo in the centre of Sydney. So a shift to remove jobs from capital cities and back into regions would seem to rewind some of what happened under Mark Scott. But not really. These new regional jobs will create digital and video online content and in most cases, I predict, what they produce will not make it to radio airwaves or television screens. Call me old-fashioned, but I still hope that the people creating that new content in their new jobs in the regions will get away from their screens and head out to the people and places they’re representing. If they stay in their chairs doing digital searches for content, then there’s not much point moving people back from the city to the country to cover the regions. I await with interest to see how regional audiences respond to the promised new content and how much of the new digital video material really is gathered there.

Meanwhile, in her ABC media release Managing Director Guthrie has sympathised with those staff “whose roles are impacted” following the “painful decisions to reduce employee numbers.” And yes, word on Harris Street Ultimo is that staff are aggrieved – again by how swiftly sackings are being implemented and how they are being explained. When the ABC under Mark Scott announced 400 job cuts from news and current affairs not long ago, the organisation was criticised for the callous way it determined who should leave: staff had to apply to stay by listing the breadth of their skills. Some staff left immediately in protest at the process. This time the ABC’s initial description of job cuts as “middle management” and “support roles” that involve “duplication” sounded like the broadcaster was culling people who haven’t been pulling their weight or won’t be missed. Staff are hurt that the cuts to their work areas are not being acknowledged publicly with sufficient explicit detail. When we look at who was told last week they’re leaving – camera crews, technical support, production and directors assistants and people who organise the resources to support the program makers and reporters – it’s clear the departures are going to be felt one way or another in what we see and hear on ABC. As the “restructure” filters through to ABC programming and content it will be obvious also that some talent and expertise has gone, probably for good… and is no longer wanted.