Do taxpayers really need to pay for the ABC any more?
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Mark Latham is a fine example of the economic principle of specialisation and the division of labour. He is an excellent public intellectual but was a woeful politician. His passion and strong views are ill-suited for Canberra, but make for delightful reading in the op-ed pages of the Australian Financial Review. Unfortunately, that paper has an extraordinary subscription-only policy and many of his excellent ideas and arguments will be lost. His recent articles on bad parenting are must reading. Today he is having a go at the ABC. There are so many arguments against the ABC that is hard to imagine any new contributions. Yet Latham manages to produce one. He does raise the argument that government ownership of the ABC is no longer necessary because the market already provides a very broad spectrum of entertainment and news. This is, of course, true. Yet the ABC is able to provide some entertainment that commercial operators would never show. For example, several years ago the ABC put on, in an early timeslot, the magnificent Angels in America mini-series. Unfortunately, that sort of thing is rare. Latham suggests we’re getting less quality and more trivia. He bemoans the flight of quality to subscription media (while writing for the AFR). His complaint isn’t that the ABC is an out-of-touch elitist organisation, but rather that ABC viewers are out-of-touch elitists; ABC employees apparently are “cornball comics”. I don’t know — my understanding is that ABC viewers tend to be AB income group and Liberal voters. The complaint often heard from Liberals is that the ABC is “our enemies talking to our friends”. Latham tells us that the Rudd government “needs to be tough on trendies but humane to the much abused federal budget”. I agree. The Rudd government has spent money irresponsibly and the federal budget is a disaster. It is disgraceful to have planned a budget deficit in peace-time, even if the economy has slowed down. But it isn’t clear that privatising the ABC is the solution to fiscal indiscipline. The federal government needs to stop spending money, not find new sources of revenue. But what of the idea of privatising the ABC anyway? There is an apocryphal story that the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises once suggested that he would privatise everything, except the opera. But Mises also believed that the full costs and benefits of choices should be known to decision makers before they make decisions. If after a cost-benefit analysis voters and tax-payers still supported subsidy to the opera, or the ABC, or whatever, then a subsidy should be made. The ABC costs a bit more than seven cents per day, and what are we getting for our money? Sinclair Davidson is a professor in the School of Economics, Finance and Marketing at RMIT University and a senior fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs. He watches Insiders and Inside Business on ABC television. |
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10 Comments
I’d be more inclined to think that it’s Mark Latham who is out of touch, not the ABC.
While I’m not interested in Professor Davidsons viewing habits, (I’d have thought he’s more of a Fox News type of guy anyhow) I am amused that his implied critisism of the ABC would be based on such a limited exposure to the broadcaster. On the other hand, I suspect that in the Professors ideal universe the opera would be privatised along with as the ABC!
While there is obviously room for improvement, particularly in its international reporting & analysis, I for one believe I’m getting my seven cents plus worth.
Thank you ABC.
Peter Frank
“The ABC costs a bit more than seven cents per day, and what are we getting for our money?”
AN excellent TV channel, excellent news services, the occasional brilliant homegrown TV show, good shows ignored by the commercial networks, ABC Classical which provides a nice alternative to Top40 radio, an excellent online service for news and entertainment….*
Not bad for 7 cents.
*Comment not paid for. I’m not Alan Jones.
“The ABC costs a bit more than seven cents per day, and what are we getting for our money?”
No one that has watched commercial television in North America would ever need to ask that question.
Well i do not - it is an incredibly poor value for money proposition at the moment, esp for news.
i can recall a time when the ABC News was the only definitive on-air broadcaster - everyone bar none turned to it for its accuracy and timeliness.
Now? It’s gone so far down market that even SBS is better. i am quite tired of poor thought through “live” crosses and ridiculously delayed “items just in” that could and should have been incorporated within the main body item thus leaving more time for more news.
The pap it broadcasts today as news is no better than tabloid journalism..
Juanita Phillips was so much better when she was on CNN from 1998 - but such a shame her broadcasting masters employed her in 2002 as they have dumbed down bopth her and our nightly news ever since.
7 cents a day value? i don’t think so.
The non-commercial broadcasters like the ABC and SBS deliver credible News and thought provoking Current Affairs programs. I find Channel 9 in particular an insult to my intelligence and a total waste of space.
Money is so tight that ABC radio is on high rotation, do we really need the same Alan Saunders or Natasha Mitchell or Rachel Kohn program repeated 4 times in a week. How do announcers expect me to use a web browser to interact with the ABC as I am driving along a highway? Don’t they realise wireless listening is a driving activity?
there is so much wrong with this article i don’t know where to start.
Honestly what could possibly be better about a privatised ABC? News, which is the cornerstone of ABC, would be significantly diminished. Ads and program breaks would make the tv channel indistinguishable from the commercial tv rivals…do we need more commercial tv?? really???
i am astounded that the only example of ‘only on the ABC’ programming the author can come up with is Angels in America… when in fact almost all programs on the ABC, from play school to spicks and specks would never exist on commercial tv.
i am also intrigued by this idea that there are only a small group of people who are ‘ABC viewers’ - research shows time and again that the overwhelming majority of Australians, around 17 million, watch the ABC at least once a week. it is not being watched by some small margin of society.
and as for the argument that the budget is in bad shape so the ABC is too much for it - well the ABC is only a tiny, tiny fraction of budget spending - it wouldn’t be enough to fix any serious budget problem.
oh and finally, the ABC costs far less than 7 cents a day - 7 cents a day was how much it was getting in the early 80s, before the endless cuts. it is now less than that. And considering what we get in return:
3 tv channels
7 national radio stations
more than 60 local radio stations
one of the best websites in existence
around 100 abc shops and centres
…it is a very small price to pay (especially when you consider channel 7 has more money than the ABC and only manages 2 channels which aren’t even national!)
I’d pay a dollar a day, mate. I pay a lot more than 7c/day for Crikey (indeed, mostly for Rundle these days) and it’s no ABC.
Besides, it helps to keep the bastards honest. The ABC may have moved downmarket, dammit, but at least we get more than stories about pensioners being bashed. Just think what the commercial channels would do if they had the realm entirely to themselves. I don’t watch opera, but when a (supposedly) reputable news source such as the Australian resorts to selective quotation to conceal the fact that one of its columnists is involved in Godwin Grech’s fantasies, I despair.
As any of the probably one million plus Aussies know, all the ABC has to do is follow the BBC. Simple. We don’t want to be like America, where you simply can’t find informative media amongst all the commercial nonsense.
Ok, we don’t have the budget of the BBC (not the population and thankfully no TV licenses) so the quality suffers. Perhaps our ABC can become a little more like SBS, perhaps throw a few ads in during the non-news and non-kids programmes, just as long as content takes priority and you keep the sales people away from programming decisions. If it means better content, especially with drama, then great! All tax payers want good bang for their buck. The ABC must remain relevant.
Found this interesting
http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/06/18/the-bbc-and-the-future-of-broadcasting/