Take one public broadcaster. Take away much of its internal production capacity. Outsource it. Then take its content, and put it up for sale. At what stage does this organisation cease to be a public broadcaster, and when should we begin to try and redefine the term?
Yesterday, the ABC passed a significant landmark on its journey towards the crucial delivery of its triennial funding submission, on which much hope for the future hangs.
The milestone was the launch of ABC downloads, an online extension of the ABC shop by which customers will be able to pay a fee to download some of the programming from the ABC’s extensive library. Have a look at it here.
Critics argue that the content should be free, because the taxpayer has already paid for it. (For a more sophisticated argument about the nature of “public goods” and the true cost of charging for them, see this blog post by Nicholas Gruen.)
I can accept that in an imperfect world the ABC needs to sell its drama offerings once they have been screened for free. Better than taking advertising, I think. And I can see the sense in Mark Scott’s argument about there being no difference between paying for content in shops in the mall and shops in virtual space. But surely one of the things that is most important about the ABC, one of its chief public goods, is news and current events. I would have liked to think that programmes like Four Corners might have remain free to air in all mediums.
How was the selection of content available to download made? The truth is that the availability of content is governed largely by whether or not the ABC owns, or can beg borrow and buy the rights. Some of the cutting-edge drama about to hit our screens, such as The Hollow Men, is yet to be the subject of a firm agreement giving Auntie the right to make it available for paid download.
And this is where the paid download issue runs smack bang into the other end of the process line: the outsourcing of production. Increasingly, content goes in one end of the ABC, resides briefly on its platforms then comes out the other end and finds a home elsewhere.
Whether outsourcing is a good thing or the mark of the devil is one of the hottest debates in the faction-ridden institution. Should the ABC remain a major production house in its own right, or should it become primarily a commissioner of content?
Nobody really wants to hand over control to the audience, the open housers say, yet that is the way of the future.
The paradigm is changing. The ABC belongs to the people, and in the media world of the future only institutions with very porous boundaries will survive.
So content comes in, and content goes out. What sort of thing do we need in between?
Pretty fundamental questions and scary for those who see nothing but threat in asking them. Don’t worry. Not many people are.
So what's your view? Is outsourcing the way of the future? Or is the ABC moving away from its role as our national broadcaster?