From BS today:
The Abbott government has announced a review into the efficiency of Australia’s two national broadcasters.
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has recruited Peter Lewis, a former chief financial officer at Seven West Media, to conduct a study into the ABC and SBS.
“It is a routine responsibility of the minister to ensure that the ABC and SBS use public resources as efficiently as possible,” he said in a statement on Thursday.
The decision follows Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s earlier criticism of the ABC in which he accused it of acting against the national interest and lacking “basic affection for the home team”.
The criticism should be taken as a compliment, Mr Turnbull said on Thursday in defence of the broadcaster.
That’s a good idea. The broadcaster should be kept on its toes and I can tell you from experience that a stiff bristled broom would do the ABC no harm at all.
But this has been handled very badly in political terms. It will be widely seen as a witch hunt (and may actually be one) following the PM’s recent personal attacks on the broadcaster. It doesn’t end there. The story goes on:
Amid the commentary, Mr Abbott confirmed the government would revisit Labor’s “particularly dodgy” decision to award the ABC the broadcasting rights to the Australia Network.
…The coalition had significant concerns about “probity issues” when the $223 million Australia Network contract was permanently awarded to the ABC in 2011, accusing the Gillard government of botching the tender process.
A bit of history is useful here. Australia Network was founded by the ABC and began life in 1993 as Australian Television International, funded by the then Labour Government. After five years it was stripped of the management rights by the new Liberal Government, which were handed to Channel Seven in 1998.
The result was an operational debacle. The momentum the channel had built up was lost, advertisers deserted it, content quality deteriorated, Channel Seven made big losses and didn’t bother to re-tender in 2002.
The ABC won the tender and the channel was reborn as ABC Asia Pacific. But the pattern had now been established. The rebuild began and went well until 2005 when the five year contract was up for tender renewal. The uncertainty around the process, with Sky News lobbying aggressively to grab the peach, meant no advertising and distribution contracts beyond tender deadlines could be signed. Advertisers deserted the channel again.
The ABC again won the tender in 2005 but the Liberal Government pushed the channel to rebrand as “Australian Network” so that the management contract could more easily be shifted to another operator in future.
The 2011 tender, now under the Labor Government, saw Sky News again press for the contract but it was awarded to the ABC and the tender process itself was scrapped. And yes, advertisers had deserted the channel again.
I can’t comment on the “probity” of the process. What I can say is that the five year recurrent tender process was quite destructive to the channel’s operational efficiency. Ending it permanently gave the channel the continuity it needed to build long term relationships in advertising and distribution and it grew strongly as a result.
Not that that matters now.
