“Those who adapt, survive,” ABC chair Ita Buttrose said on Friday as she emphasised the broadcaster’s “digital first approach” in her end of year message.
“We all know this is an era of rapid change … since the Covid pandemic the pace of change has increased,” she said. “Things are evolving quickly, and when faced with evolution, those who adapt survive.”
Buttrose said there were opportunities for the ABC in the “new landscape”, where the broadcaster will take a “digital first approach”, meaning stories will not be held back for broadcast times.
“There is no room for complacency,” she said. “If we are to fulfil our charter for the Australian people we must continually adapt, responding to audience trends and to the need to balance efficiency and effectiveness. That’s why the ABC will be taking a digital first approach.”
“In a world where trust is in short supply”, the ABC remains a trusted institution, she said, thanking journalists overseas covering wars, and at home covering floods, cyclones and bushfires.
Buttrose’s five-year term ends in March. “I shall miss the ABC,” she said. “I shall miss you too.”
Not much Christmas cheer
After the year’s succession of big events at News Corp, it’s a shame the annual Christmas soiree at the Murdochs’ Bellevue Hill mansion in Sydney’s east has been called off, according to a report in the Australian Financial Review.
Lachlan Murdoch – who took over from his dad, Rupert, (sort of) this year – is apparently in the United States, so the usual conga line of the rich and powerful will not have to go through the rigamarole of ducking the press on the way in.
This time a year ago, Murdoch junior had just finished his deposition in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News when he chucked the knees-up at his Bellevue Hill mansion. (Rupert followed with his deposition on the 13 and 14 December).
The ritzy shindig is usually a roll call of the sort of elites who like to decry “elites”. Think plenty of News Corp bigwigs, shock jocks and conservative politicians. The sort of people who might also have gone to former prime minister John Howard’s Christmas party – which was also cancelled because Howard needs knee surgery.
Satan, chicken thieves and OnlyFans
Ad Standards has revealed 2023’s most complained about ads. Satan, skateboarders and OnlyFans were among the top irritants.
Executive director Richard Bean said they received more than 3,500 complaints and investigated more than 250 ads.
“We’ve seen a 25% increase in complaints this year, demonstrating the community’s enthusiasm for holding businesses accountable for their ads,” he said.
Of the top five, No 1 was a billboard featuring a woman in a bikini advertising her OnlyFans page. Complainants said it was objectifying and sexualising women and that women would feel they had to live up to a idea of “flaunting their sexuality to gain attention and money!” (exclamation mark included). No 2 was for Red Rooster and featured a skateboarder nicking his mates’ chicken. That was encouraging youth crime, complainants said.
An ad for chewing gum that showed two women kissing sparked the complaint that same-sex relationships “need to be tolerated but should not be advertised as the norm”. Won’t somebody think of the children? There was more thinking of the children in complaints about an ad with a hand holding a sex toy, and one advertising Diablo IV (a thing that used to be called a video game) with the phrase “welcome to hell”.
All five complaints were dismissed.
Farewell to the king
For those of a certain generation, Triple J’s Richard Kingsmill has helped curate musical tastes for decades. Ben Eltham dubbed him the “kingmaker”.
“For a long part of the 2000s, it seemed as though you couldn’t succceed in Australian music without Kingsmill’s support,” he wrote.
So, to use the hackneyed phrase, it felt like the end of an era to hear he was moving on.
“We love you, Richard!”, the ABC website said.
On Thursday, the Nine newspapers reported that Kingsmill was made redundant. The ABC declined to comment.
If it’s true – all power to the king. In these tumultuous times it’s surprising that the word “redundant” still carries such a stigma. Sure, it may have the stench of clearing the old stuff out to get the (cheaper, shinier) new stuff in but there’s one hell of a golden lining once the smell has dissipated.
Kingsmill started in 1988. The ABC’s redundancy deal is four weeks’ salary for the first five years of service, then three weeks’ salary per year after that – capped at 24 years.
We can’t do the maths, obviously, without knowing his salary. But we can get a bit of the bigger picture ...
The ABC is culling 120 jobs – former political editor Andrew Probyn was the highest profile loss but has a new gig now at Nine. In its annual report for 2022-23, the ABC revealed that separations and redundancies cost it more than $21m.
The year before, it was about $7m.
Drumroll, please
The reaction to news of The Drum’s axing on the platform formerly known as Twitter was perfectly consistent with the way Twits have always reacted to the ABC panel show – some screech it’s too left, others moan it’s too right, and a lot of people think it falls in the Goldilocks zone.
Trolls and troglodytes aside, hosts Julia Baird and Ellen Fanning wrote a moving tribute to the show, whose last episode airs on Friday.
Baird wrote that the show was fundamentally about hope, about challenging ideas about who should be on television, about diversity and lived experience. And also about listening and the possibility of hearing another point of view. And it was about inclusiveness.
“Hope is too often spoken about as a deficit, or belonging to the simple-hearted and naive,” she wrote. “But in an increasingly polarised, distrustful world, it also does that rare thing: it binds us.”
Baird wrote that the show was “a radical departure from journalism as usual” and gave voice to the usually voiceless.
Cash for AAP
There was a stocking full of goodness for the media this week.
The communications minister, Michelle Rowland, announced $6m for Australian Associated Press for their newswire services.
“By providing these media outlets with a baseline of daily national and state news, AAP helps them focus their resources on regional and local news,” she said. “Loss of this content would be a blow to regional news businesses that are already struggling.”
The Independent MP Zoe Daniel – unfortunately but necessarily in these times – had to point out that “facts matter”.
“This is good for public interest journalism, media diversity and to help overcome the decline in media voices in much of rural and remote Australia,” she said.
Then there was $11.2m over four years for the Australian Communications and Media Authority to measure media diversity and $900,000 for the Public Interest Journalism Initiative.
The enemy of my enemy
A year after Nikki Savva’s Bulldozed, another (hopefully) excoriating look at politics is about to drop.
Nemesis – The Inside Story of Ambition, Betrayal and Revenge in the Coalition Years of Government starts on 29 January on the ABC.
Journalist Mark Willacy and his producers have convinced a (somewhat) stellar lineup to talk to him about prime ministers past – Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison.
The trailer dropped this week and revealed – neat device – word association games.
Turnbull’s asked about Abbott; Joyce about Turnbull; Pyne about Morrison. Let’s hope chaos ensues.
Barbie, bubble, toil and trouble
Margot Robbie, the Australian actor who has shot to new levels of fame thanks to the Barbie movie, has been all over the media this week.
But one appearance caused a bit of frothing.
The West Australian splashed with Robbie in a bubble bath, a glass of bubbles on the side and the headline: “They’re a dud”.
It’s a crack at Labor’s industrial relations laws. You know, the laws that will help workers, to the chagrin of big business.
Why Robbie? Well some clever clogs tortuously twisted a line from her 2015 film The Big Short. After one character in the film says: “Wall St loves to use confusing terms to make you think only they can do what they do”, Robbie explains mortgage bonds and the subprime crisis.
The West has changed that to: “Labor loves to use confusing terms to make you think their new IR laws are GOOD for workers … so here’s Margot Robbie in a bubble bath to explain the truth.”
The only problem is, Robbie has tended to be on the side of the workers, not big business.
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance took a swipe, calling it a “misleading and inappropriate use of Margot Robbie’s image”. She hasn’t resigned as a member of MEAA equity, the union tweeted, and she’s also a proud member of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
This is a misleading and inappropriate use of Margot Robbie's image. Furthermore, we can confirm that despite making her career in the US, she has not resigned as a member of #MEAAequity - and she is a member of @sagaftra! #proudtobeunion https://t.co/TQF0aSeDIy
— MEAA (@withMEAA) December 8, 2023
Which the West would have known if … it read its own reporting. In September it reported she marched to support the ongoing strike in Hollywood, T-shirt, placard and all.
“I am very much in support of all the unions,” she said.
