🚀 go-pugleaf

In <3209c6e3.874532@news.mel.aone.net.au> douglas.buckser@acslink.aone.net.au (doug buckser) writes:
>It's not clear to me why exclusive networks are necessary.  After all,
>ABC television appears to have both local and national information on
>the same broadcasting channel.  Why is radio different?

Aye, now there's the rub.

Radio, as a highly personal medium, has a very important role to play in 
bringing people information on a personal level.

TV cannot, by its nature, bring you the market reports from Gunnedah, or
the Trial Days information in Penola, or the expected frosts in Ivanhoe, or
the Regional news in Kalgoorlie, or the Cane Sugar CCS level in Ingham, 
or... you get my point.

This information is genuinely vital to those in the respective regions I 
mentioned.

But would you, as an urban Melbourne listener, listen to the ABC if you got 
all that interrupting your traffic reports on the SE Arterial? Or have the
discussion of largely urban issued fragmented by the sheep prices at Moe?

Not-a-chance, methinks.

And a similar defence can be made for all the networks: each provides a 
service that no-one else in Australia does - or is willing to do.

Even NewsRadio, who pay my salary cheques .. after all, its the only 
continuous news format in Australia .. and no-one else wants parliamentary
broadcasts. 
 
(If truth be known, NewsRadio, is probably a luxury .. but then again, our 
entire operating budget is, I am told, slightly less than John Laws' car 
registration & insurance costs)

>Low ratings.  Bad reviews.  That sort of thing.  If my memory is
>accurate, I understand that Melbourne's audience for Mercury was so
>small in some weeks that it barely registered enough viewers to avoid
>an asterisk.

Interesting. It rated quite well, elsewhere (AFAIK).


>If $540,000,000 isn't enough money for the ABC to retain its
>integrity, I struggle to think of how much money -is- enough.  A
>billion?  Two billion?  The mind boggles.

No, the $540 mil is enough .. and could, perhaps, be trimmed _a bit_ as part 
of the reshaping that was already in place.

No-one is asking for more (well, I'm not, anyway) .. all we ask is that the
ABC not be gutted in what appears to be a blatant 'get-even' schtick.

>I believe that any organisation which spends $540,000,000 each year
>can find some ways to reduce expenditure with minimal impact on
>production.  In this time of financial hardship, the ABC should
>identify and stop unnecessary spending, so that the money can be
>directed to more deserving programs.

That was already happening. 50-mill was already being shaved when the latest
custs were announced.

>This may be our fundamental disagreement on this subject.  I do not
>agree with your assumption that the ABC is not beholden to its funding
>body, which is the government in this case.  The correlation of a
>collective progressive ABC culture and a Labor government is simply
>too great to be accepted.

Well, other have been arguing that the ABC has been 'leftist' since the 
Whitlam days.  

If they are right, (given the intervention of the Fraser years) you are 
wrong. 

If you are right, then they are wrong, and the ABC was 'rightist' from the
mid 70s to the mid 80s.

Personally, I both sides are wrong :-)


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