tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/abc-a-new-era-27353/articlesABC: A new era – The Conversation2016-05-09T20:04:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/589832016-05-09T20:04:47Z2016-05-09T20:04:47ZMemo to Michelle Guthrie: as local newspapers die, might the ABC help out?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121648/original/image-20160509-23356-1beoll9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this man's day, Cooma had a thriving newspaper. Now it is gone – could the ABC step into the breach?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Records NSW/flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The ABC’s new managing director, Michelle Guthrie, has been in the job for just over a week. She has already made it her mission to increase diversity at the broadcaster and <a href="https://theconversation.com/michelle-guthrie-should-look-to-uk-and-reality-tv-to-achieve-a-more-diverse-abc-58931">Helen Vatsikopoulos offers some suggestions</a> how this could be done. Our experts consider how to <a href="https://theconversation.com/memo-to-michelle-guthrie-expert-ideas-for-the-new-abc-era-58929">improve news and current affairs coverage, local content and digital services</a> and Brian McNair (below) suggests how Guthrie could assist with the crisis in local and regional journalism.</em></p>
<p>Last week saw the <a href="http://www.coomaexpress.com.au/story/3889403/farewell-to-a-good-friend/?cs=567#slide=8">closure of the Cooma-Monaro Express</a>, after 130 years of serving the Snowy Mountains community of Cooma.</p>
<p>The title is the latest casualty of Fairfax Media’s restructuring, and a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-05/cooma-monaro-express-hits-newsstands-for-final-time/7388716">real blow</a> to the people who have depended on it for local coverage. Nine journalism jobs will be lost at the paper, and there will be knock on economic impacts.</p>
<p>Cooma newsagent Shane Clark told the ABC,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was quite a big shock. It’s not like sales have dropped dramatically so it’s a bit out of the blue on behalf of Fairfax. Country towns love their local papers and sometimes I think that the decision-makers up in Sydney don’t understand how important local papers are to country areas.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At QUT, our research on the Australian public sphere shows that people truly value their local journalism. In a world of media industry turbulence and change, the local paper (and its online equivalent) retains its value as the only place where a certain, crucial category of information can be found. </p>
<p>We can access all the national and global news we want on ABC, Sky, CNN and BBC World. We can read the whole world’s media online at the touch of a button, finding out what’s going on in the US presidential campaign at exactly the same time as the Americans themselves. </p>
<p>But when it comes to how the local mayor is performing, or who is being born and who is dying in the community, or what multinational corporation is trying to get an LNG permit to dig up a neigbourhood beauty spot, we need local journalism to report, investigate, scrutinise, expose. To lose a title such as the Cooma-Monaro Express is to lose a central element of the infrastructure of local democracy.</p>
<p>Australia’s crisis of journalism is nowhere more evident than in the local and regional sectors. Deakin University scholars set out the challenges in a thoughtful <a href="%5Bwww.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=a0e6a828-eac9-4364%5D(http://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=a0e6a828-eac9-4364">submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications</a> last March. They noted that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While rural and regional Australians have access to more media than ever before in a digital world … they are receiving less news that is relevant to them at the local level.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Deakin paper focuses on what the ABC can do to preserve and protect its own local and regional services, as it too struggles to restructure and streamline for the digital era. </p>
<p>But as Michelle Guthrie steps into the role of ABC Managing Director, we should be asking what the ABC can do to support the commercial sector in the regions, and communities such as Cooma.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121652/original/image-20160509-23372-1xn5gwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121652/original/image-20160509-23372-1xn5gwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121652/original/image-20160509-23372-1xn5gwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121652/original/image-20160509-23372-1xn5gwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121652/original/image-20160509-23372-1xn5gwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121652/original/image-20160509-23372-1xn5gwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121652/original/image-20160509-23372-1xn5gwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michelle Guthrie speaking to the Senate Estimates Committee last week.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Coch/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mark Scott’s February <a href="https://theconversation.com/abc-managing-director-mark-scotts-address-to-the-national-press-club-55308">speech to the National Press Club</a> identified “the closure of many regional newspapers and the continued loss of local content makers in the bush, with fewer regional radio and TV news services” as part of the challenge facing Australian media. </p>
<p>One way to address this widening democratic deficit would be to expand the ABC into regional news holes abandoned by Fairfax and others. But even if there were funds for that approach, it presents the ABC with political problems around perceived anti-competitiveness and overreach.</p>
<p>Moreover, the ABC is a big behemoth, lacking both the funds and the agility, one might suggest, to replace very localised outlets such as the Cooma-Monaro Express.</p>
<p>It would be far better to develop the approach Scott alluded to in a <a href="http://about.abc.net.au/speeches/the-abc-in-the-media-ecosystem/">2013 speech in the United States</a>, where he quoted approvingly journalism professor Jeff Jarvis’ notion of “an organisation that sees itself as a member of an <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/sep/14/ecosystem-hyperlocal-bloggers">eco-system</a>” and which understands “the value of every relationship, even relationships with competitors, to create both value and efficiency … a platform or network that would foster others’ success”.</p>
<p>In that speech, Scott outlined some pilot schemes and initiatives around content sharing with local commercial content producers. These include the BBC’s Newstracker service, which drives online traffic to local media and makes the BBC “the fifth highest feeder of readers to UK commercial newspaper websites, sending many more visitors there than Facebook”.</p>
<p>Since then, the <a>BBC has gone further</a> to support the UK’s local media industry, and local journalism in particular, with schemes focused on hyper-local websites at one end of the spectrum, and partnerships with big commercial companies on the other.</p>
<p>It was reported two weeks ago that the UK News Media Association, which represents the national, regional and local press, was nearing agreement with the BBC to work together on reviving local journalism. </p>
<p>Details remain to be finalised, but specific proposals include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>regional press providing the BBC with a comprehensive reporting service primarily covering local authorities</p></li>
<li><p>a video bank that would make BBC regional content available to local media partners free of charge</p></li>
<li><p>a shared data journalism unit</p></li>
<li><p>an agreement on better linking to local media content on BBC news sites and attribution to content originated in local media.</p></li>
<li><p>100 journalists funded by the BBC on local coverage which would be shared with the commercial sector.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The BBC, like the ABC, walks a tightrope between the provision of public cultural goods such as journalism, and the perception of competitors that it is squeezing commercial media enterprises out of markets. </p>
<p>While the idea that the ABC should be only a market failure broadcaster is a recipe for decline and marginalisation, it is entirely valid to say that an organisation protected from the bitter winds of free market competition should use its resources and prestige to bolster a key journalism sector which the commercial sector is best suited to deliver, but struggling to maintain.</p>
<p>The ABC already cooperates with Fairfax and other media organisations such as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on specific projects such as the Panama Papers. And it should be among Guthrie’s strategic priorities to accelerate and consolidate the collaborative approach, sharing the tax payer’s dollar with those who wish to access the ABC’s vast resources and expertise in pursuit of public services such as quality local journalism.</p>
<p>Australia loves its ABC, and local communities such as Cooma need their journalism.</p>
<p>With the digital opportunities opening up, is it time for the ABC to think in new ways about how it can serve local communities by helping local and regional news producers stay in business with much needed quality local coverage?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58983/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian McNair receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a Chief Investigator within e Digital Media Research Centre at QUT.</span></em></p>The 130-year-old Cooma-Monaro Express is the latest newspaper casualty in a time of industry turbulence. Yet with local news more important than ever, could the ABC use its resources to bolster this key journalism sector?Brian McNair, Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/589292016-05-08T20:05:29Z2016-05-08T20:05:29ZMemo to Michelle Guthrie: expert ideas for the new ABC era<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121463/original/image-20160506-5704-5f6235.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure>
<p>The ABC’s new managing director, Michelle Guthrie, has been in the job for a week. She has already made it her mission to increase diversity at the broadcaster and Helen Vatsikopoulos <a href="https://theconversation.com/michelle-guthrie-should-look-to-uk-and-reality-tv-to-achieve-a-more-diverse-abc-58931">offers some suggestions how to here.</a> We asked a group of experts to consider what needs to be done in other areas: from news and current affairs coverage to local content to digital services.</p>
<h2>News and current affairs</h2>
<p><strong>Peter Manning, former Head of TV News and Current Affairs at the ABC, now Adjunct Professor of Journalism at UTS</strong></p>
<p>New managing director Michelle Guthrie has just had her first lesson in dealing with her political masters in Canberra.</p>
<p>According to the gossip trail, she was Malcolm Turnbull’s preferred candidate for MD following the end of Mark Scott’s 10-year reign. If so, it hasn’t helped her in the Budget handed down last week. Scott had made a special plea in his farewell speech for one of his victories – a A$20 million a year grant called the “Enhanced Newsgathering Program” for the 2013-2016 triennium. Despite Guthrie’s clean-slate relationship with the media savvy Turnbull, the requested A$20 million has been cut by a third, to A$13.5 million annually.</p>
<p>ABC staff and viewers will be watching closely all the nuances of that relationship. Guthrie’s failure to hold the line on ABC funding will not go down well. More directly, the ABC <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-03/budget-2016-abc-facing-budget-cuts/7380570">issued a statement</a> quickly noting: “There will necessarily be some changes to staffing and programming in line with the reduced allocation of funds.” Jobs will go.</p>
<p>Which jobs? It’s likely two of the five initiatives in the three year program – outer suburban bureaus (in Sydney and Melbourne) and live-linking capacity in the major regions – are safe. But the other three – a national reporting team, state based digital news and the ABC Fact Check Unit – are under threat.</p>
<p>The ABC has always regarded its relations with the bush as central to its charter and the outer suburban bureaus are extremely cost effective. They have only a few reporters but cover very well the western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne – where most people live.</p>
<p>For what’s its worth, Guthrie has an unenviable job – trying to put her stamp on an empire whose core business is news and current affairs – with programs that are performing well in the ratings but stretched to the limit in terms of resources.</p>
<p>In that situation, better to sit back and smell the roses for a while and get to know the values of the place and how it works.</p>
<p>Under Scott, news and current affairs became more accessible, better distributed (to a variety of platforms) and more heavily regulated to ensure fairness and balance.</p>
<p>The ABC also became more news oriented and current affairs slipped down the corporate beanpole. Like so many other cultural institutions, it became more defensive and a victim of outrageous attacks from right-wing cultural warriors such as Gerard Henderson and Andrew Bolt.</p>
<p>In this environment, the ABC’s news coverage became more “literal”, specialising in what we used to call “police rounds”: crime, fires, car accidents and courts. It would be good to see a more confident, serious ABC News that reported more socially significant policy rounds, such as economics, environment, industrial relations, transport and the arts.</p>
<p>The ABC’s foreign correspondents also mark it out as different in the marketplace. No-one competes with them in Australia. News should therefore be roughly one third local, one third national and one third global.</p>
<p>Finally, the abolition of the state-based editions of the 7.30 Report was a major error. We are a federal nation. It means state premiers and ministers get it easy. Quentin Dempster was a major loss in NSW and with him went a corporate memory as well. I am sure Mike Baird is pleased to see the back of him. As a viewer, I’m certainly not.</p>
<h2>Digital strategy</h2>
<p><strong>Jonathon Hutchinson, lecturer in Online Media at the University of Sydney</strong></p>
<p>Often when people discuss the ABC’s digital strategy, particularly under the leadership of Michelle Guthrie, it is framed with a negative connotation as either a <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/digital/abc-at-risk-of-heading-down-clickbait-route/news-story/e6287935e10da6e42e8c389a9fec187d">click bait</a> exercise, or a <a href="http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2016/04/11/changes-anger-abc-staff/%5D">waste of money</a>. But when talking about digital strategy, one should consider the ABC’s obligation, under its charter, to provide material to all Australians – wherever they live.</p>
<p>As the ABC embraces its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HooSoVcU6m4">“digital first” content production model</a>, it is offering digital ahead of, or in conjunction with, its broadcast TV and Radio content. Examples include the Television Division’s iView platform and the development of an entire audio podcasting unit within the Radio Division.</p>
<p>Digital first enables the ABC to commission influential digital content producers, for example leading YouTube celebrity producers, to co-create innovative ABC content. It also means content can be as long or short as it needs – not tied to restrictive programming time slots. It is attractive for many reasons, not least its cost effectiveness within a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-03/budget-2016-abc-facing-budget-cuts/7380570">hostile funding environment</a>.</p>
<p>However, to capitalise on the ABC’s innovation within this space, the organisation must ensure its focus remains on access to the content, beyond providing free radio and iView apps.</p>
<p>Digital first content has to be consumed on digital platforms, which require access to the internet and a significant amount of data. While data charges have significantly dropped in recent years for Australian internet customers, the demand of video streaming services is an enormous strain on an already struggling infrastructure. As Rebecca Heap notes, iView alone is consistently reaching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HooSoVcU6m4">video streaming levels of 50 million views per month</a>, before we add commercial services such Netflix, Stan and similar to that same internet infrastructure.</p>
<p>Data that is pushed through copper pipes may not necessarily be able to handle an entire neighborhood’s demand, rendering our NBN infrastructure incompatible for future digital consumption habits.</p>
<p>Furthermore, this type of activity is entirely unreachable for many Australians who would otherwise access ABC content via mobile devices, which still attract incredibly expensive monthly data charges.</p>
<p>So while the ABC is leading the way with its digital first strategy, it must maintain its focus simultaneously on providing or subsidising digital infrastructure that can be universally accessed by Australian citizens.</p>
<p>Guthrie, in taking over from Scott, must maintain a strong role in the overall Australian communication landscape. This especially includes lobbying the government for a better NBN infrastructure: a position I’m certain she is well equipped for, given her previous role at Google.</p>
<p>This further emphasises the importance of Guthrie’s role as a key “push-back” agent against an often dismissive government when it comes to the values of public service media. She is the voice of a diverse cultural institution, beloved by many as our Aunty.</p>
<h2>Local content</h2>
<p><strong>Vincent O'Donnell, Honorary Research Associate of the School of Media and Communication, RMIT University</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121474/original/image-20160506-427-1ibxm75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121474/original/image-20160506-427-1ibxm75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121474/original/image-20160506-427-1ibxm75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121474/original/image-20160506-427-1ibxm75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121474/original/image-20160506-427-1ibxm75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121474/original/image-20160506-427-1ibxm75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121474/original/image-20160506-427-1ibxm75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121474/original/image-20160506-427-1ibxm75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dresses all lit up at the Adelaide Fringe Festival…the ABC needs to look outside Sydney and Melbourne for content.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Coghlan/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Local content on Australian television, even the ABC, is an endangered species. On commercial television it will soon be as elusive as the <a href="http://www.bushheritage.org.au/what_we_do/protect-animals/night-parrot">Night Parrot</a>, despite the wholesome and hopeless promises of the government’s media reform legislation.</p>
<p>This, in part, is the outcome of lazy regional commercial station managers who turn to deregulation rather than innovation to save the sinking share price of their companies. They fail to exploit their one competitive advantage over all other electronic media, that of <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Ricardo.html">localism</a>.</p>
<p>Ignoring, too, all free-to-air media’s public service obligation, they pass the buck to the ABC, redefining its broadcast role as compensating for their local content deficit, especially in news.</p>
<p>But the ABC is not blame free. It has retreated from content production in Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart. It may have made sense to the ABC bean counters to concentrate content production in Melbourne and, especially, Sydney, but it flies in the face of the ABC mandate to reflect Australia to Australians. All Australia.</p>
<p>The thinking may be “Sydney and the bush”, but Sydney is not Australia, and neither is Melbourne. The avenues to redress the deficiency in program diversity are within easy reach for both commercial and public sector broadcasters as long as every state doesn’t want to be the home of the next blockbuster series.</p>
<p>For both, there is a model in ABC Radio that all television could follow.</p>
<p>Though largely produced from studios in Sydney and Melbourne, Radio National achieves a significant catchment of content from across all Australia (although Darwin and far North Queensland remain poorly represented).</p>
<p>Programs like <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandarts/">Books and Arts</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/liveset">The Live Set</a> pursue content from festivals across Australia. There is a wealth of light entertainment content and serious drama happening every night in all our capital cities and many provincial towns, much of it of high production quality and potentially good for TV.</p>
<p>The content is culturally vital, accessible and needs just a small outside broadcast van for the night. Adelaide, every autumn, is host to the world’s <a href="https://www.adelaidefringe.com.au/">third largest fringe festival</a>, behind only Edinburgh, Scotland, and Edmonton, Canada. Is someone saying there is nothing there that is worth packaging for TV?</p>
<p>Not only is the content there but the productions are opportunities for the next generation of screen directors. Ric Birch, veteran of half a dozen Olympic opening telecasts, started on ABC’s low-budget <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK_%28TV_series%29">GTK</a>. Where will the next Ric Birch come from?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58929/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vincent O'Donnell presents the long -running weekly arts and culture current affair program, Arts Alive, on the national Community Radio Network.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathon Hutchinson and Peter Manning do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New ABC chief Michelle Guthrie has been in the job for a week. We asked a range of experts what she needs to do to improve news and current affairs coverage, boost local content and strengthen digital services.Jonathon Hutchinson, Lecturer in Online Media, University of SydneyPeter Manning, Adjunct Professor of Journalism, University of Technology SydneyVincent O'Donnell, Honorary Research Associate of the School of Media and Communication, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/589312016-05-06T00:39:28Z2016-05-06T00:39:28ZMichelle Guthrie should look to UK and reality TV to achieve a more diverse ABC<p>Dear Michelle, </p>
<p>Welcome back to Australia and may I say how pleasantly surprising it is to finally have a diverse face at the helm of the national broadcaster.</p>
<p>Those of us, like me, who are part of the 26% of Australians who were born overseas, look forward to your promise for a more diverse ABC. As do those who - like you - are part of the <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/census">20% of second generation Australians</a> with at least one parent born overseas who speak a language other than English at home.</p>
<p>Two years ago I wrote about the lack of diversity at the ABC for this <a href="https://theconversation.com/whose-australian-stories-cultural-diversity-at-the-abc-29481">website</a>. I was thus a little surprised to read recently of the outgoing ABC managing director Mark Scott’s “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/27/abc-failing-to-reflect-racial-diversity-of-modern-australia-says-mark-scott">mea culpa</a>” on the issue.</p>
<p>Scott told <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/scotty-doesnt-know?utm_term=.so8vadW65#.qsmaA4vW1">Buzzfeed’s Mark Di Stefano</a> that one of his biggest failures as MD was employing “too many Anglos”. Contrasting Australia with the UK, he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When I watch and listen to the BBC when I’m in the UK I think the on-air talent really represents a diversity of modern Britain. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Scott had ten years to do something about this. Yet it could be argued that, apart from ABCNews24, the main channel got whiter and whiter under his stewardship. Was he unconsciously hiring people who looked and sounded like him?</p>
<p>Do you watch reality television Michelle? It’s blind to colour. If you have the voice or the cooking skills, you can make it. Have you been watching My Kitchen Rules? <a href="http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/reality-tv/spice-sisters-tasia-and-gracia-seger-win-my-kitchen-rules/news-story/2768dd456a1a6deed5b48db6bb97d3c5">Tasia and Gracia Seger</a>, “The Spice Sisters,” won. We got to meet their multicultural family – which has lived in Indonesia and India as well as Australia. There was even an Albanian woman cooking on the show, delighting my mother, who has Greek-Albanian ancestry. And Dami Im, the Korean-born singer who won the fifth season of X Factor Australia, will <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/programs/eurovision/article/2016/05/05/first-look-dami-ims-eurovision-2016-performance">represent Australia at Eurovision</a> (to be broadcast by SBS).</p>
<p>Of course a more diverse ABC, one that truly holds a mirror to Australian society and tells all its stories, might make SBS less relevant. I wonder at the timing and urgency of this cultural diversity rhetoric? Is it just a coincidence that at Scott’s final <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-24/mark-scott-delivers-national-press-club-address/7195888">Press Club speech</a> he again brought up the issue of an ABC/SBS merger? </p>
<p>Still, SBS broadcasts in languages other than English. And as migration patterns change, I’d argue it’s more important than ever for migrants to hear news and programs in their mother tongue – both for social cohesion and their sense of belonging. I don’t think the ABC can or will do that.</p>
<p>Apparently ABC radio is now forming a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/abc-radio-staff-told-to-put-people-with-difficult-accents-on-air-20160502-gokjsh.html">diversity action group</a> to examine whether there’s an unconscious bias against certain accents in the voices that are put to air. This is a great idea but cultural diversity by committee has already been tried. Two years ago, I wrote that ABC news and current affairs had formed a <a>diversity action group</a> too. I am not sure what it has achieved.</p>
<p>After my article was published in 2014, the ABC wrote to me and the editors at The Conversation. They were especially concerned about my comments regarding Australian Story. The program told such an overwhelming number of white stories, I wrote, that I sometimes felt I was watching Landline.</p>
<p>The ABC’s Sally Jackson wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Although the program pursues stories in a wide range of communities, it is the case that there is a higher failure rate in non-Anglo communities, i.e. stories are pursued but there is a reluctance to proceed – often, ironically, for cultural reasons. […] The team is also seeking other ways to introduce more diversity, such as seeking out people from diverse ethnicities as guest introducers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This begs the question: why was ethnic talent pulling out of appearing on Australian Story? Was it an issue of trust? Or cultural insensitivity? </p>
<p>Australian Story, or “White Australian Story” as many of my multicultural friends facetiously call it, is a complex program to produce with very high production values. But it has failed to reflect diverse Australian stories. </p>
<p>For 19 years, it was run by its founding executive producer Deborah Fleming. In a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/deb-fleming-farewells-australian-story-the-abc-show-she-founded-19-years-ago-20150725-giitog.html">swansong interview</a> last year, she told Fairfax Media’s Paul Kalina that the show suffered from the “tyranny of pictures that can make or break any TV show, the format requires its subjects to have a good command of English.”</p>
<p>Under its new executive producer Deborah Masters, I recently watched an episode that contained a subtitled interview with <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/austory/content/2015/s4348989.htm">the mother of Socceroos coach Ange Postecoglou</a>.
She was speaking in Greek. That was a refreshing change. I look forward to more such stories. </p>
<p>Look at what the Americans have done to make their television screens reflect the reality on the street. Look, too, at what the BBC is doing right now with its affirmative action policy. </p>
<p>The BBC has employed a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/ariel/33637666">Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Succession</a>, Tunde Ogungbesane. He says he never watched the BBC before because it did not reflect his reality. He will be tackling unconscious bias at the recruitment level by removing people’s names – and where they went to school – from their job applications. </p>
<p>The BBC has made available a two million pound Diversity Fund to help create new programs. It has created new internships and a new leadership development program so that diversity happens from the top down.</p>
<p>The BBC has also pledged that half of its workforce will be women by the year 2020. The ABC’s most recent <a href="http://about.abc.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/EquityDiversityAnnualRPT201415.pdf">cultural diversity report</a> shows that 52.5% of all employees are women. </p>
<p>However only 11.8% of ABC employees were from non-English speaking backgrounds in 2015. This is down from 12.4% the year before. </p>
<p>And the numbers for content makers are even worse: 7.4% last year were employees from non-English speaking backgrounds – down from 8.2% the year before. It looks like Mark Scott was right – he did hire too many Anglos!</p>
<p>Let us hope that soon there will be more people who look like you making programs and appearing on our ABC.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Vatsikopoulos worked for the ABC from 1982-87 and 2000-2009, and for SBS from 1988-1999.</span></em></p>The ABC’s new chief, who took over last week, has identified improving diversity at the broadcaster as a top priority. This is long overdue - the BBC has already tackled the issue from the top down.Helen Vatsikopoulos, Lecturer in Journalism, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.