ABC cuts and the progressive reduction in the capacity of the Australian media to reflect us back to ourselves

The cuts to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) budget had been well foreshadowed. And, yes, whichever way you cut it, it is another broken promise. The reactions on both sides have been very stereotyped.  In this short post, I want to come at the issue another way, one that reflects my own biases

Background

This is the web site for Australia's Channel Nine news, this for Channel 7, this for Channel 10. Now compare it with ABC TV or, for the sake of completeness, SBS news.

This is the web site for NBN TV news, this for Prime TV. I have deliberately selected these TV stations because they still have local and regional news.

Prime local news has declined as the network spread, while its regional news has always been fairly narrow. The third Northern NSW TV network, Northern Rivers TV, also had local news, but this vanished after it became absorbed into the Ten network.

Regional TV is an area where the commercial networks were, still are, much better than the ABC. You see, ABC is state/metro based and has no local or regional TV coverage at all except, I suppose, where the state or territory entity is is so small that the coverage is by definition local.

ABC radio is quite different. This is the ABC Kimberley site, this the New England North West site. ABC radio is the main source of news and events at regional level outside the still very important if struggling local newspapers. Those papers themselves have an increasingly localised focus.

This is the web site of the Fairfax owned Armidale Express; I write the Express's history column. The site format is the same for all Fairfax regional papers. The regional referred to there is not regional in the old sense, but regional in the sense of feed from other Fairfax papers in regional (ie non-metro) Australia.  

If we now turn to special interest broadcasting, ABC radio is the medium par excellence when it comes to country or regional Australia with programs like the now to be closed Bush Telegraph.

Discussion

We all have our own biases and perceptions. I would argue, for example, that the earlier decision to close the ABC's international service was an own goal of monumental  proportions. In similar vein, faced with cuts the ABC is choosing what to cut with varying responses depending on your perceptions of the value of those things being cut or, alternatively, being saved or even extended. The Australian Financial Review, for example, mounted a swinging attack on the ABC's decision to extend digital coverage.

In all the changes that have taken place in the media, the ABC cuts and consequent re-orientation are just the latest, the things that I have most noticed are a gradual impoverishment at two levels.

One is simply access to news and information. Yes, I am a news junkey, but I think that it's still true. The second and the one that I am most interested in, is the progressive reduction in the capacity of the Australian media to reflect us back to ourselves in all our local diversity.

 The Financial Review argued that the proliferation of on-line sites meant that there was no justification for the ABC to move further into the digital space. That may be true, depending on the way that the arguments are phrased. But I operate in the digital space the paper is talking about.

I created two regional specific New England blogs in part because I was interested in the area in question, in part because there was very little coordinated coverage of the broader area I was interested in. Then I realised that my blogs had become in part journals of record because there was no longer any, I mean any, media source that you might go to for this stuff.

Now here there is a problem. I am a single person with broad interests. How do I find the time for my self-identified journal of record role?  Clearly there is demand; the stats show that, but I struggle to maintain the blogs.

This brings me to the simple take-home message from this post. The decision by the Government to cut funding, the subsequent response by ABC management, further reduces coverage in areas (geographic and subject) that I am interested in. There is no point me arguing about the cuts, for or against, because that won't actually affect what has become a firmly established trend.

If I want to do anything, I am going to have to do it myself, using the platforms I have. Whether that makes sense I leave it to others to judge. For the moment, I'm just thinking about responses.