A year ago, the last government torched its plan for a joined-up public broadcaster more like Australia's one. But the ABC is a billion-dollar beast that's also been a political football. Mediawatch asks its outgoing boss where it - and David Anderson himself - is heading.
The ABC's boss David Anderson answers questions on ABC TV last month about his decision to step down at the end of the year. Photo: screenshot / ABC TV news
"To speak truth to power, news media have . . . to be big enough and strong enough that politicians and other holders of power can't afford to ignore them. Without that, we're in trouble," warned Gavin Ellis, former editor of the New Zealand Herald.
In a recent talk entitled 'The Day the News Dies', Ellis went on to say commercial news media companies here were in financial trouble.
State-funded RNZ "still operates substantial services", he said, also noting it provides news for many other outlets now as well.
But it alone cannot be "the saviour of journalism here", he added.
"If you have only one organisation delivering the news, you call that something like Pravda or Xinhua."
A week later, under the equally cheery headline 'Open Society on Death Row', former Newshub boss Hal Crawford - now a media analyst in his native Australia - said "news Armageddon was pretty easy to imagine now".
He reckoned only one monolithic public media organisation could operate in each country in future.
It's bleak stuff, but Ellis and Crawford are far from the only ones pointing out that only our public broadcasters seem secure these days.
Closer together
Earlier this month, RNZ and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) agreed a memorandum of understanding to share content with each other and cooperate on new productions.
RNZ Chief Executive and Editor in Chief Paul Thompson with ABC Managing Director David Anderson. Photo: Stephen Parker
Sealing the deal at RNZ in Wellington, ABC managing director David Anderson said the ABC and RNZ had a lot in common.
But the ABC is a far bigger beast. It operates local and national radio networks, several national TV channels - including a dedicated 24/7 one for news - as well as news and entertainment, delivered on demand and online. It is funded by about A$1 billion (NZ$1.08b) a year by taxpayers there.
Here, the current coalition government put the previous one's plan for a joined-up public media entity out of its misery when they took over last year.
Have we missed an historic opportunity to have a mini- ABC for the future?
"I don't know that I'm in a position to judge," David Anderson told Mediawatch diplomatically. "I did have a delegation come and meet me in Australia to talk about it. But looking at TVNZ and listening to RNZ and looking at what happens online, I think they're two fundamentally different organisations.
"One is commercially driven and totally depends on ad revenue. It is a completely different driver for RNZ. It was always going to be a big challenge to merge the two of them."
How does being joined-up pay off for the ABC?
"It allows you to leverage. We know we are reaching more than 50 percent of the population on our primary network television channels, and we've got other multi-channels as well - all supported by ABC iView, our video on-demand service," David Anderson told Mediawatch.
Photo: AFP
"That helps you in concert with what you do on radio. There's four national radio networks before you get to local ones. We're in 60 locations around Australia and that goes from hyper-local to networked.
"Then you add in what you do for news. Digital news for us reached 12.7m people last month, out of a population of 26m."
The ABC also operates 11 overseas bureaux that gather news.
"We measure how many touch points they have with the ABC, and then that adds up to good scores on trust, too."
"We are charter-driven, much like RNZ, in that our purpose is legislated - as is our independence and requirement to be accurate and impartial."
Targeted by foes
ABC is certainly big enough to make centres of power take notice - but so do the ABC's commercial rivals.
Once-mighty TV broadcasters Seven-West, Nine, 10 and Sky News are nowhere near as profitable as they once were. News publishers including Rupert Murdoch's influential News Corp are also in decline. That makes the ABC a big target for criticism from rival media and people on the political right.
Anderson has described News Corp as "obsessed with attacking the ABC".
"It suits their business model. Their business model would be better if we didn't exist," Anderson told Mediawatch.
"But not long ago, there was a competitive neutrality review that basically found we have no effect on [commercial media companies'] revenue and how they operate.
"We're non-commercial and, editorially, we take a different lane. Commercial operators in Australia look a little bit like TVNZ here. They run entertainment programmes and things like The Block and talent shows. We generally don't have sport on television, but we do on radio. We can't afford it and we don't monetise it, whereas they do.
"We pick up what others were doing with regard to drama, comedy and different styles of entertainment where we're not competing directly. When they see audience on the ABC, they will see that as competition, but we're offering something that is opposed to what they're offering.
"And, I might add, it is the role of a public broadcaster to get all perspectives. You don't create false balance through doing that, but you want to make sure that you are capturing the perspectives that are held by the nation - and putting forward the facts that underpin all of that."
Is the ABC under pressure to get bigger audiences in return for A$1b a year?
"I've seen many governments come and go, and they will always look at the relative performance of the national broadcaster. Frankly, what they'll say varies from, 'Stick to your knitting, just stay small and don't upset anybody' through to, 'We should be reaching a higher quantity of people over time.'
"For us, though, it's all about trust, relevance and value. If you just make it all about 'reach', you can make bad decisions."
Big tech = big problem
Even though the ABC has secure public funding and many channels of its own, it still depends on offshore tech platforms like Google, Facebook and TikTok to reach digital-age Australians.
And it also depends on them for additional revenue because Australian legislation had compelled the big tech platforms to do deals that have returned millions to media companies who produce news.
Here, the government is still at the stage of redrafting legislation to do the same.
David Anderson met the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Paul Goldsmith to talk about that this month while he was here.
"If you look at where people go to consume their media, a lot of it is on social media. Every week, 98 percent of Australians (aged 14 and over) are actually on YouTube; 96 percent are on Facebook and I think 86 percent on Instagram and 60 percent on TikTok."
"I don't know where people find the time honestly, but that's where they're consuming their news and their entertainment as well."
Whereas people used to worry about the power of Murdoch, now it's Musk and Zuckerberg and the decisions they make.
"If anything, they seem to hold journalism with tongs as far from their face as possible," Andrew Dodd, from the University of Melbourne Center for Advancing Journalism recently wrote.
"They thought they were going to have a fourth estate of their own, but that strategy has changed and they've said they don't need it," said Anderson.
So why create content designed for social media platforms?
"We'll operate differently from the other commercial players, but because we're there for the public, and that's where the public are, it's important that we're there as well."
"At the ABC, we ban our staff from having TikTok on their phones, because that was the government advice. But we still produce content for TikTok given that over 60 percent of Australians are on it. We're there for the public - and that outweighs any business relationship.
"The simple fact is that of the 12.7m people that came to ABC News digital last month, 50 percent of that traffic comes through both Facebook and Google. There is a 'referral codependency' here.
"The Media Bargaining Code, which came into place about three years ago in Australia, compelled both Meta (Facebook) and Google to do deals with media publishers. Facebook has indicated to all media in Australia that they are no longer going to do that.
"So our funding [from that] dries up in December when the last tranche disappears.
"It is many millions of dollars. It is a double whammy for commercial operators and for us, it's a whole-of-ABC problem. We're going to have to make savings to cover what we have in our budget for it."
On the way out
David Anderson won't be around to see the fruits of this new MOU with RNZ.
In August, he announced he was leaving the ABC at the end of the year after 35 years there - the last five in the top job.
Angela Stengel, ABC’s Head of Digital Content & Innovation (L) and Kim Williams, chair of the ABC speaking at Futurecast 2024. Photo: screenshot from livestream
He still has more than four years of his current term to go - and he's only partway through the five-year plan he's overseen so far.
That might have something to do with the recently appointed chairperson of the ABC, Kim Williams, criticising the broadcaster's output under Anderson in public.
"I think we have, on the one hand, a tendency to have too much in news and current affairs that is filler and bland," Williams said recently.
"There needs to be serious organisational and cultural reform," he added.
Ouch.
"I am on record as saying we should never be defensive about needing to improve or having a look at what we do. I think it's perfectly fine for Kim to have some observations and impart them to me and talk about them more broadly. That is quite normal," Anderson told Mediawatch.
Wouldn't such criticism normally be aired behind closed doors?
"Look, we embrace radical transparency at the ABC. Everyone generally wants to know what you're thinking - much like I'm giving this interview with you, so I'm quite happy to do it."
Will it be a wrench to leave an outfit you've spent 35 years in?
"I feel like it's the right time for me, personally, to leave. And I think it's okay to leave a job. People are searching for reasons, but I think you can call time on something."
He's 56 years old and not ready to retire. So what next? Working for Rupert Murdoch maybe? Or TikTok?
"Yeah, probably not," Anderson laughs.
"It's an anxious time when you make a decision and you pull the pin, but then you wait for the phone to ring. I've given an undertaking to stay around until April, should the chair need me, which means not attending job interviews between now and then.
"After that, I'll just see who rings."
