Guthrie plans changes while no one is watching

When Guthrie appointed Jim Rudder to carry out a two-month efficiency review, she was looking for private sector-style savings — not the kind public servants do when they don’t care whether they save money or not.

Rudder had just finished modernising Fox Sports US. His background is establishing pay-TV networks in Britain, Italy and Germany — where efficiency is a ­byword. Just compare costs at Sky TV Australia and the ABC. Leaving aside transmission, the ABC spends 50 per cent of its budget on making programs; Sky spends much more than 80 per cent.

Guthrie wants to spend up to 80 per cent on content, without asking taxpayers for a dollar. ­Instead, she is cutting management by 20 per cent, reducing duplication in support areas and trimming production numbers — shows like Media Watch credit up to nine staff to produce 15 minutes’ television a week. There have been howls that up to 85 production staff — vision mixers, lighting directors and the entire field camera department — are being axed. But technological change means you can do more with less. And there is obviously fat in the system when ABC hosts take “well-earned breaks” from late November until early February. All up, 200 jobs will go, freeing up $15 million for 80 new reporters in rural and regional Australia.

Guthrie will use another $50m for a content fund to ­respond to a seemingly inexorable, catastrophic long-term ­decline in ABC audiences. The ABC counts someone as a viewer if they watch just five continuous minutes of television a week. Even then, only 37.8 per cent watch the ABC in the five major metropolitan cities, down from 72 per cent in 1991.

And the decline is across all age groups. Even ABC Kids TV, which captures 61 per cent of zero to four-year-old viewers, is down from 67 per cent last year. And the average age of an ABC viewer is now 66. Yet 20 million Australians, about 86 per cent of the population, watch broadcast TV (free-to-air and subscription channels) weekly, on average about three hours a day.

Guthrie says the ABC must ­respond to new and powerful media competitors. No doubt she means the video-on-demand services offered by iTunes, Amazon, Netflix et al. More than 60 per cent of Australians over 16 are watching video-on-­demand, up from 50 per cent in 2013.

Guthrie’s answer is to open her $50m fund to all employees “to source new ideas for content”. But why should making content be limited to the ABC? In the face of dramatically declining audience share, the last thing the ABC needs is more of the same. The subscription TV sector ­invested $893m in television screen content last year — more than the ABC and SBS combined — creating 60,000 hours of first-run Australian content and broadcasting for 242,000 hours. As for quality, some of the best TV in the world is made in the private sector.

Guthrie’s content fund — ­indeed all ABC content funding — should be opened to all those who produce TV content in Australia. This is not a new concept. Australia TV, our equivalent of BBC World, was produced by the private sector, then by the public sector. Indeed, it was a Labor government that most recently put it out to tender, and it was the private sector bidder, Sky TV, which was found by an independent panel to be most competitive. That’s the catch. The ABC does use some content produced by non-ABC staff but far too often they are ex-ABC staff. The gatekeepers of Guthrie’s content fund must be genuinely independent.

As to what should be made with taxpayers’ money, that should also be determined not by a clique at the ABC but by a review of the ABC charter, to which everyone can contribute, as happens every decade at the BBC. The review should decide roughly how much of each kind of content should be created. Left to itself, ABC TV produces hardly any Australian history, for example, despite its fabulous archives — which, despite being paid for by all Australians, are very expensive for anyone outside the ABC to use. Meanwhile, pay TV creates thousands of hours of original, Australian content: news, sport, history, drama, music, children’s TV.

Everyone should compete on a level playing field to produce content for the public broadcaster. The BBC has announced a contestable fund of £60m ($97m) for which anyone can bid. The ABC should follow suit.

Competition breathes life into moribund businesses. Guthrie, an ex-Google executive, knows it. Who better to bring it to the ABC?

Rebecca Weisser is a research associate at the Centre for Independent Studies