Director of Television Kim Dalton (formerly CEO of Film Australia, employed by the ABC from January) wants to disband the corporation's television production teams and hand over financial rights and editorial control to the private sector (flogging-out rather than flogging-off). His views clearly have the endorsement of the board and managing director.
There are just a few issues:
1. Such an approach would please the deeply ideological commitment of the Howard Government and presumably the Board to commercial rather than public media.
2. This approach will ease flogging-off the ABC. As with the Film Commission and Film Australia (of which board member Stephen Skala is chairman), under the Dalton approach it will be little more than a clearing-house for contractors’ material.
3. Quality and diversity will decline, because contract crews will lack the collective memory and collective experience of ABC production crews.
4. Contractors will be more easily pressured by the government and Hard Right to present issues in a manner favourable to them. Senator Fierravanti-Wells, for instance, didn't wait for filming of The Bastard Boys (about the waterfront dispute between Chris Corrigan and the Maritime Employees' Union in 1998) to start before she denounced it for anti-Coalition "bias". Communications Minister Senator Coonan actually commended her for complaining to the ABC!
5. It does at least highlight the blatant hypocrisy of the Editorial Policies - although all this footage will be shown on and identified with the ABC, the ABC will have no real editorial control. Pro-government bias will be made easier.
6. It will also be much more difficult to obtain information about such contracts, or to assess their impact on ABC services.
7. Deloitte recently reported that many companies both overestimate the benefits and underestimate the costs of contracting-out. One reason that the Foreign Minister can avoid responsibility for the AWB kickbacks is because his department didn't have the expertise to vet its wheat contracts with Iraq. Nor, all too soon, will the ABC have the qualified and experienced staff to provide a second and independent opinion on disputed issues.
8. There is every likelihood that the biggest "independent" producers will get disproportionate benefits from such an arrangement.
9. Given the potential for conflicts of interest by ABC managers who come from or go to that sector, a twelve-month separation should be required, on pain of a ban on ABC funding for the relevant firm and others it controls.
10. In a recent speech to the keynote SPAA 2007 Conference, Mr Dalton observed:
(a) “We are, for better or for worse, interdependent - we rely on each other for our success.” That suggests that the “independent” production sector is certainly not strong enough to be independent. What contribution are the commercial stations making?
(b) “that the economic and cultural vitality of the independent sector is crucial to the ABC's output of Australian content.”. But policy decisions regarding support for an independent production sector are a responsibility for government, not the ABC.
11. As the ABC itself pointed out in 2001,
"In addition to the skills developed with experience, the ABC has formal traineeship programs in areas such as radio broadcasting, journalism, television production and broadcasting technology. The ABC also provided a range if traineeships specifically for Indigenous Australians in both administrative and production work areas.
Professionals in all parts of Australia's film, television and radio industries and, more recently, in the online media, have acquired or honed their skills at the ABC."
Mr Dalton did not acknowledge in his SPAA speech that his own policy would reasonably soon greatly reduce that hidden subsidy to the private sector.
Similar pressure was placed on the BBC following Lord Hutton's trial and sentencing of it after the Gilligan affair. During the BBC's Content Supply Review, while those financially associated with the independent production sector argued for more contracting-out, one academic stated that "under present circumstances creativity, quality and innovation in content production are more likely to be secured by in-house than independent production." To put it another way, internal production at the BBC is "undervalued, under-examined and under-appreciated".
Toll road contracting-out is a good example of the misleading justifications that can be used. Sydney academic John Goldberg claimed the modelling for such projects is to maximise profits to investment banks rather than provide the best possible service for motorists; Macquarie Bank executive Warwick Smith then demanded of University of Sydney vice-chancellor Gavin Brown that the university dissociate itself from the academic - which it did[1].
In contrast to the ideological bent of contemporary governments, the public has always wanted important services in public hands, especially given the results. A November 2001 survey found that more people felt that flogging-off/flogging-out delivered worse services than felt that it delivered better services. Acting as it does as a forum for national debate and social interaction, the ABC's internal TV production capacity is very much in that category.
Ultimately, this may in part be an exercise to conceal the insufficiency of the ABC's funding by replacing quality with quantity. As WA FABC has long been saying, and as the recently leaked summary of the KPMG Review confirmed, the government is refusing to provide the money for the ABC to meet its Charter commitments.
Flogging-out television production is not a new idea. It was sought, for instance, by the Mansfield Report of 1996. The then managing director, Brian Johns, replied:
"[Mansfield's] view that the majority of television production be outsourced, with the exception of news and current affairs, seems out of character with the overall tone of the Report. ... It is an extreme position. This level of outsourcing would weaken the ABC's capacity to compete as a broadcaster. Control of content and ownership of copyright is becoming critical in the multichannel environment. Industry leaders in Australia and overseas are shoring up their production capability. Yet Mr Mansfield is advocating the opposite course".
Mr Johns said it was critical for the ABC's future, and the health of the industry, that the ABC remain a major producer of television programs.
Dalton, in contrast, uses the Mansfield recommendations to justify his approach.
WA FABC sees Johns as being right, and Dalton & Co. as being wrong. Our ABC would be the worse for their changes.