With former chair of the ABC Ita Buttrose announcing that she has finally decided to to the decent thing and leave the corporation, speculation has been rife about who should be the new chair of the ABC. Well stand back Ladies and Germs, fasten your seatbelts, hold onto your hats, gird your loins, lions, loons, and liens, because I'm about to open up a can of Australia's Finest Top Brewed Insanity and spray it all over the place.
The person who should be the next ABC Chair is... ME.
"Well hang on a second", I don't here you say because this is a text document and I am the one writing it but "You're not qualified", then let me remind you that the Commonwealth Bank, the NAB, Westpac, the ANZ, Woolworths, Qantas, Coles, and Telstra, are all run by gormless, feckless, talentless people, who all post profits simply by jacking up their prices. When it comes to the ASX200, the actual talent pool of seriously stellar CEOs, is as deep as if you threw a cup of water into an empty Olympic-sized swimming pool and asked Keegan Palmer to go swimming. Even that analogy is many layers of cultural references deeper than the management talent in the ASX200.
Am I qualified? I am as unqualified as the ASX200's goon squad. To be fair, I have been in a private accounting firm for 20 years and because I can read both a balance sheet and a profit and loss statement, if anything I am gloriously overqualified. Am I blowing my tiny trumpet? You can bet London to a brick I am; and it plays "Trumpet Voluntary".
No, the reason why I want to throw my name into the ring, as opposed to the people who have come from other media firms, is that more than likely I would be uniquely the only person who genuinely cares about the Corporation and wants to see it survive until at least 2123. I think that whoever becomes the chair of the ABC, should at very least believe in the continued existence of the ABC. While that sounds so obvious that it should make you want to bang your head against the wall in frustration, bear in mind that Janet Albrechetsen has served on the ABC board as Murdoch's attack Piranha Dog (all bite; no purpose) and that Ita Buttrose herself was installed after having been a Ten Entertainment Network piece. I would go so far as to suggest that Ita has been so absent in management, as to be dangerous.
What would make Me different? I believe that the ABC is not only a necessary and vital public good but that because it isn't driven by profit motive, that it does those strange things that commercial media in increasingly abandoning - actual journalism.
Especially since the death of Fairfax as a going concern, the flagship pieces of journalism in Australia, which might have once upon a time been the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, have fallen so far that they may even be a cut below The Australian. The Australian always was a tory propaganda sheet. TV journalism in this country withered away and faded out of existence some time ago. This means that by default, the gold stars for journalism in Australia are AM and PM on ABC Radio National. Fact. Mic drop.
The reason for this is that radio is almost forced to do proper and better journalism by virtue of not having the luxury of having pictures to show. Instead of showing explosions, chimneys falling down, fires, car crashes, and the endless parade of movie and soap stars, radio news and current affairs has the time to actually bother to report on the news and provide background and do analysis of the news. Fairfax newspapers used to be able to do that when they were broadsheets and the Saturday edition was so thick that you could use a rolled up one as a murder weapon, but as a Nine Ent Co tabloid, they neither have the space nor the curiosity. Beyond AM and PM, RN Breakfast with Patricia Karvelas is quite frankly the best interview/talk show in the country because she is a proper journalist; unlike the open mouth breathers at 2GB/4BC.
But it's not just journalism where the ABC takes providing media content seriously. Other Radio National shows like The Science Show, The Law Report, The Health Report, The Religion & Ethics Report, The Philosophers Zone et cetera et cetera et cetera, are the long form magazine type shows which have long been abandoned by commercial media. Probably the most well known science show on Australian television was Towards 2000, and even the name should give you an idea at how long that's been allowed to wither.
The ABC is the most likely place to commission drama and comedy shows, which aren't hidden behind paywalls. Also, streaming services aren't bound by laws with regards to producing Australian content; which says that although they are happy to take the public's money, they then are not happy to employ people to the same degree. The ABC should have been the home of the FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia and it is scandalous that for a home World Cup, this was not on free-to-air.
It should also very much be put on notice that the ABC is the media organisation which is the most likely to train up technical staff to operate cameras, switching desks for both audio and radio, set dressing, lighting crews, as well as the other aspects of making television and radio. Seven, Nine, Ten, and especially Fox, see training as a deal loss on their profit and loss statements and although I can not peer behind the curtain, the few people that I do know who have worked in commercial media all won their media wings at either the ABC or SBS.
If I was head of the ABC, I bet that I would be frequently up in the grill of the Communications Minister both defending the budget as well as asking to make the ABC better. I really hate the sycophantic pleading that the ABC has been doing for many years, only to be kicked like a small dog by cruel tory governments. I'd look at refreshing radio and television as well as commissioning stuff to sell. Game shows, panel shows, quiz shows, documentaries, comedies, drama, kids shows... I would be looking at organisations like Screen Australia, NSW, Vic et cetera and wanting to hold pitch meetings a lot.
The problem with the advert as posted in the newspaper is that the scope of the dragnet that they are looking for, is as shallow as the ASX200. The person whom they are going to get will either be some boring boring exec, or some deeply tory time bomb; when what they need is a Jurgen Klopp, a Willy Wonka, a Xanatos, or a PT Barnham.
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