The attacks on the ABC, like those on the BBC in the UK, are usually from the Right. They are about taste, alleged political bias and now free video on its website.

Newspapers will only be able to charge for access to their websites if they act together. The ABC's very successful free website is seen by papers as unfair online competition

These are are difficult times, particularly for Murdoch's newspapers. Murdoch's recent announcement that his newspapers will soon start charging for online access means that revenue is desperately needed for his media empire. His newspapers are not making much money anymore.

All this Murdochian raging against the dying of the light is very diverting.

Public broadcasters have been 'dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market' via radio and TV for decades. I can't imagine why anyone should think the public will suddenly begin to object just because people like Rupert tell them to. They remind me of the trade unions: people were terrified of them for years until one day they realised they couldn't hurt them any more.

The old media empires' problems reflect their inability to compete in the field of entertainment, not news. I also object strenuously to publicly funded institutions delivering entertainment, whether it be by means of TV, radio or the internet, although even if they stopped I don't think it would do much to help Rupert. However I object even more strenuously to any suggestion that news is a commodity over which the private sector should have exclusive control.

Ken,
what do you mean by publicly funded institutions delivering entertainment whether it be by means of TV, radio or the internet?

The ABC's Dig Radio? Or classical FM? Or ABC Jazz? Or ABC Country? Or The Daily Planet?

Is delivering entertainment an example of the ABC being too big?

I think Ken means all of the above, Gary. He doesn't really approve of public money being spent to provide free entertainment to a very limited audience. I can see his point, I just don't happen to agree with it.

Darryl Mason on the speech

http://theorstrahyun.blogspot.com/2009/08/james-murdoch-our-bananas-are-doomed.html

"It's actually chock full of first class conspiracy theories and bizarre proclamations about how you can only have free speech if people are forced to pay for the news."

And he quotes Rupert from 20 years ago:

'television sets would be “linked by fibre-optic cable to a global cornucopia of programming and nearly infinite libraries of data, education and entertainment”'

Murdoch would have pictured himself providing the cornucopia. He didn't count on the means of production falling into the hands of punters who'd abandon News Corp in favour of lolcatz.

Ken,
I wondered how you'd square this with your belief that the ABC should be sold. Without public service news, the news is a commodity over which the private sector has exclusive control. Or was, anyway.

I find it vastly amusing that Murdock is whinging about the BBC,given his own NEWS LTD love of monopoly if he can engineer it.
Here is the son of a man who owns FOX NEWS,that honest and wonderful TV News station in the US,If the BBC and ABC can stop Murdock from repeating the excrescence which is FOX News and the jokingly so called presenters the more the better.
Its a Pity the US is stupid enough to not have a public broadcaster,instead of having to rely on whatever the commercial TV stations serve up,which from watching TV news here is just Rubbish.

Well of course the Murdoch's are not happy unless the monopoly news provider is News Corp and of course they attack the ABC and BBC for offering an alternative slant on the news.

If the Murdoch's had their way and throttle ABC & BBC we would all have to watch Al Jazeera for unbiased reporting!

Ah well Lyn I have never argued or even hinted that the ABC should be sold. I have said ABC TELEVISION should be sold, which is a vastly different thing. People just wilfully and persistently misrepresent my position.

What I have argued is that the ABC should get a new charter that guarantees its funding and independence and requires it to be an absolutely first-class source of news, in the true sense.

I would see no justification in a new charter for publicly-funded entertainment and I would flog off ABC TV while it still has some value in the marketplace. If it's deemed too politically risky to shut down all the entertainment shows on radio, they should at least be self-funding by means of advertising. I have yet to hear a single persuasive argument for funding entertainment for a minority audience so they can enjoy it free of commercials while the lumpen proletariat have to cop Joyce Mayne as the price of their appalling taste. The whole thing reeks of elitism and class condescension. If there's a case to publicly fund niche subcultures - which I don't yet accept - do it through specific purpose grants to institutions like community FM stations instead of monolithic bureaucracies like the ABC.

Yes Gary I think all your examples probably count as entertainment although the only one I know about at first hand is Classic FM. I say that as a classical music tragic who has devoted a ridiculous number of hours to listening to it.

Ken,
I remember now, the arguments you made about ABC TV over at RTS. Quite a while ago. I wasn't deliberately misrepresenting your position.

I get your point about publicly funded elitism and agree with that bit of your argument. But if it's costing us 12 cents a day to keep Rupert in check, it's worth it.

Ken,
ABC TV delivers news and political commentary (Lateline, Q+A, 7.30 Report, Insiders) as well as entertainment. Or do you regard both news + political commentary as entertainment?

Do we need the old style format of the political commentary on ABC Television of one on one "interrogation." As Bernard Keane puts it in Crikey this traditional model treats citizens:

like sheep, herding them together at anointed times and feeding them carefully prepared information selected by journalists, editors and proprietors....traditional political journalism -- particularly on television -- used certain almost ritualistic formats. One was the interrogation by a senior journalist of a politician, a "grilling" in which an invariably middle-aged, white, male journalist tried to embarrass a politician (of usually the same demographic).

As Keane says the internet has enabled audiences to be almost as well-informed as your average, and increasingly time-poor, political journalist, particularly about complex policy issues.

There is far more audience engagement in Q+A, which uses a broader range of panel members.

Yes Gary there is some news on the ABC but to my mind they don't contribute anything significant that is not already available elsewhere.

Stuff like Q & A - which I don't regard as news - is just entertainment for public affairs junkies. If people want the quasi-analytical stuff that shows like Four Corners runs occasionally, it can be picked up by SBS. Having TWO publicly funded TV networks to deliver news to the tiny minority who can't get it any other way is massively unwarranted.

True news and investigative reporting should be the core activity. The funds released by dropping free entertainment can be re-allocated to the network of reporters and generate a really first class news service. If it's published online it will get to other media quickly enough, and this reality can only ACCELERATE in the future. One reason the quality of free-to-air TV everywhere is so appalling is that it's a dying medium and everyone knows it, especially the advertisers. Money is simply no longer available to make quality product.

Lyn I wasn't suggesting you intentionally misrepresented me but the fact that you did reflects, I think, the number of times others have claimed that is my position. It was actually interesting to see over at RTS that as soon as I floated the idea of selling ABC TV there were a flurry of furious "How dare you want to close down the ABC" comments. I'm sure some of them WERE a deliberate attempt to re-frame the discussion by people who know it's impossible to justify the stupid situation we have now. Indeed the honest ones didn't even try; they simply said they loved to watch Peter Crundall and The Bill without commercials and I should just STFU.

"they loved to watch Peter Crundall and The Bill without commercials and I should just STFU"

That's pretty much my position, Ken, although I understand why you disagree.

I have to admit that there is a lot of junk on free-to air television including the ABC, though I do note that ABC 2 is going to show The Wire, which is quality work. I watch more DVD's than I do television.

Ken your view is close to James Murdoch's, who argued that there a lot of things that the BBC as a public broadcaster should not do. That desire for a "far, far smaller" public brodcasting corporation is different from the elite/minority taste argument, even if it is connected to the arguments over the value of public service broadcasting.

Where there is tacit agreement is that it is not desirable to have news available only to those who will pay directly for it. A younger audience, and a poorer audience, is not going to pay for news. The idea that large numbers of people will pay for content is "mass delusion" on the part of news executives.

Is the ABC the CORE problem? True, it is a dominant player, its web site is huge, and it will prevent News Ltd and Fairfax placing news behind a paywall. Isn't a central problem how to make money from online journalism that is free?

Not my fault if Murdoch agrees with me :D but your post only summarised his views about the BBC's news service (and I certainly don't intend to go and read what he said, I couldn't care less what he thinks).

My opinion is about the functions that a public agency should perform. Size should follow function, not the other way around.

If Murdoch's version of "quality journalism" is the rationale for diminishing the BBC or any other public broadcaster than then we are simply taking another step toward greed-based destruction of anything other than celebrity news and performance anger against humanity and public service. I suggest those who think otherwise should read their history, especially the history of Murdoch and his cheapening of the press in the UK and the U.S.A.

"If Murdoch's version of "quality journalism" is the rationale for diminishing the BBC or any other public broadcaster than then we are simply taking another step toward greed-based destruction of anything other than celebrity news"

News Corp's position so far appears to be that celebrity news and scandal is popular, so that's what people will pay for. Big mistake I think. That's exactly the kind of thing that spreads fastest through gossip networks. Murdoch seems to genuinely not understand what he's up against, which must be a first.

Gary mentions the Wire. As a parent I'd also add children's TV and alternatives to Dragonball Z supplemented with junk food and crap toy ads. At least it's possible to introduce kids to TV with Play School and Bananas in PJs.

Watch any of the commercial 'comedy' shows and they're riddled with people who started with the ABC. We haven't seen much in the way of commercials buying up ABC generated series lately. Kath and Kim was the last one I remember. But it has functioned as a kind of training ground for the Australian TV industry.

The business model ‘Fremium’ may offer some pointers here. This is similar to that set out by Chris Anderson, but isn’t quite as utopian. It is therefore a good option to consider when thinking about how the media can monetize online content given the big presence of the ABC in Australia or the BBC in the UK.

The business model essentially works by offering the basic services for free, once the user becomes a loyal they may advance to the premium services available. Web sites such Linkedin, Skype, Flickr and more recently Spotify all use this model.

james Murdoch made a good point about the old distinction between the press and the broadcasters makes less sense when the two are rapidly converging, forming "an all-media market".

This is where, the Australian and the ABC both run websites that include text, audio and video. These days, newspapers a bit like a broadcaster and broadcasters are a bit like a newspaper.

Local newspapers are dying or of poor quality, yet towns and cities across Australia need to know what is happening in their councils, town halls and police forces. The ABC has an army of reporters and offices across the land, unmatched by any other news organisation. Why doesn't it set aside a few millions to cover those unreported communities – then put the results into the public realm, "open source" style?

The key question: How does a newspaper that needs to move on to the web--eg., News Corp + Fairfax--- and pay for the words it puts there, cope when the ABC dishes them out for free?

I'm all for free re the news and commentary--I love it--- but the ABC does try to offer something for everyone. Its website is huge and it is getting bigger by the day. There are layers and layers and layers. Blogging is taken seriously by some ABC presenters.

Capitalists have spent the last 30 years or more successfully encroaching on the public sector. Roads, schools, health care, telecommunications, energy, even prisons - all have been transformed to some extent into private concerns run for short-term profit.

A series of random events mean that news is now a public good, which is a highly desirable state of affairs. Let's keep it that way and resist the efforts of the Murdochs of this world to get their grubby hands back on it.