Dempster did not name the manager, but last Monday the incoming Director of Radio Michael Mason told a meeting of Radio National (RN) staff that they would suffer disproportionately because the ABC had to ‘reshape the network for the digital future’. He went on to announce extensive cuts to RN’s specialist programs.
RN is the home of specialisation at the ABC, and religion has been one of its signature specialisations, because of the public broadcaster’s ‘cultural diversity’ charter obligation, and the fact that, often and increasingly, there is a deeper religious or spiritual explanation to what is happening in our world that eludes most, if not all, other mainstream media.
Yet religion is a particular target of the ‘reshaping’, with a 40 per cent staff loss compared to 10 per cent in other RN program areas. At the time of writing, the only program to remain in its current form is Andrew West's Religion and Ethics Report, though it will suffer from the 70 per cent cut to resources for religious programs. There will be less depth in Rachael Kohn's The Spirit of Things, with its air time being reduced, and the ABC’s longest running radio program Encounter will be absorbed into a new program that belongs to the features genre.
‘Genre’ is RN management’s new buzzword, but it’s hard to fathom why. That is because it does not sit well with Managing Director Mark Scott’s ‘digital future’ vision, as long as the the widely accepted ‘content is king’ meme continues to apply to digital publishing industry practice.
Genre is associated with form, which is opposed to content. It allows for the endless repetition of single and superficial ideas, while the principle of specialisation provides multifaceted checks and balances to guard against this. Each discipline offers a different way of looking at the world, and isolating one from others allows us to reach the greater depth of understanding required by the ‘cultural diversity’ charter obligation.
Meanwhile the curse of digital technology is that it is too easy to publish the same thought in as many forms or ‘genres’ as we like. That’s why content is indeed king and an ABC that values specialisation is perfectly positioned to shine in the digital world. It’s just a pity that the management ‘nincompoops’ don’t appear to grasp this.
Of particular concern is news that those managers who do understand – the guardians of specialisation at the ABC – have been made redundant or had their roles reduced. Religious TV executive producer Rose Hesp – who is responsible for Compass and the purchase of the BBC’s Songs of Praise, which the ABC is cancelling – is going, and the role her RN equivalent Jane Jeffes is being diluted.
Rupert Murdoch has been accused of manipulating the Abbott Government to ensure the emasculation of the ABC, as payback for the support that helped it win the 2013 Federal Election. It’s not the size of the cuts that are likely to deliver what Murdoch wants, but management’s decisions in implementing them.