No amount of
evidence to the contrary will convince the conservative cultural
warriors that the ABC is anything but a left-wing monolith.

Sure,
Aunty has lots of lefties, but nowadays the overwhelming majority of
them keep their politics to themselves. Indeed, the tendency now,
particularly in television, is to make programming that’s innocuous to
the max. As evidenced in those inane TV promos, the ABC now projects an
attitude of cheerful vacuity.

Even the news and current affairs
promos resemble Benetton commercials. Watch an evening of ABC TV and
it’s easy to see that the network is targeting a smug, middle-class
audience that would prefer to be gently entertained rather than
seriously informed and might actually turn nasty if challenged.

Promos for Agony Aunts outnumber those for Four Corners
and you get the distinct feeling that the powers that be at Ultimo
would just love it if 4Cs crawled away into one of its corners and
quietly died.

If the ABC were a colour it would most definitely
be beige. As one frustrated executive producer confided to me recently,
at Aunty these days it’s a case of the bland leading the bland.

There’s not much Windschuttle, Albrechtsen and their fellow travellers can do to the ABC that it hasn’t already done to itself.

And
for Gerard Henderson to assert, as he did this morning on Radio
National, that the ABC is less balanced today than it was ten years ago
just demonstrates how intellectually lazy Aunty has become. Henderson
is allowed to air his views as a weekly commentator on Radio National
Breakfast solely because he is a conservative. Yes, perhaps Aunty is
less balanced, but not in ways Gerard and co would have us believe.