March 15, 2006
Why the ABC should carry lots of advertising
By Crikey publisher Eric Beecher
Although the little kite about the ABC taking advertising was shot down with deadly accuracy this morning by the spokesman for Australia’s TV proprietors, Mr John Howard, it should still be floating.
The common argument against running advertising on the ABC is that it would threaten the national broadcaster’s independence. In fact, carrying advertising would be the single biggest step the ABC could take to protect its independence.
The ABC is under constant threat from its owners, the federal government, which controls its budget and hates its agenda. This has been the case for several decades, through governments of different political hues. And the pressure on ABC funding will only grow as the media becomes more diffuse and the traditional role of a national broadcaster becomes harder to justify.
Carrying advertising would generate significant revenues for the ABC — hundreds of millions of dollars once it became an established medium for reaching a desirable audience who largely don’t watch commercial television. Those revenues could be ploughed back into ABC programming — strengthening areas like local drama — and would deflect the damage caused by inevitable government budget cuts.
The crucial issue would be “church and state” — ensuring that advertising and editorial comment were kept in entirely separate compartments that could never infect each other — just like it is at other reputable commercial media organisations, such as The New York Times or The Guardian. This would have to be enshrined in the ABC charter and would be inviolate.
Of course advertising on the ABC won’t happen. Not because ordinary people, or even politicians, believe it is wrong for ethical reasons, but because a far more powerful three-member group believe it is wrong for commercial reasons. Hundreds of millions of reasons.
Well, this is a very ironic juxtapositioned piece from 2006 alongside your editorial that discusses the capture of the commercial print media by the public relations industry. At least government ownership of the ABC keeps the issue in the spotlight rather than the murky relationship used by interest groups and their advertising spend to influence what appears as news in the commercial media. And maybe they don’t need to spend any money, as a PR announcement is often enough for a cowed and beleaguered commercial editor to run with.
Beecher’s argument is very interesting and more subtle than the above commenter suggests.
The fact is that the ABC is already suffering from a lack of independence, and has been for a long time. Perhaps making the government merely one of the ABC’s sources of funding would help it achieve greater independence from the government.
We all know what happened when SBS increased advertising especially after inserting within programs. The next roundup of government grants reduced the proportion for SBS and why not? They are getting money from ads so why should government money be given. This just drives SBS further down the slippery slope to become just another commercial channel.
Beecher wants the ABC to go down the same path. Has he interests in TV advertising that should be declared.
As for me, I usually watch ABC TV direct but if people like Beecher get their way I will record what I want on my PVR and click past the ads in a flash as I do with the commercial channels.
The greed of the advertisers has no limits. Some shows from UK commercial channels scheduled to last one hour including a full quota of ads and promos are now appearing on channels such as 7TWO to last another 80 minutes. Shall we start playing “spot the program” amongst all this mush?
Mr Beecher is clearly unaware of the disasters that have befallen ALL Public Broadcasters that have tried to encompass advertising in their funding models. In Canada and New Zealand it has all but destroyed once effective national institutions. Channel 4 in the UK, funded originally by a levy on commercial networks, is in a slow and possibly terminal decline. PBS in the US, largely funded by underwriting from program sponsors, has become an irrelevance.
As others have commented, the struggles at SBS here do not suggest Australian would be in any different. Once a public broadcaster is forced to chase ratings in order to attract advertising revenue, it ceases to offer any discernible difference from the background noise of commercial media and blogsphere. Governments soon lose interest in funding them (ask SBS), viewers, listeners and mouse-clickers drift away despite ever more desperate efforts to attract their attention, and the death spiral reaches its inevitable conclusion.
The argument needs to be reconfigured: in a sea of digital plenty, the distinctive value of a publicly funded but independent broadcaster, operating across all electronic media, will soon enough be seen as a sign of a civilised, informed society. As much an advantage to the public good as universal health care and education.