The ABC’s decision not to bid for the non-commercial broadcast rights for the 2020 summer Olympics shows two significant trends that are shaping Australian media.
Most of the attention has been around what it tells us about the continued creaking of the ABC floorboards under the heavy tread of financial pressure, warning of the risk of collapse. But it’s also a signal of the likely future of free-to-air sports, radio and television.
The ABC says the radio broadcast would have cost about $1 million to set up and service the broadcast facilities required in Tokyo. The broadcaster is historically reluctant to stop doing what it’s always done. So the fact they couldn’t find the money for a service they’ve provided since 1952 demonstrates how hard the government’s cuts are biting.
More seriously it shows how little flexibility the ABC has in its budget. It shows what insiders have been saying: there is virtually no discretionary money for one-off expenditures.
With the inevitable navel gazing that controversial programming brings, ABC director of regional and local Judith Whelan told the ABC’s Virginia Trioli: “The vast majority of that cost is the staging of the commentary. We have to set up a separate broadcast centre in the host city and staff that with commentators, producers, technicians.” The ABC would also have to set up and service a dedicated digital broadcast station.
It’s likely the ABC will have already eaten into much of what discretionary dollars it has with the outstanding job it has done in covering this week’s fires and acting as the emergency broadcaster. Watch for a similar event later in the financial year that the ABC will lack the resources to cover.
Like just about every decision by ABC management to manoeuvre through the cost cuts imposed by Canberra, this decision has been grasped by culture warriors to attack the ABC with their own list of programming they’d prefer to see axed.
And as always, there’s plenty of hyperventilating to bully the ABC into changing its mind (and as with last week’s Q&A imbroglio, the ABC buckling is always a short-odds bet). But as the ABC staff have been saying since 2013, the broadcaster can only manage its funding cuts by doing less, particularly if it wants to do more in under-served markets.
It makes sense for one of the things discarded to be radio sport broadcasting, which has an increasingly ageing and niche market — particularly for one-off events like the Olympics.
Live sport has been central to free-to-air broadcasting. It’s the one product that has largely sustained audiences. On television, although linear audiences have dropped by about a third over the past decade, live sport has held the line.
But the evidence increasingly suggests that audiences are shifting their sports consumption to streaming and social media — slowly at first, but expect that to soon speed up.
News Corp reports in its latest quarterly numbers that its Kayo sports streaming service had 430,000 subscribers at September 30, offsetting the continued decline in subscriptions for its core Foxtel product. Optus Sports (which streams the English Premier League) reports 700,000 subscribers.
Last week, Nine’s Roy Masters reported that an internal NRL audit had suggested that the sports’ digital arm was expected to be worth almost $1 billion within two years, based on revenues from direct advertising, sponsorship, sales and broadcast. That’ll be a media organisation worth more than Seven West Media.
This week, British sportspromedia.com reported a study that found more live sport is now being watched on smart phones and connected devices than on television (many people would, of course, do both) and that 60% view sport either through “over-the-top” streaming services or premium social media.
Of course, there remain audiences who rely on radio broadcasting for sport. But when people can carry all the sport they want in their pocket, it’s hard to justify the ABC spending a million dollars it doesn’t have for what is now a relatively bespoke demand.
The Olympics coverage is a one-off every four years. Having saved $1M in 2020 by jettisoning the Olympics, what does the ABC abandon in 2021 to live within its depleted means? Come 2024, there will be no Olympic coverage to dump, what will go then?
If I ran the place, many of the dedicated regional radio stations would be next to go. If ABC Radio Victoria can be broadcast from Melbourne after 7 pm, why not all day? Hit the Nats where it will hurt. What’s the old saying: if you value it, you should be prepared to pay for it.
Wonderful news no more of our tax dollars going to one of the world’s greediest and most corrupt entities. Those interested have tv and a plethora of online options.
The Olympics should be abolished or privatised and at the very least held in the same location every time on land and facilities bought and maintained by the IOC. The only Olympics not to break a bank was LA because no one else competed to up the price. Cities end up with displaced people and suburbs, huge debts and white elephant facilities.
While we’re at it abolish or privatise the elitist Aust Inst of Sport and ban any public money supporting the Olympics. Fat chance I know.
Well yes we don’t want any “elitist” athletes now do we? We could spend the money on a few million participation ribbons and hand them out to the kids.
Sport is a fine thing Mike but its participation has no need of taxpayer support. Even AFL clubs get our money somehow. I’ve got a long line of pet programs, subsidies and rorts I’d love to get rid of – around 20 billion a year. Spend it where it’s needed in public health, public schools, disability and aged care. Boring and unsexy stuff like that.
Yes I understand that but the AIS is a drop in the bucket compared to other things. My state subsidises an AFL side but their argument is that it brings more money in that it costs so I’m good with that. I wouldn’t be happy with it otherwise.
I like to see the boundaries pushed and “elite” athletes competing to be best. Mediocre doesn’t achieve anything.
The true measure of the AOC’s devotion to athletic prowess was to shift a few ‘events’ up to the Fukushima Prefecture.
The recent ‘deadly’ typhoon, Hagibis, hit Fukushima, and the flooding caused numbers of the black plastic bags containing radioactive soil scooped up since the nuclear facility’s meltdown(s) to variously split asunder, or be washed into the Pacific Ocean.
But, hey! Let’s play baseball!
The only Olympic events I’ve watched in the last 3 Olympics were those in which Usain Bolt competed, because he was a once in a century athlete, genuine, and with a character worthy of interest.
If John Coates, the op’s guru of the Olympic ‘movement’, thinks I might be interested in ‘engineered’ sports, like ‘upside down, sideways skiing while playing a hybrid of basketball and hockey, to music’, he’s seriously misread his hoped for audience.
I could not give a flying you-know-what about the Olympic ‘movement’. FCOL, have people cottoned to just who sits on the Olympic board, executive and advisory panels?!
‘Extreme snouts’.
Yes it’s all very correct about streaming tv etc but we are talking about RADIO here. Just like with the cricket or footy there are some of us who can’t just sit & watch the TV but are well able to do our work with a set of earbuds in. I’m not sure if Tokyo is a particularly expensive games to cover but $1m sounds a lot especially given that the ABC is now expected to cover emergency broadcasting without any additional funding. I’ll bet that given we are only 4 1/2 months into the financial year with full scale bushfire events already happening any upcoming emergencies will be getting funded out money set aside for other programming. It’s a tough call but I don’t think the ABC had much choice.
Would anyone other than a boomer be listening to the Olympics on radio?
It’ll give them something to whinge about for a while.
Anyone other than a boomer? So you’ve never listened to the radio while working or something? Oh well your loss.