ABC fails to resonate in the regions

The ABC’s commitment to diversity and inclusion seldom stretches to those living outside the cities. By Nick Cater.

Conjuring up a mental image of a battling farmer, ear to the radio, waiting to hear that sale yard price for ewes was once a source of relief from ABC irritability syndrome. City dwellers could avoid being driven nuts by the national broadcaster in the same way they cope with a week of heavy rain, by treating it as a blessing for farmers. A new report into the ABC’s regional service has shattered that illusion. It turns out people in the country tune in to the national broadcaster in much the same manner as those in the city; that is to say, not very much at all.

A survey of 1000 people in regional and rural Australia conducted by Compass Polling for the Page Research Centre shows the ABC is almost irrelevant to most daily lives, offering very little of value they can’t find elsewhere. Only 20 per cent tuned into ABC local radio at least once a week and only 8 per cent listened to Radio National. Instead, they tuned into commercial radio (35 per cent), podcasts (12 per cent) and internet radio (10 per cent).

The golden era of regional public broadcasting is in any case a mirage. From the mid-1930s, commercial radio stations such as 4AK on the Darling Downs out-muscled ABC stations by pumping city programs to the furthest corners of their states using up to 2000 watts of signal strength from transmitting towers 70m high. NSW senator Guy Arkins was demanding a royal commission as far back as 1936 claiming the ABC was wasting the bulk of the £800,000 it received from listener licences and the public deserved to know more of what went on behind the its closed doors.

Today the ABC’s biggest challenge is the arrival of ubiquitous fast broadband and vastly improved mobile services. There is little point in listening patiently to Country Hour when the price of sorghum futures, long-range weather forecasts and storm warnings are readily available in the palm of your hand. The survey found only 6 per cent of ABC listeners tuned in for regionally focused programs such as Country Hour, an audience that can only be expected to decline still further as digital offerings expand.

In the broadcast entertainment market, ABC-TV captures the attention of a minority of country viewers for a short time. Only 36 per cent watch ABC more than an hour a week. By comparison, 54 per cent spent more than an hour watching streaming services, such as Netflix, 21 per cent spent more than an hour watching subscription services such as Foxtel and 36 per cent watched YouTube for 60 minutes or more.

Four years ago, when I first canvassed the existential challenge streaming and subscription services presented to its audience, the national broadcaster attempted to rebut the argument by questioning my reading of the audience figures. Since then, the hours Australians spend watching conventional TV has declined by at least 20 per cent according to analysis by IBISWorld. The audience for streaming services, on the other hand, has grown substantially during the pandemic. Roy Morgan reports 17.3 million Australians watched a streaming service in 2020, up from 14.9 million the previous year. Thanks to $50bn or so of public investment in broadband delivered by cable or satellite, no Australian need sit through another episode of Doc Martin or watch conservative politicians and churchmen being grievously defamed on Four Corners. Streaming services and Sky News Australia bring the world to everyone’s door, and for everything else there is YouTube.

The ABC clearly saw the digital revolution coming when it became an early entrant to the catch-up market in 2008. Yet ABC iview’s audience trails a long way behind its competitors despite offering its services for free.

Digital competition notwithstanding, the ABC’s retreat to near irrelevancy in regional and rural Australia was far from inevitable. With a budget insulated from market forces and its national reach, it is better placed than any of its commercial competitors to showcase the rich tapestry of Australian rural life to metropolitan viewers and overseas audiences. It has the ability to do this very well, as feel-good documentary series Muster Dogs, screening on ABC1, demonstrates.

Yet the Page Research Centre report found the ABC’s commitment to diversity and inclusion seldom stretches to those living outside the cities with the exception of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

For the ABC, “contemporary Australia means the voices and stories of women; Aboriginal Australians; people with disabilities; people from non-English-speaking backgrounds; and people who are broadly labelled as ‘queer’ ”, the report says. “It seems that regional Australia is not part of contemporary Australia and, sadly, country yokels are to be laughed at and patronised. In other words, the ABC’s structural biases on diversity relate to people’s personal characteristics, not the geography of Australian communities.”

It is little wonder the audience is so small when “regional-focused programming is commissioned and produced almost as an afterthought, rather than an integral part of the ABC’s central mission to inform and entertain all Australians”, the report finds.

Liberal governments have always been nervous about reform of the ABC, fearing a backlash from voters particularly in the country. By shattering the myth of rural and regional affinity to public broadcasting, the National Party-aligned Page Research Centre has changed the political dynamic. The report’s principle recommendation is the separation of ABC’s regional services under a new body, ABC Regional, which would be headquartered in a regional centre and take over non-metro stations, newsrooms and transmission infrastructure. Modestly, it recommends a third of the ABC’s funding be allocated to the new body. Worthy as the proposal might be, let’s not kid ourselves it will do much to make the Annandale Broadcasting Corporation appealing in Armidale or change the inner-metropolitan mindset that condemns it to remain a boutique service for the chattering classes. It’s charter, the guts of which dates from pre-internet days, is overdue for a review to determine what public good, if any, a taxpayer-funded broadcaster should play in an era of ubiquitous communication.