It's time for the ABC to ditch the forgettable fluff
At a sold-out session at the Sorrento Writers Festival in late April, ABC chair Kim Williams concisely and convincingly outlined his priorities for the 'network of networks' he heads.
'How can there be a future in timidity?' he said. 'There's no future in bland.' Questioned further at the festival by ABC icon Kerry O'Brien, Williams observed that 'an agency under never-ending ferocious attack' can become defensive and inclined to 'self-censorship'. He also noted, in relation to ABC TV, that there's 'massive work to be done in documentary and also in drama and comedy'.
This conversation between Williams and O'Brien was part of a broader discussion about the future of the ABC between the pair that began at last year's Byron Writers Festival. It was there that Williams, who is not one to mince words, noted that funding cuts had made the organisation 'more timid'. The ABC is reliant on government funding for most of its money and political displeasure can have a significant impact.
But these remarks will come as some small comfort to viewers who, for years, have watched those key departments of drama and comedy shrink to depressing lows. Locally produced documentaries have virtually vanished; drama is sporadic and too often uninspiring; and, while the comedies can be a shining asset, there's not nearly enough of the good stuff.
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Referring to the ABC's audio output, Williams declared at Sorrento, 'We need to constantly be thinking, 'How do we make this service distinctive?'' In that light, it's instructive to consider a couple of recent TV premieres, both adapted from UK formats and sitting squarely in the light-entertainment realm.
The more successful of the pair, The Piano (Sundays, 7.30pm and iview), hosted by a well-cast, warm and slightly too effusive Amanda Keller, invites amateur musicians to perform on publicly placed pianos. Unbeknownst to them, their performances are assessed by judges Harry Connick Jr and Andrea Lam. Each episode, a winner is selected, and a recital is planned to conclude the six-part series. Amid the broad range of performers, touching backstories are revealed. One of those uplifting, hard-to-resist productions that tug knowingly and hard at the heartstrings, it celebrates the unifying and transformative power of music.
Less satisfying is Claire Hooper's House of Games (weeknights, 6.30 and iview), an uncomfortably static, studio-based game show in which the host and the players try hard to look like they're having fun. The strain shows and the series would fit comfortably into what O'Brien observed had been 'the creep of mediocrity' at the ABC.
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News.com.au
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- News.com.au
‘Preachy': The truth behind The Project and Q&A's brutal axings
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But that doesn't make it any less devastating for the hundreds whose jobs are now in question at Channel 10, as well as those at ABC now that its own long-running current affairs show, Q&A, is also being axed from the airwaves. 'ABC has a fixed budget, it has to go begging to the government if it wants more,' said media analyst Steve Allen, director at Pearman Media Agency. 'It has to run everything on the smell of an oily rag, they're running multiple radio and television networks all off a smaller budget that most commercial networks, apart from maybe 10, don't have to operate off,' he told 'But the common theme here is that programs have to perform,' Mr Allen continued. 'They have to attract an audience; for entirely different reasons if we're talking Channel 10 and ABC. But at their core they have to be popular. It's more than a decade since The Project was at its height of viewership. Seven and Nine, their news shows are ratings behemoths. They're in the top five programmes every night of the week. 'It's incredibly hard for anyone to compete in that hour or hour and a half, whether that's SBS, ABC or Channel 10. And that's the problem The Project faced. Its ratings aren't going up. Since its stellar cast faded away bit by bit they've tried all sorts of personality and host combinations none of which really worked,' he added. As advertising dollars have continued to decrease over the years, forcing free-to-air broadcast networks around the world to tighten their purse strings and shift their entire business models to compete with streaming, Mr Allen explained that it's likely Channel 10 saw The Project's timeslot as an untapped revenue stream. 'It's contracted out to Rove Productions and one has to assume that they were making money out of it. So I would imagine that Network 10 thought if they take it in-house then they can use the profit margin that was being made to spend on something different.' 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Living within a world where we're bombarded with unsolicited opinions across social media on everything from our own lives to those of celebrities, perhaps the fundamental crux is that when viewers tune into a current affairs shows, what they desire more than anything is news presented to them without any form of bias along with it, regardless of the side they personally stand on. As the demise of The Project became clear, some corners of social media blamed it on the show being 'too left-leaning' and desperate to 'push the woke agenda', while others on the polar opposite side tweeted that it was just a mouthpiece 'to push right-wing agendas to a left-wing audience'. It seems clear that this is why these shows are failing, doomed to be just another relic of TV's past. They hark back to a period in our culture when nuance was not only integral to conversation but valued. We live in a world nowadays where everything is so black and white that it's made merely flirting with the grey area nigh impossible. Shows that attempt balance now feel doomed to try and court both sides, only to end up being abandoned by both. 'Both shows had become stale and lost the essence of what they once were,' said TV Blackbox's Rob McKnight. 'The Project turned from a light show to a preachy show and Q&A left behind the core of what it stood for.' It seems Network 10 have come to the same realisation, with their announcement of The Project's replacement 10 News+, making very clear that one thing viewers won't get when tuning in is any form of opinion from its presenters. 'At the heart of everything we do is delivering news and current affairs that matter to you,' said the announcement. 'No filler. No opinion. Just the facts.' All that's left to see now is whether that sentiment can resonate with viewers so Channel 10 can finally bag themselves a win. As more and more legacy shows begin to fall into obscurity, all eyes are slowly turning toward morning television, an institution for many around the world, including here in Australia. Once a pioneer of the format with Good Morning Australia, Channel 10 has failed to achieve success in the timeslot since the show ended in 2005. Its follow-up show, Studio 10, was brutally axed at the end of 2023. While its rivals have continued to succeed with shows such as Today and Sunrise still regularly reaching millions every weekday, some critics have suggested that it could be the next timeslot to face struggles. Mr insisting that Australia's morning shows have 'nothing' to be concerned about, at least for the time being. 'The audiences for Sunrise, TODAY and ABC News Breakfast are very strong and both TODAY and Sunrise generate plenty of revenue,' he said. 'These shows also help the networks have local programming and connect with audiences.' 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I don't know why I've held on to this memory, but when I was about five I was having a low-level bad day – it seemed to involve some angst about a grazed knee – and I was consoling myself with thoughts of watching Doctor Who as soon as I got home. This wasn't some cool, modern Doctor. These were repeats on the ABC of Tom Baker in a chunky knitted scarf. I didn't have the foggiest idea what was going on in most of the plot lines, but I probably would have accepted anything in that after-school timeslot with equanimity. Now, of course, there would be any one of a hundred televisual choices at my fingertips, but I don't know that I would be happier for it. A lot of high-quality television is being made right now, and I've watched a lot of it with gusto. Ted Lasso was tender and joyful. The Last of Us, Succession and Fake were spectacular in very different ways. But having too much choice can be paralysing. There's even a name for it: the paradox of choice. It is possible to scroll for hours on a streaming service without feeling any great conviction about one's eventual choice, precisely because there is always something else one might have chosen. It is low-stakes decision-making, but it can still be exhausting. That's where a free-to-air multichannel steps up. It is the balm on my grazed knee. On a recent weeknight, Nine Go! – one of the network's digital channels – offered a tasty smorgasbord of the same TV treats I watched in my childhood, topped off with a nighttime showing of The Matrix. Heaven. Many of these shows (including those in earlier timeslots, such as Bewitched and The Addams Family) were decades old when I first saw them and looked positively ancient to me at the time. Now they are supremely comforting by virtue of their association with my junior years.
