Kim Williams, the ABC’s current chairman, wants the organisation to be “the last broadcaster standing” and one of his first acts in office was to reverse the board’s decision to begin reducing the corporation’s radio networks.
“It is not up to the ABC to simply shut down a number of broadcast services, such as Radio National, ABC Classic or Triple J,” Williams told Guardian Australia. “They are part of our responsibility.”
ABC chief executive David Anderson said last year that it was inevitable that the audiences of some AM stations such as RN and NewsRadio would become so small “that we will try to rationalise that over time”.
In a wide-ranging interview last week, Williams attacked ABC’s critics, saying News Corp.’s obsession with the public broadcaster was “unbalanced and at times quite insane” and should be largely ignored.
Williams was appointed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in January and took over from Ita Buttrose in March. He has wasted no time in Canberra lobbying for better funding, saying his role is to “be an active advocate for the ABC in terms of its secured funding”.
“And I don’t apologize for that.”
When he arrived at ABC headquarters in Ultimo, Williams said there were already discussions about making podcasts the “transmission medium of the future” and reducing the number of AM stations in the race to digital transmission.
“And in my opinion, that’s a little too far away from the audience,” he says. “I don’t agree with that. I’ve reversed that decision.”
ABC has been preparing Australians for the move from traditional broadcasting to on-demand digital services for some time, already investing in iview and the ABC Listen app. Last year, the company announced a “significant transition” to digital broadcasting and a reduction in the amount of money invested in AM radio stations by 2028.
It is believed that the board had already seriously considered various options for reducing the number of talk services (RN, NewsRadio and local radio) before Williams took office.
“In five years, we expect that audience engagement will predominantly be through digital products or digital services,” Anderson said last year.
However, Williams believes ABC Radio needs to be available on both broadcast and digital. He also believes radio has suffered from internal neglect for a number of years and should have a much larger audience.
“ABC has a responsibility to be a reliable broadcaster for the country,” he says. “And I would say we are the last broadcaster left because there are a lot of people in Australia who don’t have any money. A lot of Australians are old and not tech-savvy.”
“The ABC has an obligation to achieve these goals, in addition to its absolute legal obligation to be an innovator.”
(Incidentally, he detests the renaming of Radio National to RN in 2012 because it does not express what the station is.)
Williams’ determination to improve radio and support broadcasting as a delivery platform has won him some fans, but when a candid briefing he gave to RN staff last month was leaked to the media, he was embarrassed.
“It surprised me,” Williams said after the story appeared in the Nine newspapers. “It was a lesson, but I don’t stand behind the things I say.”
In the briefing, he had been critical of the placement of the articles on ABC News’ website and argued that lifestyle articles should be given less importance.
However, when previously asked about ABC’s lifestyle content, he told the Guardian that the channel offers something for everyone and it is not his job to judge audiences on what they want to consume.
“The ABC’s primary commitment is obviously to broadcast serious news and commentary and to produce things that reflect a variety of serious community aspirations or are part of mainstream entertainment,” he says.
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ABC News, currently undergoing a major restructuring, regained its place as Australia’s leading online news brand in June with almost 12.6 million unique visitors, overtaking Murdoch’s news.com.au, which had been number one for 17 months.
Williams last worked at the ABC in 1995, when Aunty employed 10,000 people. Today, it has just under 5,000, but many more services need to be provided.
He has calculated that after years of budget cuts, public broadcasting is underfunded by half a billion dollars in real terms compared to 40 years ago.
At the Byron Writers Festival on Saturday, Williams was refreshingly candid in conversation with former ABC presenter Kerry O’Brien. He said the version of the ABC he found was “severely impoverished and shrunken” and the internal cultural consequences were that it had become more timid and “split into a number of tribes”. He criticised the ABC’s documentary production, saying it was “in a bad state”; its drama was “less distinctive” than it used to be and ABC News sometimes had a “tabloid sensibility”.
But Williams is optimistic he can help get ABC back on track. He believes management has a strong case for better funding, and that’s because of its role in creating social peace. “I think the national media company has a very special role to play in a time of massive misinformation and disinformation,” he says.
In addition, ABC is vital at a time when Australian culture is being inundated with international content on streaming services such as Netflix.
Williams says the government’s failure to meet its deadline to introduce legislation on local quotas on streaming platforms is “an obstacle”. He has no doubts about the government’s determination.
“But there are very good reasons to invest in ABC to ensure the national diet is supplied with safe, high-quality Australian fibre at a time when we are completely inundated with non-Australian material.
“You really have to think about what Australia’s children are consuming and how their hearts, minds and desires are actually being influenced.”
It is 11 years since Williams resigned as CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia, just 20 months after taking the job. It was a painful experience, and he now has few friends at the company’s Holt Street headquarters and even less patience for the culture war there.
“There are certain parts of the media, apparently concentrated in News Corp, that have an obsession with commentary on the ABC,” says Williams. “I don’t share the view of many that you should respond to every critical comment that is made.”
“I think the people at ABC should generally be pretty resilient, and I am deeply skeptical that the readership shares the enthusiasm that News Corp. puts into its never-ending stream of attacks on ABC.”
In recent months, Australian newspaper News Corp has targeted political journalist Laura Tingle, who is also an ABC board member, for comments she made at a writers’ festival. The newspaper has published dozens of articles criticising her every action.
“I mean, it borders on obsession sometimes,” says Williams. “When you get some distance, you ask yourself, ‘Are you really serious?'”
