First, the hard facts: the ABC is top-to-bottom ripper.
The taxpayer-funded broadcaster has enjoyed a long-ass legacy of delivering capital-Q Quality content to Aussie viewers since day dot.
We were weaned on Play School and cheeky peeks at Catalyst; our teens were moulded by those British interlopers on Dr Who; now, our first few vote-casting years have been fed a healthy diet of 7.30 and Q&A.
The breadth and depth of that programming is largely due to the fact the ABC has always sort of skirted commercial demands; since we pay for it in our tax dollaz, the need to squeeze more advertising bucks out of us all has largely been moot.
If it stays solely tax-payer funded, ie. public. And that’s a big if these days. The aptly-titled Friends Of The ABC have cobbled together a vision from the ungodly, dystopian future where Aunty is beholden to commercial constraints, thanks to unchecked government funding cuts.
It is… unpleasant.
The idea of seeing an island-stranded Kerry O’Brien chow down on char-grilled reptiles as his unkempt ginger dreadlocks dangle in the wind is enticing, but only in the short-term. The vid’s raison d’être is the attached petition, calling for pollies not to meddle with the Aussie institution and its journalistic integrity.
Otherwise we’d end up with Leigh Sales scrambling for votes. And viewers.
You can check the petition out here – it asks main man Malcolm Turnbull, Treasurer Scott Morrison and Communications Minister Mitch Fifield not to cut any more funding from the beloved mainstay.
Besides, the station’s reporters rip into quasi-reptilian humans on their shows just as they bloody are.
