Losing the Brand in the Australian Media Landscape

The key issues addressed in this chapter concern how the uniqueness of Aunty was being debilitated by paranoia over what the literature described as the “ancient hatreds” between the Murdochs and the ABC, where Rupert Murdoch is one of the major actors in the Australian commercial digital media field. Yet the ABC has so much of which it can be proud and differentiate itself. Using the methodological analysis of this book, which combines Institutional Logics and Bourdieu, provided means of assessing failures to “future proof” the ABC. Omissions of boards to craft policy to protect specifically the ABC’s precious cultural capital and means by which it could translate the ABC’s habitus into the commercial digital field. Despite efforts by former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to change conditions that would create nonpartisan boards—some boards were not politically cohesive. In addition, managers have collapsed the execution of policy changes into staff expectations and demands, and in so doing lost valuable time in terms of their strategic agency and staff resources when major sackings occurred. Third, governments have failed to give forward-looking feedback on with the organisation’s activities in the digital space. Governments have failed to develop policy that would support, promote and develop the ABC. There are concerns now that the ABC’s cultural capital—once envied by other actors—is now being caught up in the content values of the hurly burly digital commercialised media field and that the ABC has shifted and drifted from being “the people’s station” (The Canberra Times, 1979) to one that “instinctively takes everyone's side but Australia’s” (Massola, 2015) with “editorial content, which alienates large segments of the Australian public” (Jolly 2014, quoting Switzer, 2013) and did not have sufficient funding to remain relevant (Jolly 2014, quoting Friends of the ABC, Victoria, 2008). Instead, there was biased or wasteful use of taxpayers' money in what former Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard had described as making “bizarre” (Hunt, 2016) and sexist programs.