Future Options

This chapter provides summary and conclusions of the research findings from previous chapters that have located the ABC as an irreplaceable venue and destination for dialogue and nuanced debate in Australia. Yet, the process of digitisation within a globalised media ecology and shifting cultural concerns has exposed two issues: how the ABC needed to re-define itself in the changed and changing environment and that there had been failures to plan, manage and create policy that preserved and re-invested in the ABC’s reputational capital and cultural capital. This was a valuable vestige of its past, acquired in its former élite privileged field which was occupied by actors who believed in the ongoing and universal relevance and value of the ABC for all Australians seeking to pursue the national interest. The ABC had succeeded in that task such that it was treasured by a broad cross-section of Australians from many disparate backgrounds. The pressure from governments to digitise was met with enthusiasm by ABC leadership, yet the ABC then ran headlong into the emergent commercial digital field unaware of the dangers, trip wires and landmines ahead. In re-capturing its cultural capital it should re-build its confidence and habitus by forgetting about merging with the cultural practices of commercial media and transplant the ABC—its habitus, and its two most valuable assets: its cultural capital and reputational capital into a sub-field of the commercial digital field. Those have been at the heart of the institution’s hard won status, which offered differentiation and uniqueness. The ABC once resided in its own uniquely defined field and provided content that commercial interests were unable, or unwilling to make. It finds itself muddled, having forgotten to transpose itself as a publicly-paid sub-field into the emergent contemporary media and cultural landscape.