The legislative framework for Australia’s taxpayer-funded left-wing propaganda machine national broadcaster specifies that it must “provide within Australia innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard”. Nowhere in the act does it say that ‘the taxpayer has to keep paying for dreck no one cares about’.
Yet, that’s what we’re doing. If BFD readers think the PIJF is a rip-off, just remember that you’re only being stiffed 55 million dollars to fund special schools for leftard journalists. Aussie taxpayers are forced to fork out a billion dollars a year for the privilege of keeping a bunch of journalistic special-needs kids entertained.
Well, we have to hope ABC journos are being entertained – because no one else is.
The ABC’s flagship radio program has continued to plummet in the ratings, averaging as low as “just 1000 listeners” in one capital city.
You’d get a bigger audience by posting a video of paint drying to YouTube.
At least the paint isn’t browbeating you about how racist, transphobic and just generally awful you are.
Media commentator Tim Burrowes from Unmade Media noted that ABC Radio National’s five-city breakfast audience was now “below 50,000”.
“You have to wonder how low an audience needs to get before something changes,” he wrote.
I dunno — ask Disney.
Interestingly, the internet was abuzz today with rumours that George Lucas was in talks to buy Lucasfilm back from Disney. Ever since the Mouse got his grubby gloves on the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, both are suffering a prolonged, slow death as Disney hacks push THE MESSAGE over, y’know, entertainment. But a commercial enterprise can only lose so much money.
Taxpayer-funded media are above such petty concerns as ‘audience’.
“At ABC Radio National, Patricia Karvelas’ share of the breakfast audience has shrunk again. She now commands just 1.5 per cent (yes, 1.5 per cent) of Sydney listeners, 3.1 per cent in Melbourne, 2.7 per cent in Brisbane, 1.6 per cent in Adelaide and 0.4 per cent in Perth.”
Burrowes said the Perth RN Breakfast number represented “an average of just 1000 listeners – the lowest that can be recorded without returning an asterisk”.
“In the evenings in Perth, RN actually gets the dreaded asterisk,” he said.
This is all, mind you, after ABC management ordered an urgent review into its plummeting listenership. Someone needs to tell them it ain’t working.
“The ABC’s review into its radio operations is getting urgent, even if public broadcasters move slower than their commercial counterparts. The ABC also argues that it does better on podcasts. However, despite its promises (including yet another announcement back in March) it’s yet to join the Podcast Ranker. The fourth ratings survey comes arrives a little sooner than usual, on July 11. I wonder whether change will have occurred by then.”
As public servants will, the ABC has ready excuses for frittering taxpayers’ money.
But the ABC has hit back, with a spokesman saying that analysis “grossly misrepresents” the situation.
“To judge RN Breakfast’s performance solely on its average audience figure, based on a quarter hour, grossly misrepresents its listenership and how that listenership engages with the program over three hours each morning,” he said.
“RN Breakfast continues to be hugely influential, reaching just over 300,000 listeners in the five capital cities across each week. Once you factor in its total national broadcast audience, that figure rises to around 430,000 people.”
News.com.au
So… 300k listeners in five cities in a week? At three hours per day, that works out to just 4,000 listeners per hour in each city. Wow, that makes all the difference!
Even factoring in podcasts doesn’t make the numbers any better. ABC management boast that RN “reaches around 860,000 people nationally across the week”.
Which works out to whopping 5,000 people per hour. Across an entire nation of 27,000,000.
So, that’s 0.02 per cent of Australians per hour. A stunning three per cent of Australians over the entire week.
A bargain, at just $1 billion a year.