ABC insider hits back at costs to maintain “cheap and cheerful” Adelaide team

An ABC insider has hit back at Mark Scott’s description of ABC’s Adelaide facilities at last night’s Senate Estimates hearing.

The ABC managing director would not be drawn on whether TV production outside of news and current affairs would be shut down in Adelaide, nor how many jobs would be axed in the process. Scott said staff would be the first to hear in an ABC staff address on Monday.

He related the difficulties in keeping 3 studios operating fulltime in Adelaide whilst talking up ABC productions such as ANZAC Girls, partnering with the independent sector.

But the devil may be in the detail.

ABC insiders have provided some comment which -in the interests of ongoing and open debate- I am publishing in full.

1) Mr. Scott said: ABC TV Adelaide has 3 studios which aren’t used to their full capacity; Syd/Melb ABC studios have greater usage; the Adelaide studios are expensive to maintain.

Rebuttal
Just as “oils ain’t oils” so too there are “studios” and then there are STUDIOS.

Adelaide’s largest TV studio (51B) is a black box with an old/modest lighting rig. Poh’s Kitchen was filmed there.
It has no control room (a control room is the working “guts” of a studio). The studio floor is just a quiet, darkened space to film in.
It has no live broadcast cameras. In fact it has NO cameras (so, no studio camera costs). When filming is done in there, field cameras are brought in from the “field camera” shed next door (these are the same cameras that go to news conferences or shoot programs like The Cook & The Chef or Dream Build).
The studio floor is like a shoebox without shoes in it (i.e. it is a space that can be used as required but it doesn’t have expensive gear associated with it – and it isn’t expensive to maintain).
If Sydney and Melbourne studios are Commodores, Adelaide’s studio is a tricycle. And tricycles aren’t expensive to maintain.

Adelaide’s mid-size studio (51A) records 25 programs per week throughout most of the year. Every day, two news bulletins are filmed there, and so too are two Behind The News bulletins (plus the weekly BTN show is also shot there). Again, it is a modest studio by Sydney standards, and it has a small control room & a tiny staff..

The so-called “Studio 51C” is hardly a studio at all. It’s really just a case of regional ingenuity. It is an office space (like a store room) that is no bigger than a suburban bedroom. It’s been painted black and a small “green screen” has been hung. It doesn’t have a lighting rig. It doesn’t have a control room. It’s just a room with black walls and some noise insulation.Hell, it’s ceiling is 9 feet high; it’s tiny!

By contrast, the fully-equipped “studios” at the SA Film Corp are proper sound stages for the production of feature films. They are great spaces – and very expensive to maintain. ABC Adelaide’s are cheap and cheerful and (in the best tradition of regional ingenuity) they get the job done (when they are needed) without unnecessary cost.And when not in use, they aren’t a drain on budgets. (They also get rented out to the private sector.)

Also, Adelaide doesn’t have dedicated studio crews. The news studio cameras are remotely-controlled from the control room. And when Behind The News films in a studio, it grabs a camo who would otherwise be working elsewhere in the branch (on news, or Landline, or a show like Poh’s Kitchen). Remember: Adelaide has fewer staff but they all wear more hats than their eastern States colleagues. It’s like comparing a big business to a small business; in the small business, everyone mucks in and cuts their clothe to work within a smaller budget.

Finally & importantly… Adelaide is a branch that gets dirt under its fingernails. Its crews specialise in in-the-field filming (but they also do studio-based shows too). This field-based expertise is seen in shows such as Restoration Australia (transmission 2015), Dream Build, Cook and the Chef, Poh’s Kitchen, Talking Heads, the recent Adelaide zoo doco etc. Real stories about real South Australians filmed in areal locations.

2) Mr Scott said: “In SA between 2011 and 2014 we’ve spent $22m with the independent production sector, including doing programming like ANZAC Girls.”

Rebuttal
Mr Scott’s point needs scrutiny. ANZAC Girls was a drama made by Sydney-based company Screen Time. It was filmed in SA (because of its beaches and old buildings) and some post production was done in Adelaide. But to suggest the full budget was spent in SA would be open to question. The drama’s “key creatives” aren’t based in Adelaide; they flew in and out, as did many actors and crew members. Yes, the production did use some SA cast, crew & facilities – but only for a time. The circus soon left town, it didn’t put down roots and “nourish” SA in the medium- or long-term.

More importantly, the fictional ANZAC Girls didn’t tell any particular SA stories or showcase SA figures.In contrast, true-blue SA stories/characters ARE showcased on internally-made shows such as The Cook and The Chef, Dream Build, Poh’s Kitchen, Restoration Australia, Talking Heads, and docos on The Beatles and the Adelaide Zoo, etc.

The solution?
It’s estimated ABC TV in Adelaide needs about $3m pa. This is just 1/4 of 1% of the ABC’s $1.2B annual budget. In contrast, the ABC’s 5% funding cut is potentially a 100% cut for ABC TV SA’s successful little unit that gets big results. Its most recent show got 1.4m viewers (Countdown). The 2013 annual report listed another Adel series – Dream Build – as being in the top 12 most popular shows (internal or external) that year.

The Howard government allocated tied-funding specifically for ABC regional production. When this quarantined funding ended under Labor, Mark Scott closed ABC TV Production in Qld (2007), WA (2011) and Tas (2012). Voices were not raised – questions not asked – when this was done.