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Axed: New Inventors, Art Nation, Collectors.

The ABC has axed New Inventors, Art Nation and Collectors and implemented widespread redundancies in production across the country.

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Following recent speculation, ABC director of television Kim Dalton has confirmed today that he had axed New Inventors, Art Nation and Collectors and implemented widespread redundancies in ABC TV production across the country.

The Australian reports ABC executives today handed redundancy notices to dozens of staff across the country, axing arts programming and production units in Adelaide and Perth.

First Tuesday Book Club with Jennifer Byrne and At The Movies are safe, but arts documentaries will be outsourced.

Dalton blamed the increasingly competitive broadcasting environment for the cuts.

“ABC TV management recognises that this can be a very difficult time for some staff and will ensure all the appropriate support is offered,” Mr Dalton said in a staff email.

“However in the face of an increasingly competitive broadcasting environment and increasing financial pressures, ABC TV must ensure it uses its Government funding as efficiently and effectively as possible to deliver maximum value to its audiences and the Australian taxpayer.”

New Inventors was has been rumoured to go for several months but a tweet by panelist Mark Pesce last week was the strongest hint yet it was axed. Its Grand Final airs on August 17.

“As a result of these changes production requirements are less. Therefore ABC TV proposes to reduce the levels of staff in NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Northern Territory Production Pools resulting in proposed staff redundancies,” he said.

Art Nation, which replaced Sunday Arts, ends on 27th November while internally-produced arts documentaries for Artscape will cease. Fifteen people were this morning  were offered redundancies. Other Arts programming will now be outsourced.

Four television staff at ABC Adelaide were made redundant earlier today. Sources say seven more redundancies have just been announced in WA, marking the end of internal TV production in that state.

Tasmanian ABC has escaped cuts with a new program, Auctions, being commissioned to replace Collectors.

Graeme Thomson, the ABC section secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, said ABC managing director Mark Scott had authorised more outsourcing than the former managing director Jonathan Shier, who was sacked by the board.

“ABC staff have been gutted by this decision. They are personally committed to delivering the quality content that has made the ABC one of Australia’s most important and respected cultural institutions,” he said.

“The cutting of Art Nation, the ABC’s only remaining TV arts program, is an act of cultural vandalism.

“The ABC is at its best when it broadcasts the best international and domestically produced material available. This has meant maintaining a balance between in-house and private sector production.

“Under Head of Television Kim Dalton ideologically driven approach, this balance has been lost. The ABC TV has been reduced to a mere transmission tower broadcasting the same material from the same production houses used by commercial channels. This threatens the ABC’s distinctiveness, rationale and ultimately, its funding.

“The national broadcaster is required to provide quality programs that reflect the diversity of Australia, its cultures and regional perspectives. The announcement today that regional TV producers are to be sacked destroys this important arm of the ABC Charter.”

38 Responses

  1. @Ronnie & @abc tv survivor- completely agree with your viewpoints.

    However, I’m not sure that ABC has junked the right programmes. I have no ratings figures on hand to back up my theory, just recall and a gut feeling here so far.

    I reckon both New Inventors and The Collectors could have been salvaged with outsourcing and thus a fresh approach.
    Both programmes still have a relevancy in today’s Australia. They certainly should have been refreshed or renewed years ago and the ABC management and/or the production teams should stand condemned for that.

    As for At The Movies, it and it’s hosts are dated and given it’s discussing in detail aspects of what ultimately is a commercial undertaking, it still looks like a plug-fest. Ditto for the First Tuesday Book Club.

    As for comments about ABC’s commitment to the arts – well, at the end of the day, arts (esp performing arts) are often funded by governments and mostly attended by a minority of the wider general public and a majority of urban elitists. The Friends of the ABC fall into the latter group in my opinion.

    Arts on TV has never had large or even substantial viewing figures. Our tax dollars should not go into endeavours for the enjoyment of so few.

    Subscription TV is the place for this niche programming, although the Ovation Channel hardly set Foxtel alight with viewer numbers and by all accounts, neither does Stvdio.

  2. An another thing.

    The decision to use Claudia Chan Shaw in Collectors.

    While I have nothing against her,

    Footing the Bill each week for return flights to Sydney,

    When a Taswegian could surely have been found,

    begs belief.

    There’s some Savings ABC

  3. If ABC is keeping books(1st Tuesday Book Club) and movies(At The Movies), then why couldn’t it see fit to keep art(Art Nation), which is not only the only show of it’s kind on ABC, but on FTA tv all up, shame about this one going.

    New Inventors, it has had a good run, maybe it’s time for something different instead. Collectors, it was a pretty unique and intersting show, but the past host situation I think, was the beginning of the end of this show anyway, this is a way out of it all for ABC perhaps.

  4. Firstly – the only controversy here is being kicked up by the union. and its being fuelled by an ABC- hating media section in The Australian. so lets ackwoledge that..

    firstly – we are talking about the most boring, lifeless programs on aussie tv here. made by some of the laziest, most entrenched publics servants on earth. its not like anyone is pulling David and Margaret or Jen Byrne here, mmmmkay? those people who Are being made redundant are going to be offered the most insanely huge redundancy packages (cos they’ve all been there since Edmund Barton was PM) and – if they’re good – they’ll be hired back at twice the rate as freelancers. short term contracts Is working in tv in 2011. thats how it goes.

    as for cultural vandalism? are you kidding me? the ABC will keep making arts programming but they have accurately assessed that those programmes were not the right way to do so.

    independent producers have clearly produced the best products on the ABC’s slate over the last few years: gruen? chaser? enough rope? kath and kim? paper giants? all external. and with good bloody reason too. anyone who has tried make tv within the ABC will know that it is mired with comissioning editors, producers and crew who are on a collective mission to redefine the definitions of “lazy and inefficient”

  6. The ABC board is stacked with John Howard’s right-wing religious nutters. A fair and balanced board is now required.

    The influence of News Limited on the ABC’s coverage of news must be investigated. And the role of News Limited in the training of “journalists”.

  9. Kim Dalton is implementing the right model fo the ABC’s future. The ABC should commission everything from independent producers. There is simply no need to maintain internal production capacity. Each genre needs a strong genre head to commission whatever the ABC programmers decide they need. Genre heads need to deliver strong results for a contracted period and then move on. It is brutal – but fair and transparent. No cushy little enclaves to hide in at the ABC any longer.

  10. I use to enjoy Sunday afternoon arts shows….also Friday nights…Can We Help and The Collectors……all gone…
    And they also seem to be losing show they should have had…like Downton Abbey…*sad*

  12. So ABC axe a show because they are finding it hard in a multichannel environment, yet the ABC doesn’t rely on ratings. They have no source of income apart from the Government so why should they care if a show is bombing. Even in the ABC was getting 2% in shares nightly, they shouldn’t change their lineup because its not their business.
    Yes, the Government should up their funding for the ABC. I am in complete agreement with that. But ABC shouldn’t be striving to get a million viewers each night. The New Inventors probably has a budget 1/10th the size of Crownies, yet ABC must have that Aussie drama, even if it has flopped. The ABC is supposed to be a network which provides alternative variety to the ‘Big 3’, rather than a rating-chasing commercial meganetwork.
    In my eyes, ABC has always managed to create great shows on a tiny budget- Kath and Kim was shot on a tiny amount of money in comparison to the networks dramas, so was Summer Heights High. Yet ABC has, over the past 3 years or so, been trotting out dramas that seem to be directed at general audiences, the Nine/Seven/TEN territory.
    There are two ways the network can go now: either commercialiesed and cut from the Gov, or to return to the path the network has taken before and regain its status as a real alternative to the sh*t Nine and Seven programme.

  13. I am rather disappointed that New Inventors and Collectors have been given the chop. These two shows are examples of unique programming to the ABC – there aren’t any alternative similar shows on other channels.

    If the ABC is going to cut this programming, amongst other specialist programming it has, the ABC will just end up like any other channel.

    It is crazy that there seems to be stronger rules in place for the commercial channels to produce Australian programming and drama than the ABC.

  14. OMG I love collectors

    I certainly aren’t going to watch a show called Auctions

    First Spics and Specks and now this.

    Tell you what. I am going to outsource my TV

  16. Happy to see “New Inventors” go. The host had a barely-concealed fear of the technical; rather than an ability to simplify the novel and complex, he annoyingly shied away from it.

  17. The ABC master plan seems to be to produce specialist programs (like arts) so badly that they alienate the audience. Then axe them because of low ratings. If the charter dictates covering specialist areas like the arts, they can then commission much cheaper programming with the defence that “this stuff doesn’t rate”. If they attempted to do arts programming well (and schedule it sensibly), they’d find out that there is a very respectable audience out there.

  19. Agreed Richard. What a disaster. As I’ve been saying one by one the beloved shows disappear. For what? Technology that doesn’t work very well and can be relied on to stuff up? I’d prefer and trust people more. It’s the real treasure of the ABC or any organisation. Too bad modern or not so modern management don’t realise this.

  22. Very disappointing news about The Arts. I remember when there was a whole Sunday afternoon show. Perhaps they need more funds from the Federal Government. I’d happily give 10c a day.

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