ABC Life site draws sector comment
New ABC lifestyle site to feature everything from health & relationships to recaps of Gardening Australia.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
On Monday ABC will launch a new lifestyle site ABC Life featuring “content on issues important to all Australians – work and careers, health and wellbeing, finance, relationships and family – free from commercial agendas.”
The site will include curated content from ABC Television, ABC NEWS, ABC Regional and Local, triple j, Radio National, ABC online and podcasts, supplemented by creative output from an ABC Life team.
It will also include recaps of Gardening Australia, a special series with RN’s Life Matters, and content from War on Waste, Employable Me, The Pineapple Project and Ladies, We Need To Talk.
Scott Spark, ABC Life Lead, said, “ABC Life builds on the tradition of the ABC tapping into the everyday topics, issues and stories that matter to people. It will look and sound like Australia now, and be free of advertiser interests.”
But the concept has already seen some raise questions about best use of ABC journalism and funding at a time when the broadcaster is under review over its Charter and competing with commercial interests.
FreeTV chief executive Bridget Fair,told Fairfax it was “hard to see how the ABC can justify” its new lifestyle offering.
“This would have to be one of the most comprehensively covered market segments in Australian media.”
ABC maintains “ABC Life was developed within the ABC’s Content Ideas Lab and is part of the Investing in Audiences Strategy to meet the changing needs and expectations of audiences within the ABC’s Charter remit.”
13 Responses
Regardless of the rights/wrongs of this site, I have to say that I really enjoyed The Pineapple Project on podcast. The content (getting your finances in order) was not necessarily ground-breaking but the presentation was hilarious.
Wasn’t ABC the one who closed down a cooking/recipe website a few years ago?
This could be a good new place to bring back that kind of content in an archive form along with a Gardening Australia database.
I’m sure that’s not what this will end up being, but I wouldn’t mind if Life had a whole database of all that stuff from ABC past, they’d have so much to pull from. That would be pretty sweet.
I really wish there was an option on this site to block seeing comments from the usual ABC haters. I find it offensive as a viewer and supporter of the ABC to be referred to as far left by someone who is clearly far right.
It’s probably good to remember that accusations of “bias” tend to reveal more about the bias of the accuser rather than the accused.
Agreed. The amount of times I have been accused of bias towards a certain channel (and it’s all of them at various times), is usually a nod to their own alignments.
Spot on C.J and David
My only real problem with it is that there’s usually not single whit of original thought or even personal opinion involved – it’s all just recycled & parroted almost verbatim from one of their usual favourite sources.
If they’d even formed their position or opinion themselves based on sources they’d cherry-picked themselves, it wouldn’t be so bad – at least then it’d original thought based on consideration of something they considered factual, not just repetitive bleating of someone elses rhetoric.
Which is funny, because the Right are usually the ones who claim to be big on ‘personal responsibility’ and ‘thinking for yourself’…
The branding is all wrong. It should be named ABC Cult. The only lifestyle it is likely to portray is inner city hipsters that have never worked a hard day in their life.
Wait.. .Don’t SBS have SBS Life? You would think under the current Competitive Neutrality Review that the ABC would try to do something a little different…
Another waste of money…
As opposed to the commercial networks who dress up supposed “Lifestyle” content which is however a 100% paid for advertorial?
I am all in favour of the ABC offering branching into this, Gardening Australia etc is already produced and I see no harm in extending articles into an online form.
Got to love ABC management. On one hand they complain they are cash strapped then they go out and expand their offering stealing market share from others. Just like there is no need for a far left ABC online news website when we have The Guardian now the ABC are moving into a section of the media which is already well catered for.
Government broadcasting should deliver unique content such as NITV instead of becoming a tax funded Foxtel clone.
Or a way of re-packaging mostly existing content from other arms to grow audience engagement & get maximum bang-for-buck without digging too deeply into their stagnant/reduced funding. You just don’t know…