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“Do we have a problem with people leaving?”

ABC Managing Director defends staffing turnover and looks to a depth of talent at the public broadcaster.

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On Friday ABC Managing Director David Anderson was quizzed about the departure of a number of high profile presenters.

ABC Radio Melbourne’s Raf Epstein cited the departures of Stan Grant, Tracey Holmes, Mary Gearin, Madeleine Morris, Andrew Probyn, asking “Do we have a problem with people leaving?”

“I don’t think so,” Anderson replied. “I think that people will leave from time to time. This year we announced changes with regard to our staff base as well as some of what it is that we were doing. We had to do that for two reasons. One was that our indexation wasn’t keeping up with rising costs and the other one was strategically investing in our future. With that comes some change, and yes, we have had quite a lot of change this year with regard to high profile people. You’re right.”

Epstein noted Stan Grant and Andrew Probyn’s exits were “compelling stuff… they’re not easy to replace.”

“That is true, though there are two different specific circumstances, with regard to them both,” Anderson continued.

“But look, we’ve got a great many people at the ABC who do wonderful things… which I have to say, we’ve got good depth of talent of people coming through. So I don’t think we’re in trouble with that. I’ve been at the ABC for a while now and I use see talent rise and then occasionally then leave.”

“None of that’s been mishandled in your view?” asked Epstein.

“No, I don’t believe that’s been mishandled.”

4 Responses

  1. I would think that the ABC will be having further more significant issues going forward, not least being the organisations decreasing relevancy to the viewing public, the ABC is a tax payer funded media organisation, not a socio-political influencer.

  2. i will get alot of people not agreeing with me but the National Broadcaster should be picking up regional TV local news in the bush as some commercial offerings are slowing winding back, i worked in a ABC regional office for a short period of time and the Sydney ABC TV loved having a camera operator at their disposal. I only left becuase the new manager brought in his girlfriend who had small amount of camera experience and he said we didnt need a camera operator. I didnt mind , ive gone onto better freelance job now, but the ABC should seriously think about regional TV news more.

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