0/5

ABC didn’t want to run SBS

Cabinet documents released today show that 30 years ago the ABC turned down an offer to run SBS, says The Australian.

Now released from government privy, the 1977 documents show the Fraser Government was keen to see the ABC take operations of its new multicultural radio stations, an early chapter of Channel 0-28.

But the ABC told the government the money and staff on offer to assume control of the radio stations that were to form the core of the new ethnic broadcasting service were inadequate.

“The commission would not wish to have the responsibility for operating 2EA and 3EA on the present basis and, indeed, sees no particular advantage in the Government transferring responsibility to the ABC unless the proposed changes can be made,” the then ABC chairman, John Norgard, told telecommunications minister Eric Robinson in June 1977.

The decision forced the government to create a statutory authority and created a hostile partnership between the ABC and the Fraser Government at the time.

The cabinet papers also acknowledged that “the government may be represented as ‘interfering’ with the ABC”.

The papers released today are particularly interesting in the light of talk that the ABC and SBS should merge. It is a concept that everyone has since put to bed.

Last year SBS Managing Director Shaun Brown also said the ABC should be forced to run ads.

Source: The Australian.

Leave a Reply