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“Budgetary constraints” signal early ABC summer

The ABC says money is the reason Q & A, Australian Story, Four Corners, Media Watch have all begun an early summer hiatus.

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The ABC has cited “budgetary constraints and programming reasons” in response to questions about why flagship shows have already ended their seasons.

Q & A, Australian Story, Four Corners, Media Watch and Spicks and Specks have all ended for the year (Spicks and Specks has one more xmas special to come).

The Herald Sun reports ABC1 Channel Controller Brendan Dahill has conceded he was reviewing the ABC’s roster of shows to ascertain if some were going off air too early.

He said it was difficult to balance investing the time and resources into producing quality programs such as Australian Story against airing as many episodes as possible.

He said the ABC’s commitment to viewers was backed by the new shows being rolled out, including drama series Rake and documentary series Family Confidential.

Last night ABC rolled out a new Monday night line-up, with its network share dropping from 17.8% last week to 14.9% this week.

ABC shows traditionally wind down earlier than most commercial shows but it has felt especially early this year.

Dahill says many staff and presenters would be working behind the scenes to prepare programmes for the new year.

Maybe it’s a job for Media Watch to investigate?

Oh wait….

Source: Herald Sun

14 Responses

  1. They could have saved money by not buying a second season of the absolutely dreadful “Bed Of Roses”.
    It was just one cliche after another, and such a waste of the talents of Kerry Armstrong. Cringe-worthy.
    Drop the Miss Marples and Poirets too, waste of money for stuff long past its use-by date.
    All their viewers aren’t aged 90-100.

  2. I did wonder why Spicks & Specks went off the air early, well I thought it felt early and I checked in pervious years they had about 40-42 episodes this year they had only 35. I e-mailed them about it and got no response.

    Thanks for clearing it up David, I think they need to manage their money better.

  3. I’ve been wondering how the ABC could justify dropping almost all its leading current affairs shows so long before Christmas – the world doesn’t stop! It’s bad enough to do this when they just had one channel, now that they have a news channel they can’t just stop producing programmes for substantial parts of the year. The amount of decent investigative journalism on News 24 has been limited since its launch, now there will be almost none. Unfortunately, it is too much like Sky, but often unable to cover breaking news due to having too few staff late at night and on week-ends. Even for someone like me who closely follows politics, this channel is tedious. It is just so parochial with endless politicians, lobbyists, and commentators prognosticating about whether this or that decision will be good politically for the government!

  6. I should note that, at the very least, Spicks and Specks started some 4 weeks earlier in February than it usually does; and Media Watch ran 40 episodes this year, the same number as it did in 2009, and one more than it did in 2008 — see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Watch_%28TV_program%29#Episodes

    Q&A also ran uninterrupted from its commencement in mid-Feburary (last year it had two eight-week hiatuses).

    I don’t see what the fuss is about — seasons started earlier on the ABC, so naturally they finished earlier.

  8. I questioned Spicks and Specks and The Inventors coming off air so early, but received no info. Media Watch and Four Corners generally come off air the first week in November. I worked on MW and it was generally budgeted for 40 shows per year.(feb – nov). Many ABC shows now employ production staff on contracts, which allow no wrap up and little pre-production The organisation makes savings there as employees are then out of work until their new contract takes effect in Mid January. Also with presenters, actors, writers, and cash costs connected to production – supplies, research material . Staff were ‘encouraged’ to take leave in December/January where possible.

  9. I’m not sure why people think this is a new thing for ABC, they’ve been doing it for years. Media Watch and 4 Corners in particular have often wound up weeks before the end of ratings. MW as far as I recall, has always had a 40-week season and episode 40 for 2010 aired last week so I assume 4 Corners was the same.

  10. So the ABC News channel is responsible for the budget blow out, hardly surprising.

    So lets get this straight

    – the ABC offers meagre Australian drama output
    – rushes to set up a 24 hour news service, that hardly ever goes live or breaks important news stories first and is riddled with BBC crap and repeats that hardly anybody watches
    – becomes a babysitter to mums with all their childrens programming spread out on three stations
    – and finally ending their brand name shows early because someone is crap at budgets, yet still keeps them on the books preparing shows for next year (Are they that inept they need all that time to prepare)

    ABC has no idea and is so out of touch in the real world and what most Australians want it is just sad.

  12. Perhaps if some of the dead-wood middle management public servants who have been at the ABC since the stone age were lopped, the organisation could operate in a professional way – just like any other broadcaster.

  14. I don’t claim to understand the business of television, but I would have thought that their biggest input cost would be wages and I don’t imagine they have forced everybody to take two months’ annual leave to use up their booked entitlements. Therefore, if the staff really are still “working behind the scenes”, where are the cost savings? (BTW please take this as a literal question, not an accusation – I genuinely would like to understand how it works in this industry).

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