In Australia, nearly one-in-four households are Netflix subscribers, up from almost none five years ago. The advent of such tech giants has blown apart the audience, subscription and advertising models of traditional print, radio and television companies.

New competitors, however, could emerge any time to replace those tech giants, warns Guthrie. “I was on a panel a few months ago where someone was talking about how there were only going to be three platforms: Google, Facebook and Apple. I don’t believe that. Snapchat came out of nowhere. What I learnt at Google is, you can’t take anything for granted.”

Who’s with you, who isn’t?

It’s why Guthrie, 50, has been moving swiftly since she was passed the baton by predecessor Mark Scott. She’s criss-crossed Australia visiting ABC offices to get a clearer picture of where the 84-year-old institution needs to go.

Most of those meetings have involved Guthrie sitting back and letting staff do the talking, and trying to avoid having them give answers that they think she wants to hear.

She characterises her leadership style as one that builds consensus and doesn’t dominate, which is illustrated in meetings, where she does more listening and asking of questions than directing. This, says Guthrie, who’s being paid $900,000 annually, allows you to read the signals and get better answers.

“Who’s not talking? What’s not being discussed in the meeting? What’s in the way of staff getting things done? What can be improved? What are we really good at?


“Most people have liked that I have listened more than I have spoken,” she says. “The more you sit back, the more you get a sense of what’s really going on, and who’s with you and who isn’t.”

There will be some of the ABC’s 4183 staff who won’t be with Guthrie as she embarks on what is perhaps the biggest transformation of the public broadcaster yet, even surpassing Mark Scott’s reign.

Former ABC managing director Mark Scott transformed the institution from a digital laggard to leader. Mal Fairclough

In his 10 years, Scott pushed the ABC from a digital laggard to a leader, with the national broadcaster rolling out podcasts, multiple websites, a television catch-up service in iview, apps for its radio services and additional digital TV channels – including ABC News 24 – along with embracing social media.

Most of these initiatives came well in advance of the ABC’s commercial peers but they were not without controversy.

Now Guthrie is about to test the ABC staff’s appetite for more change as she pursues araft of measures that include introducing a flatter structure across 17 divisions and working out how they can become more integrated; outsourcing of some non-content services; achieving cost savings through closer co-operation with SBS, which may be perceived as a precursor to a merger; the expansion of ABC’s content on external platforms; and increased diversity among staff to mirror Australian audiences, with one in three citizens now born overseas.

Disconnected in a connected age

When Mark Scott was preparing to step down as the ABC’s managing director, he admitted that he’d never realised the scale of the challenge when he took on the job. Not just in the digital transformation but the struggle to break down the ABC’s internal fiefdoms and also the problems of a sometimes critical government and tough budget cuts.


"She's pushing it faster thank Mark did," says ABC chairman James Spigelman of the change being instituted by managing director Michelle Guthrie. Peter Braig

If Guthrie is also daunted by the task that lies ahead, she’s not saying. What she does want to talk about, however, is how disconnected parts of the ABC are in this connected age.

She uses her own experience to illustrate what she means. In preparing for the managing director’s job interview, Guthrie researched the ABC’s products and information on the broadcaster. “There was so much there but it was hard to find,” she recalls of trawling through a multitude of ABC websites. Moreover, what struck her were the ABC’s digital silos.

Guthrie says you might find a podcast in a cul-de-sac over here, or you get some ABC radio streaming over there. “It’s not connected. We have a massive opportunity around that to make the audience experience much more vibrant and much richer.”

Her hypothesis about the ABC’s content being difficult to find was tested again after she became managing director. During a visit to the ABC’s Parliament House bureau, Guthrie was discussing a political blog with a reporter, and said: “Don’t send me the link, I want to find it myself.” Once again she trawled the ABC’s sites and eventually found the blog.

What makes the ABC "unique and distinctive"? Managing director Michelle Guthrie says its programs such as Four Corners, which broadcast an episode on abuse at a Darwin youth detention centre. ABC

How the ABC’s products are presented, particularly online, reflect the organisation’s divisional structures, she says. “If we allocate resources on a purely divisional basis, with key performance indicators or objectives set on a divisional basis, that’s how people are going to behave.

“One of the opportunities for us is to look at what level of resource should be available for the entire organisation. Our resource allocation is very much around individual product rather than around the infrastructure layer capability that is common across those products.”


Under new management

Before Scott, the MD’s job had been a revolving door. Three executives – Brian Johns, Jonathan Shier and Russell Balding – served in the decade prior and had tried to implement change more bluntly, triggering industrial action, particularly during Shier’s reign.

Guthrie says changing the resourcing would make staff think of the ABC as a whole, rather than as divisional teams. “How do we think about the ABC together, rather than as radio, TV, digital, news and current affairs, or as Sydney, Melbourne, Ballarat or Bendigo?”

She poses the question sitting in a small meeting room at the ABC’s Ultimo head office in Sydney. Beyond the room are rows of standing desks and a couple of boards covered with sticky notes and mind maps from planning sessions and staff posting ideas.

The room reflects the new style of Guthrie’s leadership. At Google, she never had her own office. At the ABC she’s taken a desk on level seven among staff, eschewing the voluminous, book-lined office on the top floor where Scott met reporters and where chairman James Spigelman also works.

Spigelman lost his space in the car park, which used to be next to the lifts, in another of Guthrie’s shake-ups when she removed reserved car spots in her first week at the ABC. He’s in favour of it and chuckles that it was an effective and dramatic way of hanging out the “under new management” sign.

When the board was searching for a replacement for Scott, it was seeking a candidate who had deep experience in disruptive media, as audience viewing habits change and shift increasingly online. Moreover, they wanted a person who would effect change rapidly. “The board was overjoyed at the final decision,” says Spigelman.

“Michelle emerged at every stage on any criteria. She’s pushing it faster than Mark did. Mark changed the culture of the place and its positioning and reputation. I have every confidence that Michelle will continue to do that and the ABC will be regarded as an even more dynamic place.”


Unique and distinctive

If Guthrie wants to be a change agent and deliver a flatter organisational structure then she must lead by example. “I’m trying to encourage us to be innovative around thinking about ways of doing things differently on the non-content area to free up resources, knowing that we have pretty flat budgets.” Doing so would free up money to reinvest in developing more content that’s going to distinguish the ABC, she says.

In May, the government’s budget continued the triennial $3.1 billion base funding for the ABC across television, radio and digital services. But it announced it would reduce additional funding of $60 million over three years by $18.6 million. This funding was used for programs including the National Reporting Team, new regional bureau, state-based digital teams and the Fact Check unit; the latter has closed as a consequence.

In such an environment, Guthrie believes there’s internal appetite for change at the ABC. “The executive team and the programming team are looking at every program and asking, ‘Is there duplication within what we do at the ABC? Can we work together more effectively, and second, is this unique and distinctive?’”

Guthrie says it’s too easy to get lost in the discussion of how to respond to the changes occurring in media. “One of the things I’ve been discussing with the team is what makes us unique and distinctive. If you covered up the ABC logo or you didn’t know what station you were tuned into, would you know it’s us? In a fragmented world, that matters. Having that sense of integrity, purpose, distinctiveness and indispensability is really important. That’s what makes that connection with audiences because people will follow us and people will find us.”

Guthrie identifies programs such as Four Corners, the ABC’s regional coverage, its election coverage and the way it contributes to the national conversation, as making it unique.

Closer ties with SBS

Guthrie has already reached out to the SBS executive team on where they can share resources. “We should absolutely be co-operating as much as we can. We have agreed to share our indigenous content for National Indigenous TV. There’s a lot more we can be doing on co-commissioning. I see us as sibling broadcasters and that we should be trying to be efficient in terms of our use of public money.”


Justin Diddams, who analysed the media sector for two decades, calls it a step in the right direction. “You could argue whether a country of this size having two publicly funded broadcasters is a little overstretched. I hate to think about the duplication of the resources between the two businesses.”

In expanding revenues and audiences, Guthrie is also looking at other platforms where the ABC’s content can be carried both in Australia and overseas. This could include partnering with technology companies or expanding the broadcaster’s own platforms. The ABC has a deal with Netflix, which will take 200 hours of its programming, and the money it receives from that is earmarked to be reinvested back into content. She says the ABC needs to embrace such partnerships as programming costs increase and the government’s spending on the organisation remains under pressure.

Also, Guthrie is exploring internationalising the ABC’s services, where practical. “When I was in Singapore, I couldn’t access iview,” she says. “Why not? I know there are rights issues, but there’s also a lot of content we commission specifically for iview. What’s stopping us internationalising some of that content and using that to connect with Australians everywhere or people interested in Australia?”

With a to-do list as big as this it’s easy to understand why Guthrie says, “I feel like I’ve been drinking from a fire hose. As change really becomes much faster we have to try things faster. You want to build dexterity into the organisation. It’s the ability to change as circumstances change.”

The test is whether the organisation will follow the path of change that Guthrie has set. She’s optimistic. “At Google everyone had a real sense of purpose. I felt that even stronger when I joined the ABC. That’s gold.”

ahyland@afr.com.au

Twitter: @newsandimages

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