Merging ABC, SBS and NITV would free up funding to spend on news and Australian content and allow the multicultural broadcaster to drop advertising, according to a discussion paper by the thinktank the Australia Institute.

The Special Broadcasting Service was launched by the then Liberal prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, in 1974, as a service for local non-English speakers but has evolved into a diverse, multi-platform broadcaster that provides more than just multilingual services.

Merging the three separately funded public broadcasters could also ensure that culturally diverse voices reached wider audiences while improving the ABC’s current lack of cultural diversity.

The momentum for a merger is gaining pace as it also was raised by ABC managing director, Mark Scott, at a Senate estimates committee earlier this month.

Scott said there was less need for a second public broadcaster since SBS provided less distinctive content and foreign language programming than it once did.

The outgoing managing director will raise the issue again in his final address to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday but is also expected to call for additional funding for ABC News.

However, the discussion paper, written by the former ABC manager Fergus Pitt, does warn that audiences are very loyal to SBS and ABC and are hostile to change.

Designed in the analogue age, the public broadcasters now have eight linear free- to-air TV channels, a pay TV service, 15 linear broadcast radio services, two separate on-demand TV services (ABC iView and SBSOnDemand), two podcasting catalogues and two online platforms – all managed by two separate bureaucracies.

Pitt argues that the services are poorly designed for the digital age and could do with an overhaul as some services have overlapping content, while others address niche markets better served online than on a TV program.

Relatively new channels like ABC2 and ABC Kids have a proportion of repeats and programs from overseas that is above 90%.

The discussion paper says catch-up TV services make repeats redundant, except for older audiences who are not yet educated in using the internet for watching TV.

The paper says that SBS can no longer rely on advertising to prop up its diminishing funding from government– because advertising spend is moving from TV to online platforms – and merging with the ABC would free up additional funds for content.

According to the institute, SBS’s digital content reaches only 6% of the Australian population and SBS News’ online reach is worse, reaching only 2% of the Australian population, behind new players the Huffington Post and Daily Mail Australia.

“The ABC, SBS and NITV appear to be passing up significant opportunities for savings and efficiency by extensively duplicating services and effort in their online and mobile services,” the report says.



“They maintain separate systems and infrastructure that provide fundamentally the same service, specifically media on-demand, news article publishing and podcasting. Given the apparent poor performance of SBS’ online news – which should be an important part of SBS strategy and charter delivery – this seems a severe problem.”

But the president of the lobby group Save Our SBS, Steve Aujard, said the report was “deeply disturbing” and, if implemented, could lead to the loss of both SBS and NITV as free-to-air channels.

“If Malcolm Turnbull supports social cohesion, a multicultural Australia and the important role of SBS, then he needs to rule out now any intent or possibility from his government of an ABC-SBS merger,” Aujard said.

The discussion paper does warn that any money saved from restructuring must be reinvested into the public broadcasters or it would undermine their charters and that the downside of a merger would be the potential loss of SBS’ distinctiveness and its ability to frame global news and entertainment to make it relevant to people in Australian contexts.

“Any attempt to reduce expenditure, instead of improving the services and defending public media from long-term threats, would undercut the entire rationale of structural reform and leave the ABC, SBS, NITV and their viewers and funders in a weaker position to face the challenges of the 21st Century,” it says.

“Core SBS stakeholders, namely ethnic and migrant communities, also retain a crucial need for the media organisation.”

The Australia Institute is an independent public policy thinktank funded by donations from philanthropic trusts.