But now let's look to the big end of town and and the future of Our ABC.

Woke up this morning feeling fine, got something special on my mind. Something tells me I'm into something good. Something tells me I'm into something good, good, good, good, 2015, it's all good. — ABC TV in 2015, 13th November, 2014

Good, good, good, it's all good.

But is that really so?

Tomorrow, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull looks set to reveal how much funding will be cut from the ABC and SBS.

And in doing so the government will break this clear and unequivocal election promise from Tony Abbott.

TONY ABBOTT: No cuts to the ABC or SBS. TONY ABBOTT: No cuts to the ABC or SBS. — SBS World News, 6th September, 2013

We understand the ABC will lose $50 million a year, on top of $9 million a year that was flagged back in May.

That's close to 6% of the ABC's annual budget of $1.1 billion.

Add in the loss of the Australia Network and various bits of special funding and that figure is more like 9% a year.

So what will the damage be? Well, we won't know for sure till ABC Managing Director Mark Scott addresses the staff, probably on Thursday

But ... here is the good, good, good news:

PEPPA PIG: And the piggies on the train go Oink oink oink, oink oink oink, oink, oink, oink. — ABC 4 Kids, Peppa Pig

Yes, Peppa Pig has survived, despite threats to her life.

So have ABC2 and ABC3 despite fears that one would be closed.

And Radio National has escaped with cuts of only 2% after the ABC board intervened.

Regional radio broadcasts will also be largely unscathed

But there's bad news too:

Friday's State-based 7.30 will be axed.

And Lateline will be cut back, but it stays on the main channel.

ABC bureaux in Tokyo, Bangkok, New Delhi and New Zealand will also be crunched with a claimed loss of 20 jobs.

TV production in South Australia outside news and current affairs-will be shut down.

And $6 million will be sliced off ABC radio, with big cuts at Classic FM.

In all, some 400 to 500 jobs will go ... with people being shown the door by Christmas.

Labor's Jason Clare calls it a "rolled gold broken promise"..

"Malcolm Turnbull has promised that these cuts would just be back of house cuts, but that looks like a lie too. It looks like hundreds of people are going to be sacked and great programs shut down. — Jason Clare, Shadow Minister for Communications, Response to Media Watch Questions, 14th November, 2014

So who is responsible for this? Not the government says Malcolm Turnbull, who wrote recently:

The savings sought from the ABC are not of a scale that will require reductions in programme expenditure. The ABC may choose to cut programming rather than tackle back office and administrative costs - but that's the ABC's call. — Malcolm Turnbull, Federal Minister for Communications, 30th September, 2014

But, actually the truth is a little more complex.

The ABC IS cutting costs and back office functions ... and it claims most or all of the $59 million in savings will be found this way.

But ... once it has returned that money to Canberra the ABC will have nothing left to invest in a business that is changing rapidly.

And that's where the cuts to programs come in.

As Mark Scott told a Melbourne University audience last month:

We want the ABC to be the home of Australian stories and conversations-not just on the platforms that have dominated the past, but on the platforms that will be central to the future in an online and mobile world. — Mark Scott, Managing Director, ABC, 13th October, 2014

In the past, the ABC has used efficiency savings to fund its investment-in ventures like News 24 and ABC Online-but now that won't be possible, so Scott says there's only one option:

We will have to spend less on television and radio to spend more on online and mobile-not just in content, but on the capacity to deliver the services demanded. — Mark Scott, Managing Director, ABC, 13th October, 2014

So where is this investment needed?

Well, the ABC's popular iview service now attracts 20 million views a month ... but it costs $4m a year to deliver.

And it's growing fast.

Meanwhile four out of five Australians now own a smartphone, and three out of five own a tablet -and they use these to get news and programs.

So the ABC needs to make and deliver more stories tailored to that medium

Says Mark Scott:

It's an online, mobile Australia-and that's the Australia the ABC needs to be serving. — Mark Scott, Managing Director, ABC, 13th October, 2014

The ABC's critics ... on both sides of the argument ... will not be happy.

Friends of the ABC and former staff director Quentin Dempster are angry about cuts to what they see as core programs, like Friday night's state-based 7.30, which Dempster presents in NSW:

... editorially, and in recognition of its charter, one would have thought the ABC had an obligation to contribute to state affairs through its TV current affairs coverage of politics, education, health, law and order, the environment, planning and multi-party corruption. — The Guardian, 28th October, 2014

But Dempster's solution to the problem-which involves no cuts to the ABC-is no longer on the government's political agenda.

While Scott may be right that to survive to 2032 (the ABC's 100th anniversary) we need to build younger audiences who will only access our content through phones and tablets, during the five, 10 or 20 years this digital transition will take, the ABC should be funded to do both. — The Guardian, 28th October, 2014

On the other side of the argument, in the Murdoch press and right wing of the Liberal Party, critics like Cory Bernardi and Andrew Bolt believe the cuts should go deeper.

ANDREW BOLT: The ABC is just too big for a state-funded, government-beholden, media outlet. It runs an empire so vast, across so many platforms, that no private media operator is even allowed to do that. — 2GB, Nights with Steve Price, 29th January, 2014

One of Bolt and Bernardi's core arguments is that the ABC should not be allowed into online and digital if it's delivering news, stories and programs for free.

So they are certainly not getting what they hoped for.

Nor is the chorus of columnists accusing the ABC of bias. Janet Albrechtesen, Chris Kenny and Gerard Henderson have all been busy complaining in recent days in the Australian.

But for everyone else-apart from the 400-500 who lose their jobs-it's not such a bad outcome.

The ABC survives pretty much intact.

Taxpayers get some money back.

And the public broadcaster is forced to confront its future more urgently than it might otherwise have done.

And as for that broken promise:

TONY ABBOTT: No cuts to the ABC or SBS. — SBS, World News, 6th September, 2013

It's not the first and it won't be the last that our politicians have broken.

Nor is it the first time the ABC has been in the frontline, as one former board member told Media Watch.

The ABC is a great echo chamber for governments wanting to get this message of stringency out. It has been done ever since Fraser first brought the 'razor gang' to the ABC in the 1970s. In this sense the ABC is symbolic ... it's a way of sending a message about the need to cut everywhere. — Former ABC Board Member, 14th November, 2014

So will the ABC now be safe from further government cuts and criticism?

Well maybe. But don't expect the future to be calm.

Fiona Martin, who's an expert on how TV and online media are coming together, believes the ABC will need to take more hard decisions-because online distribution costs more than broadcasting-so further cuts will need to be made.

... I can't see how the ABC can continue to support the number of channels it has. It's not helpful to argue that ABC staff can keep doing more with less - you need to make decisions about what is sacrificed: quantity, quality, diversity or originality. — Dr Fiona Martin, University of Sydney, Response to Media Watch Questions, 14th November, 2014

And Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull is coming up straight after this on Q&A. You may want to stay tuned.