ABC Managing Director Mark Scott spoke to The Media Report’s Richard Aedy to explain his handling of cuts to the public broadcaster. Mr Scott said closing the ABC’s Adelaide TV studios was the hardest decision he had to make and defended the ‘Hunger Games’ style competitive process being used to restructure ABC News.

Jobs are being reclassified onto lower bands on lower wages. The new jobs, which are about bringing in digital skills, are in lower bands than the journalists that are being let go, aren't they?

Mark Scott: We are looking at the skills mix we need for digital. All media organisations are doing that. We're following a process to do that which is spelled out in their industrial agreements. Yes, we are looking into people who can help us tell stories on apps and mobile as well as telling stories on radio and television.

I was reflecting on Sunday night, as I was watching the Countdown special on television, that on Monday I had to go out and announce that the team who had made it... we had to close that facility down. That was tough. Mark Scott

We're looking at job classifications, we're looking at our job mix, but still nobody will have more experienced broadcasters, more specialist broadcasters, more people with detailed news experience than the ABC. In fact, if you look at what we've done in recent years, we've gone out there and recruited senior, experienced journalists with specialist understanding of content areas, and we've created a national reporting team.

So we are changing the mix a little bit, but the depth and breadth of ABC reporting and news journalism will remain intact as a result of these changes.

I've spoken to people this week who've told me that managers have admitted to them that they will lose their jobs but will almost certainly be re-hired on contracts with lower wages and less conditions. Is that true?

We're going through a consultative process at the moment with our staff and with our unions, and I don't want to pre-empt some of that discussion.

There was an article in the paper today that said the ABC spends a disproportionate budget on wages and salaries. I thought that was a very unreasonable and unfair characterisation, because it was comparing us to a commercial television channel. There's no doubt that the ABC has fewer people on fixed term contracts than our commercial competitors, increasingly publishers as well.

We need to look at that mix, we're not trying to casualise our staff, but we are looking at what the right kind of skill mix we need is. It might be that we need people for a certain program, for a certain season, but we don't need to have those people as permanent full time employees of the organisation, and if we're going to be expected to be efficient and effective, that's the kind of debate we're going to need to have and they are some of the trade-offs we're going to need to make.

Local Radio is one of the parts of the ABC that most people engage with, why take the resources out of there?

There are some changes to some shifts in local radio. But what's generated quite a bit of attention has been the closure of these five regional local radio outposts. I'd point out that in those five local outposts there have only been four people working. There have been no radio broadcasts taking place there, no breakfast shifts, no morning shifts, they all operate within about an hour's drive of a larger ABC centre and as we look to be more efficient and more effective, putting those people in larger centres makes sense.

But none of that takes away from our commitment to local communities, local voices and local broadcasters. At the end of this we will have 55 local radio stations where local broadcasters deliver local news and hold conversations with the local community, an investment that is far deeper and richer than anyone else in the Australian media.

But places like Newcastle, which have been generating their own content on site, that's not going to continue. In NSW and Queensland there has been more of that content from regional...

With respect, Richard, it's simply not true to say that Newcastle won't be delivering its own content.

But it's losing a popular, well connected and much loved broadcaster in Carol Duncan and it will now come out of Sydney.

It is Richard, but it will still have a breakfast program, will still have a morning program, will still have a Saturday morning program that's been very popular, it will still have news people operating there. This is where there are challenging things to deal with, but one of the things the efficiency review said was "look at your local radio footprint and where you're offering".

I love the people up at Newcastle and I'm sorry about the broadcaster whose shift has gone, I think she does terrific work, but I think it's not unreasonable for the ABC to say we'll have fully fledged and operational local radio stations effectively across all shifts in our state and territory capitals and then if you're not in the state and territory capital then we can have big and significant regional radio stations, but they'll take a mix of local content, national content and statewide content, as they do now.

We run statewide broadcasting into Newcastle now, we'll do a little bit more of it under this change.

Broadcasting is a people business, it depends on morale, and morale here is underwater...

Morale is tough in media organisations around the world when there's very significant change that's happening. I've now addressed, as I speak to you today, staff meetings in four capital cities, I'm travelling around the country, I'm feeling that there's a stoicism here as people deal with what is a grim reality. It's a grim reality that media organisations around the world have to face. No one likes people losing their jobs, no one likes to hear that their job may not continue.

One of the issues is what is happening particularly in ABC News, where people are being put through what's been dubbed a kind of 'Hunger Games' in order to keep their jobs. Why do it that way?

The first reason for doing it that way is because that is a fair way that's set down in our longstanding agreement with staff. I think there are two responsibilities that we are juggling here.

One is of course we want to treat our staff fairly and compassionately and well.

The second part of our responsibility is to the future of the organisation. For the future of the organisation we need to make sure that we have the skills and the experiences that we need to put our radio stations to air, to put our news programs to air, to make the television we need to make. I know that there is a clamor and requests for a voluntary redundancy program.

Voluntary redundancy programs as I've rolled them out, and as they've been rolled out around the world, can often see an organisation lose precisely the people it needs for its future. It either loses those people or it makes those people bitterly disappointed that they were not able to take a redundancy they wanted.

The advice that we've taken, and following the guidelines that are spelled out in our agreement, this is the process we're going down. Staff have told me it's a bit confronting, people aren't particularly enjoying it, but nobody is particularly enjoying this process. We feel it's a fair process for our staff and we think it's the best process to secure the best staff mix for the future of the organisation.

You've had to make a lot of tough decisions to live within the new funding envelope and in order to transform the organisation and do this pivot to digital and mobile. What has been the hardest call?

I was sad that we had to make the call to close down our Adelaide television studio. They've done great work; I was reflecting on Sunday night, as I was watching that Countdown special on television, that on Monday I had to go out and announce that the team who had made it... we had to close that facility down. That was tough. I think there are strong arguments speaking economically rationally about why we need to do it. I think it's been hard to sustain that studio over the years and I think they appreciate that, but it was a tough decision.

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ABC Managing Director Mark Scott on program and staffing cuts Thursday 27 November 2014 Listen to the full interview with ABC Managing Director Mark Scott on The Media Report. More This [series episode segment] has image,



