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The ABC plans to launch a 24-hour news service—the broadcaster’s fourth digital television channel and the government’s sixth—placing it in direct competition with Foxtel’s Sky News Australia.
ABC4 will provide an answer to the age-old question: “It’s 3am. What is the government’s take on things?”
The new channel will provide continuous news coverage in the ABC’s distinctive style, at last providing a viewing option for those who don’t find ABC3 patronising enough.
ABC chief Mark Scott outlined a bold vision in which news would be available 24 hours a day to everyone who’s got a digital television but neither the internet nor a radio.
Mr Scott also played up the ABC’s responsibility to those least fortunate, who rely on freebies from the government: airport departure lounges that don’t want to spring for Foxtel.
The new channel is pitched at viewers who are deeply troubled by Sky’s persistent and pervasive pro-Sky News bias.
Whereas the network regularly devotes airtime to minor figures such as Jim Waley and Leigh Hatcher, it completely ignores key decisionmakers like Peter Overton and Mark Ferguson.
ABC fan group “Friends of the ABC” is ambivalent about ABC4, however, expressing concern that funding was coming out of some cancelled radio show called The Religion Report.
No-one gets to the heart of an issue quite like “Friends of the ABC”, except perhaps the ABC itself.
The Daily Grind understands that The Religion Report will be back in 2011, as ABC5.
Since publishing this article, we have been contacted by “Friends of the ABC”. Although the Friends seemed to understand that this is a joke website, they were also at pains to point out that they are “critical supporters” of the government broadcaster.
The Friends do support the ABC4 concept—and, one presumes, ABC5—provided that it comes with extra government funding. For these Friends, it’s not enough that the government fund what the group consider to be essential services. Expensive, premium versions of these essential services also require funding.
Sure, watching the ABC might give you the impression that the government’s only failing is not spending an unlimited pile of money it’s been hiding from us, but you can’t believe everything you see on the ABC.
ABC Managing Director Mark Scott will be available to answer the tough questions about ABC4, 24 hours a day, only on ABC4
