Squeers,
Nice to see the public is funding your entertainment, perhaps you would consider sending some of your tax dollars to the families who prefer Foxtel over the ABC. Unlike the ABC, Public health and transport infrastructure are essential services so this comparison falls flat on its face. You say you ride and cycle but given you shop locally how do you think the goods you buy get to the shop? Via Dr Who's Tardis perhaps. Your hypocrisy is surreal.
In terms of the dollars, given ABC have 20% of the media market, that's 4,400,000 people who could finance the ABC at their current budget for the small consideration of just $227 each per annum. So for a family of 4 that's about $1000 per annum. About the same as Foxtel. Time you got off the public teat, mate. I suggest we adopt a system similar to public broadcasting in the US and start making those who use the service pay for it.

One of the things that no-one seems to have touched on is that because the ABC is publicly-funded it almost guarantees that it will be the only broadcaster to do serious current affairs.

I've been chuffed at the number of commenters who think that OLO does as good, or better, a job than the Drum. But imagine how many more OLOs there could be if the ABC had to raise money for its own efforts.

The ABC would have to be lean and mean like we are.

That means that in our area, for example, it wouldn't be able to pay for contributions, increasing the pool of potential contributors available to us, and others like Crikey, the Punch and the National Times.

And across the board you'd get much more diversity in serious opinion because it wouldn't go through the ABC sieve, which at a national level does lean to the left.

The reason the commercial broadcaster broadcast pap is that the market for quality is not that large, and the ABC gorilla dominates that space. Without its base being protected by the taxpayer you would get something much more like what you see in print where The Australian, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald are all commercial and all do serious journalism.

MarcH,

I argued that my whole diverse family uses the public broadcaster and you yourself indicate that the ABC has "20% of the media market, that's 4,400,000 people". I bet the commercials would love those numbers!
I'de say that means the public dollars involved are pretty evenly distributed, no?
The "public teat" in this country is a dry husk, so please don't ask me and the other 4.4 million to develop a conscience over the ABC's intellectual soup kitchen!
I don't s'pose you'd be interested in enlarging on your wider agenda?
What's your vision of the future?
I bet it's really inspiring!

Squeeze,
I use the 20% figure as an example, it is by no means a firm figure and could be alot less. However if close to the mark this would mean that 4 out of 5 Australian's are subsidising the entertainment of the other 1. Hardly a fair and equitable arrangement.
You say "I don't s'pose you'd be interested in enlarging on your wider agenda?"
Will endeavour to do so, perhaps in another article in this wonderful web space!

Dear Squeers,

"what about the poor devils subsisting only on commercial gruel, who might one day see the light?"

As I suggest, the ABC will still be free-to-air, which means that those poor devils will still get a chance to listen. Once they see the light and find how good it is, they will too join the circle of patrons. If they don't, then it is their free choice which I fully respect.

"how is that going to fund quality content?"

By having enough people who care that much that they are willing to pay more to begin with. If there aren't enough people who care, then instead of compromising on quality, the ABC should compromise on broadcasting hours. Who said that a service must run 24x7? Want more hours - pay more.

I'm also a would-be cyclist, had the oppressing helmet-laws not been in place. For the meanwhile I use my car, cheerfully gaining weight and polluting my environment. I certainly don't want anyone who doesn't use roads to be forced to fund my habit: there should indeed be a clause in the tax-return saying "I wish to be exempt from funding roads and I agree not to use any roads in the coming tax-year" (but note that cyclists also use roads to a certain extent). A similar clause for the ABC would also get things right and allay my guilt, while a variety of similar clauses from different areas-of-life should be included as well so that none of us needs to be an accessory to robbery.

No wonder you do not notice the Leftist elements of the ABC because they are so common today that they have become the norm and are taken for granted. I personally noticed their leftist attitudes by the number of my comments which were censored on their website.

Talking about public-health would get us well over the 350-word limit, but suffice it to say that the bicycle-helmet law is a derivative of the leftist nanny-state philosophy by which your responsibility for your own life and health is taken over by the state.

MarcH,
I bet the ABC caters to vast the majority of Australians.
I look forward to your confession.

Yuyutsu,
I am a leftist and can assure you the ABC is not.
You mistake intellectualism, modest as it is, for leftism, and even it only stands out against popular anti-intellectualism, which fires all the other retrograde “anti”, or minimifidianist, movements.
I also don’t want a nanny state, and that’s why we need an inclusive rather than representative democracy. But we still need government and we still need public assets that we have some collective control over.
You of course think yourself an individual (Thatcher Syndrome), when in fact you are an utterly socialised being. Your every thought and reverie are syntagmatic mosaics derived from birth from a massive and evolving symbolic database that provides your illusion of reality and your centrality within it. Capitalism encourages individuality, but of course it’s not real. You’re an exotic, a supercilious hot-house plant (no offense, we all are). You believe in your individuality but you wouldn’t last a minute outside.
Of course we also each have, or had, ontological-being, a sense of self outside or beyond the syntagmatic meanings that inundate the mind. Except in the modern world it is no longer co-operative, social-symbolic meaning that we’re steeped in, but commodified meaning. Our need for meaning is nurtured and exploited by the market to turn a profit. Not that it actually “provides” meaning, it explicitly does not. It provides products, experiences, diversions, semblances, ersatz meaning, endlessly variegated and recut to appeal to our primal desire born of contemporary emptiness.
And this is what you’re defending in the name of liberalism; a wholly exploited and commodified life; social being, community and mores traded for human farming; the market catering for our every whim, while simultaneously punishing and weeding-out “dysfunctional” units—those unwilling or unable to comply. St!ff sh!t to them!
And you complain about a nanny state!
You want fragmentation, vicious and delusional individuality. I want community, compassion and “real” self-fulfilment.