Today, a really excellent set of comments on the original interesting article.
Wake up Mark Scott. Look at the interest in your dying networks. Dying from a lack of quality programs, poor scriptwriting for local drama (some exceptions...there always are), repeats and repeats of repeats.

Saw the Gemmell bit and thought that she must have been Mark Scott’s daughter. Had no idea the author was an ex-ABC lady. They do look after their own. Now that was a real promo and the ABC is good at those...probably 20% of their air time, radio and TV. For what? If one is not an ABC listener / viewer yet, they never will be. Preaching, sorry, screeching to the converted.

Phil, as for “eating your cat”, may I respectfully suggest using a sweet chili sauce. It makes everything taste the same, but really good.
There are more people interested in asylum seekers or boat people or illegal migrants than you imagine. The erosion of our country by people who may never be Australians in any way, makes it a topic not ever too far below the surface. There, day and night and always will be, deservedly so.

But back to the ABC. The comments about Classic FM are valid. No more is it ‘Classic’ as we have known it for fifty years but an misplaced endeavour to be all things to all people, ending up however as nothing to anybody, full of inane prattle from 6am to 9am (except at weekends), populist programming to suit some agenda or other which they ‘justify’ by ‘research’ and absolutely full of advertising, promotions, ABC shop commercials and prattle by the bucketload.

cont

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The ABC currently have ‘running’, the Classic 100 from the 20th Century. Soon perhaps the Classic 100 for Didgeridoo and Harp from People Above the Tropic of Capricorn or something else just as silly. Why not try Scandinavian Composers with Red Hair. They must be running out of options. People listened in the past for great composers, great artists and great music, only available these days on foreign streaming digital radio. And it’s good. In fact, it is the music that used to be on the ABC.
Not any more.

Where have those standards gone.

Then on TV, we see four TV networks, repeats ad nauseum, and programs that must have cost nothing to buy; cooking, cooking, cooking. Did I mention cooking? Third rate English documentaries. Feeding four TV channels is beyond the ABC’s budget. Thank Buddha for Media Watch, Four Corners, Foreign Correspondent, Catalyst and others proving we can be the best in the world at something, making the commercial channels look like American amateurs, which of course, they are.
Even so, they at least know what they are. They are crass and commercial and know it. It’s the business they’re in. Program content and quality? Who cares?
The management of the ABC on the other hand are still under the strange illusion that they have their fingers on the pulse, understand the public’s taste and caters for it accordingly.

Wrong Mr Scott. Please go back to the newspaper business. Move on and let us find a real professional to have an opportunity to educate, entertain and serve some valuable purpose. You have sacrificed good programs for expansion, a Scott-made empire but built on soft sand with little to hold it up.
The ABC has now grown too big but Mark Scott just don’t have what it takes to make it all work.

This commentary on 7.30 Report could be applied to anything the ABC does. I am a Radio National listener and while many programmes there are excellent several things grate. The common denominator is the things that grate are usually presented by people who seem to be at the ABC purely to impose their person on the unwitting public - Philip Adams and Tim Ritchie are prime examples. When will they ever understand public radio / television is for the listener and viewer not ABC employees and presenters. As a relative 'newbie' in Australia I cannot work out what one can do with the ABC. The central problem is that the ABC are 'critic averse' and neither welcome nor respond to criticism. Other media outlets of course couldn't care less if the ABC is annoying its audience. So where does one turn? And when will they ever consider changing the signature tune for the news - every hour for more than 40 years, that bloody old tune blares out.

Could we all please agree that that it's "it's" when we mean "it is" and it's "its" when we mean "its".

The final straw for me, with the ABC was a couple of years back, when large areas were flooded. During the first night of rain, it was so intense I thought there was a fair chance of flooding by the morning.

The power was all ready out, so I turned on the portable, which was tuned to 612. Now 612 is continually, even still, promoted as "your local ABC". This is a misnomer as it comes out of Brisbane, with presenters who, I'm sure, rarely get as far as 25Km from the Brisbane CBD, but covers much of the state.

Never having listened to 612 at night, I had not realised how far from their charter they had got. I expected my "LOCAL" ABC radio would give me some weather warnings as they had in NSW country towns, when I was a boy.

Concerned I stayed awake waiting for a news bulletin. Imagine my annoyance when I got one, which warned of a thunderstorm in Coffs Harbour, & proceeded to give a Sydney forecast for the next day. So much for the "local" bit.

We were 3 days without power, & flooded in for 4 days, so conditions were sufficiently bad for "our" ABC to have got their asses into gear, to do something useful, like give us some warnings. Of course this may mean spending less on the garbage they produce in Sydney, where much shouting means it is drama.

To say that I consider the ABC a total waste of space, is putting it too mildly

There are some excessive comments here, but overall it's a useful discussion.

1. It's clear that any sense of the ABC educating Australians is challenged and threatened by the demand that it be all things to all people.

2. ABC Classic ?? FM has surreptitiously introduced more and more dross into what used to be a classical music program. Most classical music enthusiasts do not like jazz and don't want to hear Mozart murdered by some oaf fiddling around on his flugelhorn. Better keep the jazz limited to an hour here and there so the rest of us can turn it off.

3. Cooking shows are cheap. Just put some silly pretentious people in a room with some ingredients. Tedious stuff, 90% of the time.

4. Yes, we are all tired of too many English programs. How many more people are there to murder in Midsomer Murders? How many more holes in the ground can Baldrick dig up? (yawn).SBS is clogged with English programs as well, lately as well as ponderous stuff on Aborigines by tedious people.

5. THE ABC promotions are ludicrous and repetitive. They always promote the evening's programs on Monday night and then we have a promo on Q and A- more pretentious blowhards

6. I don't as a rule watch 7.30 any more. Too many nonentities presenting.
Oh for the days of the staid but reliable ABC!

We care about the ABC and SBS because the commercial programs are so frightful. Try watching ( News. Unbelievable pap for the masses of little real news or entertainment value. Bring on the regulation of the media by some reputable organisation.