Spindoc. Particularly well and clearly stated comment. Obviously, I completely agree with what you have said.

NBC America appears a worthy model to follow I would suggest. Funding for 'emergency service' announcements on radio is worthwhile. However, streaming of detailed info from the CFS website provides excellent coverage, available on your phone at any time.

Just imagine how excellent the ABC could be. Coverage of so much more than 'marriage equality, immigration and whatever other narrow sectorial interests they thrust upon us adnausioum.

Imagine Q&A, the Drum etc etc with a broad selection of commentary, representing the broad spectrum of the Australian community. Sigh... So much potential, wasted!

Prompete says, "Funding for 'emergency service' announcements on radio is worthwhile", & I agree completely.

However "OUR" ABC abdicated that roll long ago.

In our last flood, when after inches of rain, & the loss of power for 6 hours already, I wanted some information for my South East Queensland area.

At about 2.00 AM,I turned on my battery radio tuned to the ABCs 4QR. You know the one that continually advertises itself as "YOUR LOCAL ABC" station, & anxiously waited for a news bulletin. Imagine my horror & disgust when the bulletin advised me of a thunderstorm in Gosford, heavy rain in the Coffs Harbor area, & gave a marine weather forecast for Sydney Harbor. Queensland, & our pending flood did not exist on my local Queensland station. Fat lot of use that was to the millions headed for trouble.

Before I stopped wasting my time listening to them, 4QR, our local, had a session with an English professor on language, the origin & meaning of words. Wouldn't it be wonderful if this bloke explained the meaning of "local" to the management of the ABC.

I finally got a little information from the local hole in the wall FM station, in a nearby small country town, but with their little resource capacity it was limited. I wonder how much more they could have done with a bit of that billion plus we waste on an ABC which is really just a Sydney Melbourne organisation.

How about we transfer any ABC management & production capacity to Longreach. Surely a good example of decentralization, & the jobs should only attract good people, rather than current inner city chatterers, out there.

"Jardine is entitled to his ideological position that “There is no justification for the ABC's existence and it should be abolished immediately”. But if he intends to engage in rational debate he will have to offer evidence..."

Well if I'm entitled to my ideological position that there is no justification for the ABC's existence, then there is no need to offer evidence that it's biased until someone first establishes a justification for its existence in the first place.

What is it Leslie?

And why wouldn't that be achieved by the voluntary payments of those who want it?

Hi Prompete,

The ABC has the ability to draw the conversation into what it sees “defensible”. These include freedom of the press, persecution, bias, politics, authoritarianism, censorship and the evil Murdock empire, these are their stock-in-trade, the high ground they can defend with rhetoric.

They have issued the call to arms to the likes of Binoy and his fellow travelers.

These are distractions to keep “critical thinking” out of the equation. There is no case for the ABC to use public funding to compete with any commercial market. I can accept a national radio network that provides “Public Service” broadcasts for Rural/Remote populations covering agriculture, mining, weather, transport and indigenous issues.

The ABC is swamping and distorting normal commercial market development and harming the rest of the industry. They plugged some media market gaps 50 years ago but not in 2014.

The other issue they seek to avoid is their financial management and governance. The ABC lost $14b on commercial revenues last financial year. This is in spite of additional revenues from $90m handout from ALP in May last year, $22.5m a year from Australia Network revenues and $10m for “Fact Check”. $122.5m in extra revenues?

Meanwhile their salaries bill (executive salaries have doubled since 2008) has ballooned to $470m on revenues of $1.0b. Can anyone point to any entity that has 47% of income soaked up by wages?

They have siphoned new revenues into salary and redundancy packages and spread the rest of their business far to thinly.

The ABC isn’t facing ideological assault from the government. The LNP will leave the ABC alone whilst they continue to make mistakes, then let the ABC prepare their defenses for an attack that will never happen.

The LNP will use the Expenditure Review to examine ABC costs. They will use the Productivity Commission to determine the “market value” of those costs and will work bottom up and not top down as the ABC expects.

The ABC is about to fight the wrong battle with the wrong enemy for the wrong reasons.

Should be fun to watch

Unfortunately the left has brainwashed the victimised industry into believing the tax payer should pay for their propaganda. Whether it is 'gay marriage ' illegal entries' or the 'gw myth' you can accurately predict the line taken by the socialist. Hopefully Abbott will have the will and guts to do some drastic change. Hoping it will happen internally has as much change as the corrupt unions/Labour reforming itself.

WOW

What ever happened to the idea of freedom of speech?

So lets sell off the ABC or give it away simply because what it reports does not agree with your own preciously held biases and prejudices?

I think that it is for that very reason the ABC should remain in public ownership.

What a boring world it would be if all the commercial media outlets only ever support the current political powers policies.

I certainly do not always agree with the ABC, but then I don't always agree with the commercial media either.