That must be the LLL you are talking about. The lefty labor ladyies channel. What a waste of tax payer money.

How damn silly they were, to destroy their publicly funded, party network. With a little subtlety they could have decieved a lot of swing voters. However, in their rush, they got left of Khrushchev, & drove all but the rusted on faithful away.

It is fun though, to tune in sometimes, & listen to them piddling in each others pocket. Im sure I can sometimes hear, in the background, the sound of overflowing liquid

it's not your abc, it's the government's. australia isn't yours, either.

english has a weakness. unlike latin, in english possessive and relative cases are the same. so a sheep can say:"this is my paddock", and the grazier can say:"this is my paddock", both be right yet mean something different.

australia, and the abc, are yours in the same way in the same way as the sheep and her paddock. parliament is the grazier. they own it, you just live there.

I was pleased to see Piers Akerman confirming what everyone knows about the ABC this morning. I can't understand why so many like Frankgol are in denial. He rightly says

'The ABC has provided a launching pad for the careers of such ALP stalwarts as WA Premier Alan Carpenter, NT Chief Minister Claire Martin, former NSW Premier Bob Carr, former Victorian Minister Mary Delahunty, and the ALP has returned the favour in spades, giving succour to senior former ALP staffers as George Negus, Kerry O’Brien, Greg Turnbull and Mark Bannerman among others.
The list of ABC journalists joining the Liberal Party is somewhat shorter. Former NSW Opposition leader Peter Collins and current federal candidate Pru Goward can claim to have emerged from the ABC, but have not achieved anything like the success of their former colleagues.'

I didn't see what Piers (Rupert's Dancing Bear) Ackerman said but I'm sure it was typically balanced and completely unbiased.

I always suspected that the ABC TV Weather reports had a left-wing feel about them as well.

Runner

So you think I’m in denial and and Piers Ackerman (a regular on ABC ‘Insiders’) can name eight ABC staffers with ALP connections?

“The list of ABC journalists joining the Liberal Party,” he says, “is somewhat shorter.” He names just Peter Collins and Pru Goward. (And describes Pru as a current federal candidate when in fact she’s a NSW Liberal MP.)

Runner, you know from another post my list of ABC staffers or ex-staffers with Coalition political affiliations is longer than eight. In case you didn’t read it (or are in denial) here it is again:

Gary Hardgrave, Peter Collins, Peter McArthur, Bruce Webster, Jim Bonner, Pru Goward, Cathy Job, Vicki Thompson, Ian Cover, Rob Messenger, Grant Woodhams, Ken Cooke, Chris Nicholls, Eoin Cameron, Cameron Thompson and Chris Wordsworth. How come Piers wants to hide 14 of these? In denial? Ill-informed?

Then the ABC Board is also stacked with Howard functionaries:

Mark Scott (2006) - Managing Director. Previously senior political adviser to former NSW Liberal Education Minister Metherell, and editor-in-chief at Fairfax.

Maurice Newman (2007) - Chair of the ABC and concurrently Chairman of the Australian Securities Exchange - forty years in stockbroking and investment banking. A close personal friend of John Howard.

Dr Ron Brunton (2003) Senior Fellow at right wing think tank IPA 1995 - 2001, and writer for conservative political journal Quadrant. A Howard cultural warrior.

Janet Albrechtsen (2005) - a former solicitor, now conservative newspaper columnist with The Australian. Another Howard cultural warrior.

Steven Skala (2005) – big businessman, director of neo-liberal/conservative think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies.

Peter Hurley (2006) - the President of the SA branch of the Australian Hotels Association. Fundraiser for the Liberal Party.

Keith Windschuttle (2006) Historian, Howard cultural warrior and school mate from Canterbury Boys High School.

John Gallagher (1999, reappointed 2005) Barrister in civil and criminal law. The only person on the ABC board not publicly known to be aligned to the Liberal Party.

As to the ALP list being more successful than the other mob, maybe that’s something to do with higher intelligence and better performance?

“The company advertis[ing] wants to reach as large an audience as possible…” This is quite true but Jill has got the cart before the horse. She obviously knows little about media advertising, because when an outlet is selling time what it doesn’t do is sell thirty minutes for (say) $80,000 and then happen to tell the buyer what show he has bought into. Buyers buy the right to advertise in specific shows, and then pay, after bidding, a fee relevant to the expectant ratings of that show. They just have no leverage to demand anything. If they try to, the broadcaster just tells them to get stuffed and goes back to the next highest bidder. OK, if it modified its shows to show more tits, bums and car chases it might boost the ratings and thus advertising dollars, but why would that bother a non profit organisation anyway?

I am always amused by the lengths the defenders of the ABC go to to claim it is not biased. Apart form the fact that ABC news always rates below the commercial outlets’ news DESPITE not showing ads, is it not enough that just so many Australians who are financial supporters, complain about it? The concept of bias is taken very seriously in law and in that area a judge can be removed from a trial or hearing, not just on proof of bias but merely on the appearance of it.
The very simple solution is to sell off all the government outlets and fully deregulate the media, such that all existing ‘friends of elitist and socialist’ programming could buy shares in and operate their own boutique media outlet. If it only costs 12 cents a day divided by that proportion of the public who watch the ABC then it can’t ultimately be that expensive, especially when you add advertising revenue, small as it would be.

There’s one reason the ‘friends’ will never go for this. Why vote for a system where you have to pay your own way when you can still bludge off others?