Arts shift at the ABC: now is the winter of this content 

The ABC’s recent decision to downgrade its arts expertise has caused widespread alarm over the consequences for arts coverage, the conflicts with the ABC’s legislated charter, and also the impacts on Australian democracy more broadly.

More troubling, however, is the full context of the broadcaster’s restructuring of all divisions into “News” or “Content”, within a strategy that refers to creative or journalistic staff as “content-makers”.

The timing is odd. Australia’s new national cultural policy has only just been legislated: it champions the value of artists as workers, as well as the intellectual property value of their work. Meanwhile, the spectre of artificial intelligence, with its instant content generation, is causing great concern over the future of art and news.

Instead — and for “the first time in its history”, as Calum Jaspan noted — the national broadcaster will have no stand-alone team of arts experts. Among its 120 redundancies, the ABC has announced the departure of the arts managing editor and digital editor, who were the only remaining dedicated, expert arts roles at the editorial level. 

While remaining staff will be deployed to other departments, early signs indicate they will be expected to increase their workload without additional resources or expert guidance. This risks significantly reducing the ABC’s capacities in arts journalism, cultural analysis and industry reporting. 

There is also the risk of diluting the ABC’s understanding of what constitutes the arts, so as to remain only superficially compliant with the charter requiring it to “encourage and promote the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia”.

Staff redeployed to the new “Arts, Music and Events” department — led by Kath Earle, the ABC’s former head of screen, sports and events — will also be covering “Anzac Day, Gallipoli, the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras and Australia’s celebration of New Year’s Eve”. 

Attending sensational events and harvesting them for content is very different to the industry-engaged coverage and investigations that enrich our understanding of the people who create our cultural experiences. We’ve long turned to the ABC as a cultural leader, not an Instagrammer, of who we are as a nation. 

Which takes us back to that ugly word “content”. 

Content is something that fills a container. Content is a term that’s very much at home in commercial media, where the work of journalists and artists is the text and images filling the spaces around ads. Calling it “content” diminishes that work of all worth, obscuring its intellectual property value and undermining the expertise of its creator. 

In the age of AI, calling arts and news journalism “content” seems to be inviting disaster.

A content-driven approach also risks addressing its charter by repackaging existing content online across various platforms. While assuring us that its charter obligations will be met, the ABC’s statement on changes to its arts coverage emphasises the “extensive range of art-related content” on ABCTV, iView, YouTube and Instagram — a claim that any streaming giant can make in relation to its back catalogues. 

As a public broadcaster, the ABC’s challenge is maintaining an arts approach both contemporary and relevant. Coverage that applies the same expertise we’d expect of science, climate and political investigations — work that succeeds because it engages rigorously with industry developments and presents timely investigations. Coverage that educates, informs and inspires us.

As arts leader Jonty Claypole has argued, the role of the ABC as a public broadcaster “should lie in shoring up a commitment to educational and factual programming rather than eroding it … If a public service broadcaster is to occupy a privileged and protected position at the heart of a nation’s culture, then it needs to go all out nurturing the arts of that culture.”

Culture, not content, should be at the heart of a public broadcaster’s strategy — and indeed, that’s how the ABC defines its own purpose.

“The ABC exists to serve Australians,” says its current corporate plan, “delivering valued services that reflect and contribute to Australian society, culture and identity”, and seeing itself as “a major partner and driver of Australia’s creative industries”.

With a new national cultural policy, the ABC’s newly increased funding as part of a de-politicised five-year cycle, the clear expectations of the arts sector, the threats and the opportunities of AI, and the tenuous trust of the Australian people, now is the ideal time for the ABC to develop a strategy that achieves precisely that purpose. 

At this pivotal time for the arts, we need our national broadcaster focused, passionate and actively curious about Australian culture. Calling that work “content” invites Australians to “consume” the “content” of other “content providers”, flattening our cultural landscape as we turn away from the national broadcaster. Let’s not see the ABC get left behind.