The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is in the midst of significant
change as a result of budgetary pressures from the government and the
challenge of the oncoming digital age. Lack of funding and dwindling
resources have forced the ABC to shut down many of its regional services
and to outsource many of its formerly in-house productions. However, there
do appear some ways in which the ABC might meet, as the rhetoric goes, "the
challenge of the digital era".
Traditionally, the role of the ABC has included the provision of
comprehensive coverage of, and service for, the whole of Australia,
including regions that would be economically unfeasible for commercial
operations to penetrate. Recently, however, budgetary cuts have eroded this
role substantially, with the axing of state based current affairs and the
cessation of Radio Triple J's planned expansion into regional Australia.
The Internet has provided a potential, if problematic, stop-gap solution,
through the launch of the ABC's online news service.
Internet based news solutions have few of the production-end overheads of
the television service. There are no expensive studio set ups, no
presenters, no cameras, just text that can be quickly keyed into the system
and formatted for instantaneous, non-linear delivery. I should note at this
point that currently, this "delivery" is in the passive sense of the word:
users must search out the content and download it onto their machines. In
Internet jargon, this is called "pull" technology. New technologies being
developed promise to "push" the content automatically and directly to a
user's computer.
The ABC's implementation, taking advantage of all these benefits, is
text-based, comprehensive, updated constantly, and easy to use. Currently,
however, delivery of Internet-based content is tied to the existing phone
network, and with most Internet service providers based in state capitals,
regional Internet access is hindered by the cost of long-distance calls.
The potential exists, nonetheless, for the ABC to achieve truly national
coverage by methods that bypass existing structures.
The planned shift by Australian TV networks to digital transmission has the
potential to enable new possibilities for public broadcasting. A digital
infrastructure could allow information and programming to be cheaply
produced at the local level, then recompiled centrally and redistributed
across the country. The convergence of computer and television will enable
a greater variety of content to be sent to the home -- and, possibly, sent
back out again in an altered form.
Such a transformation of the way we experience television may well alter
the concept of public broadcasting beyond recognition, if not render it
obsolete. However, these possibilities, although reasonable given projected
advances in technology, so far largely remain fantasy due to the debate
over regulation between the Federal government and the commercial networks.
It remains to be seen whether the ABC will be able to take advantage of
the new opportunities.
Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Nick Caldwell. "Looking to a Digital Future: Thoughts on the New ABC." M/C Journal 1.1 (1998).
[your date of access] <http://www.media-culture.org.au/9807/abc.php>.
Chicago style:
Nick Caldwell, "Looking to a Digital Future: Thoughts on the New ABC," M/C Journal 1, no. 1 (1998), <http://www.nedia-culture.org.au/9807/abc.php> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Nick Caldwell. (1998) Looking to a digital future: thoughts on the new ABC. M/C Journal 1(1). <http://www.media-culture.org.au/9807/abc.php> ([your date of access]).
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