Extract from The Guardian
Also losing a gig is Ellen Fanning who won’t be hosting Life Matters in 2017. Fanning has been replaced by Amanda Smith and the program’s focus is going to be narrower, specialising in family and parenting issues rather than wider social and political themes.
Joining the ABC next year is the former News Corp Australia chief executive Kim Williams, who will host a show called What Keeps Me Awake. Williams applied to succeed Mark Scott as ABC’s managing director but lost out to Michelle Guthrie. The former Seven news reader Chris Bath has been given the evening slot on local radio in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, replacing Christine Anu. Anu is moving to a weekend slot.
The strategy behind these changes remains unclear, but the ABC’s director of radio, Michael Mason, did tell staff it was about attracting a bigger audience: “I want new audiences who are not currently experiencing RN content to discover it, and for us to build a stronger platform for the network in an environment of greater media choice and fragmentation.”
The ABC staff unions – the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and the Community and Public Sector Union – are thrown by yet another round of job losses, and are asking Guthrie why she said at Senate estimates last month there would be no redundancies. “The proposal appears at odds with recent assurances given by Guthrie to federal senators that no programming changes at RN were being considered,” the MEAA said.
Meanwhile there are new pleas to overturn the axing of the weekly science program Catalyst, with the astrophysicist Prof Paul Davies and the mammalogist and climate change expert Prof Tim Flannery just two of the 64 eminent scientists who have petitioned Guthrie on her decision to sack the Catalyst team.
Joining the ABC next year is the former News Corp Australia chief executive Kim Williams, who will host a show called What Keeps Me Awake. Williams applied to succeed Mark Scott as ABC’s managing director but lost out to Michelle Guthrie. The former Seven news reader Chris Bath has been given the evening slot on local radio in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, replacing Christine Anu. Anu is moving to a weekend slot.
The strategy behind these changes remains unclear, but the ABC’s director of radio, Michael Mason, did tell staff it was about attracting a bigger audience: “I want new audiences who are not currently experiencing RN content to discover it, and for us to build a stronger platform for the network in an environment of greater media choice and fragmentation.”
The ABC staff unions – the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and the Community and Public Sector Union – are thrown by yet another round of job losses, and are asking Guthrie why she said at Senate estimates last month there would be no redundancies. “The proposal appears at odds with recent assurances given by Guthrie to federal senators that no programming changes at RN were being considered,” the MEAA said.
Meanwhile there are new pleas to overturn the axing of the weekly science program Catalyst, with the astrophysicist Prof Paul Davies and the mammalogist and climate change expert Prof Tim Flannery just two of the 64 eminent scientists who have petitioned Guthrie on her decision to sack the Catalyst team.
No comments:
Post a Comment