Extract from The Guardian
Amanda Meade
Managing director’s recently promoted
chief of staff, Sam Liston, tipped to be among the big winners
Former
Google and Murdoch executive Michelle Guthrie wants to completely
transform the way the ABC is run – from the top down. Photograph:
Paul Miller/AAP
Friday
27 January 2017 11.30 AEDT
The
ABC managing director, Michelle
Guthrie, is about to announce a major change to the structure of
the public broadcaster, probably as early as next month.
Guthrie’s
recently promoted chief of staff, Samantha Liston, the former
director of ABC People who joined the ABC in 2013. She is said to be
the big winner in the new structure with many members of the existing
executive demoted or made redundant. The
chief operating officer, David Pendleton, was the latest executive to
quit on Friday.
The
biggest losers in the power stakes may be ABC content heads –
radio, TV and news – who are set to have less autonomy in the
new-look ABC. What that means for the public is yet to be determined.
When
Mark Scott handed the reins of the ABC to Guthrie last year he was,
according to sources, surprised at how little interest she had in
picking his brains. Nine months on from Scott’s
departure it is becoming clearer that may have been because
the former Google and Murdoch executive wanted to transform the way
the ABC is run – from the top down.
Unlike
her predecessor, Guthrie did not fully engage with her heads of
department early on, cancelling one-on-one meetings with directors
and deciding not to chair her own executive meetings. Instead she
sought outside help in the form of consultants to reshape the
organisation and took advice from Liston, shunning almost everyone
else. Guthrie, sources say, is not impressed with the ABC’s “mad
bureaucracy”, saying it is too big and unwieldy. Views like this
may win her some fans, particularly in the government and among ABC
critics at News Corp.
Pendleton
did not have Guthrie’s ear and nor does news director Gaven Morris
or radio director Michael Mason. The people she is listening to
include trusty lieutenant Liston,
consultants Jim Rudder and Deb Frances and a handful of other
suits from Price Waterhouse Coopers.
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