The ABCs of funding

One of the many interesting things about the United States is that it boasts a public broadcaster which lives up to its name — the Public Broadcasting Service is financed in large part by the viewers it serves. This is a very different approach to the Australian custom of dispensing eight-figure sums from the national purse to a tight knot of the like-minded, who then appear on each other’s shows, hire each other spouses and, to prove what principled work they do, award each other Walkleys for their contributions to the sum of human knowledge.

The UK has a somewhat similar system, albeit with the addition of compulsion. If you have a TV or radio, you pay an for annual licence, the proceeds of which go to the support and sustenance of the BBC.

But whenever a user-pays system is suggested for our very own ABC, oh, the howls of scorn and outrage. The minister in charge, Malcolm Turnbull, actually launched a parliamentary group to defend the existing funding regime, and in a submission to a federal government panel the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre of Alice Springs went so far as to insist such a system would be a manifestation of exclusionary racism!

All of which demonstrates why the ABC should devote resources to the recounting of its own history, as it was financed solely by licence fees until 1948. As James Fenton MP explained to the House on April 28, 1932, “This bill proposes to create a broadcasting commission fund into which shall be paid from time to time out of Consolidated Revenue 12 shillings in respect of each listener’s licence fee received, this amount to continue to be paid in each subsequent year unless some other amount is fixed by the Minister.”

A licence-fee would be impractical in this age of video phones and internet TV. How could it ever be enforced and the fees collected? But a voluntary-subscriber model, now that could be be more workable.  Modest ambitions modestly funded, with the opinions and perspective of those footing the bill given an extra weight.

The big question, given the quality of so many of the ABC’s current offerings, would be how many Australians might consider the national broadcaster good value for money?

For those with an interest in history, the link below will bring the words of another long-dead parliamentarian, Country Party MP Thomas Collins, who complained that one of his constituents, a former military man with a fine baritone voice, had applied for the job of managing director only to see his application ignored.

Things were different back then

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