Privatise the ABC
Privatising the ABC
The privatisation of the ABC is a high priority and a perfect candidate for a share give-away to the people. If New Zealand is able to live without a national government-owned broadcaster, then so can Australia
The ABC today includes TV stations, radio stations, retail outlets, book publishing (over 120 titles each year), magazines, videos and DVDs, contemporary music and logo licensing. Each one of these has commercial competitors and there is absolutely no reason why the government should be involved in any of these industries.
Many people take a conservative approach and are afraid of change, but privatising the ABC is necessary not just on efficiency grounds but also for equity reasons. More Australians pay for ABC TV and radio than watch or listen to it. Only a minority of Australians, generally well educated with higher incomes, use the ABC. Consequently, continued corporate welfare to the ABC is a subsidy provided by taxpayers to higher income earners.
The ABC not only loses money (about $800 million per year or $80 per taxpayer) but is also losing the ratings war as it is less popular than commercial alternatives. Those who insist that the ABC is actually “better” are in effect criticising the majority of Australians for preferring the other channels.
Once privatised, the ABC would stop costing the taxpayer money and become directly answerable to its owners and audiences. This is a benefit to both the taxpayer and the consumer.
If it really is “our ABC”, then give it to us. And if ownership implies the ability to control your asset, we should be free to choose whether we keep or sell our share in it.
LDP policy
Newspoll (half owned by news corp & used in the Australian) found that Tony Abbott's claim that the ABC was biased and was anti australian & unpatriotic was incorrect.
Newspoll also cast some light on whether people think the ABC has an anti-Australian and unpatriotic bent, as Abbott claims they do. Some 82% said the ABC did a good job
82% said the ABC did a good job at being distinctively Australian, while 5% agreed with Abbott and said it didn’t.
The following poll is by essential
crikey
There are only three points one that the Government channels cost us 1.5 billion as confirmed in the SMH article I gave.
Two ABC ratings provided by you .
and three the demographics of the ABC of which their are plenty of studies that show that AbC viewers are older more middle class and more likely to have had higher education .
varying degrees, the political audiences of the different television channels in Australia are distinguishable from one another. Of course, the data in this analysis focused particularly on audiences for coverage of election campaign news, but it is not unreasonable to assume that by and large these data would reflect the audiences of the various channels more generally. The ABC audience has the most distinctive profile, especially in socio-demographic terms, with a noticeable bias towards older, better educated, more ‘middle class’ respondents, who are also politically interested and to some extent tend to be more ‘left wing’ than the norm. The latter, though, is reflected in a generalised ideological positioning and not specifically in terms of political party preferences.
Among the commercial channels, Channel 7 probably has the audience that is most different from that of the ABC. Its audience tends to draw more on those from some of the lower socio-economic strata. The Channel 9 audience is similar, but probably more socially middling than that of Channel 7, although, in counterpoint to the ABC audience Channel 9 election news viewers tend to sit more to the right of the political spectrum. In turn, the Channel 10 political audience is similar to that of Channel 9, although Channel 10 tends to attract younger viewers and Channel 9 older. And, finally, as we have seen, despite the uncertainty of the statistical evidence for the SBS audience, the data nonetheless imply, as we would expect from its broadcasting mandate, an audience of diverse cultural, religious and ethnic backgrou
http://eprints.qut.edu.au/638/1/BEAN.pdf