ABC's CNC

ABC Managing Director Mark Scott in The Australian has promised a new world of news delivery:

In 2008, work will begin on the ABC's first purpose-built continuous news centre to provide multiple, simultaneous continuous streams of news, 24 hours a day to every outlet of the ABC - ABC1, ABC2, ABC Online, Australia Network and ABC Radio.

A specialist production team will operate the CNC using new technology to sift and distil the hundreds of hours of news content produced daily by ABC staff around the country and make it available to multiple platforms around the clock.

For our audience it means stories can be published or updated as soon as they are completed, taking full advantage of the ABC news network: more than 1000 journalists working locally, nationally and internationally.

The centre will deliver to existing continuous news platforms, and be viable for potential future ones such as an ABC news channel for digital TV, or internet TV. To do this we have to reorganise the way we work. If Sky News can deliver a 24-hour news service with a fraction of the number of journalists working in ABC newsrooms, then it stands to follow that the ABC is capable of producing a 24/7 news service for our audiences: we just need to work smarter to deliver it.

In contrast to Sky News, a niche service available only in the 25 per cent of homes that can afford pay TV, the ABC provides a universal service to all Australians, rich and poor. The CNC would make ABC news content even more accessible to all Australians, all day on different devices.

We begin with a great advantage: our strength and reputation in news gathering. By adopting a new production model we can harvest more effectively the news and information we are generating.

Digital technology means we can create news content once and use it many times over on a number of different platforms. The CNC will allow us to take stories that appear on news services in Perth, Darwin or Brisbane and make them available for audiences across the country. It means we can put cameras in the AM studio, so these interviews won't just be heard on radio but can be seen on TV or online.

The same principles apply to our creation of 60 new local websites, ABC Local, delivering not just local news, weather and sport but also video and audio, reflecting local events and cul-

ture and opportunities for audiences to contribute.

These will be the dominant information hubs across regional and rural Australia, demonstrating the depth of ABC commitment outside the state and territory capitals.

The ABC has no rival in rural, regional and local news gathering and with fast broadband coming to the bush, the ABC will be the "town square" where events, issues and community information is posted and debated.

The continuous news centre will be built within existing ABC funding, a result of a constant process of review at the ABC to ensure our funding is being used in the most efficient and effective way.

Much of it involves taking the content we already produce and finding new ways to connect with our audiences. If there's a new and better way of working offered by technology, we use it.

That's how we are able to achieve so much within existing means.

I'll look forward to seeing how this unfolds. While much of what Mr Scott says about the ABC's "strength and reputation in news gathering" is true IMO there are significant areas where the network's news dissemination could be improved. For example

• Many stories broadcast on radio bulletins (esp outside Sydney) don't seem to be posted on the internet or available from archives

• The news search engine doesn't seem to be able to access stories from the preceding few days (though it seems to be able to pinpoint many of those from years ago).

If the ABC can work towards implementing Mr Scott's vision so that tangible changes, including those I've suggested above, are apparent within the next two years or so this will be a considerable achievement.

Whose ABC (Learning Centres)?

In the last couple of days there's been a lot of discussion about the financial troubles of ABC Early Learning Centres.

There's an interesting comment in today's Crikey from Stephen Magee:

In the constant tut-tutting of the commentariat about nasty Eddy Groves, one fact is constantly overlooked: Eddy's success is a direct result of the takeover of childcare in Australia by academics and public servants. 20 or 30 years ago, childcare was a happy go lucky affair: community-run centres operating out of church halls with enthusiastic amateurs, parent volunteers and a handful of paid staff were often the norm. Then the "experts" arrived. Self-appointed public service bureaucracies began imposing heavier and heavier "standards" on child care centres. Parents were, apparently, no longer capable of deciding what was appropriate for their children -- and could not devote the long hours needed to cope with the paper-shuffling processes of accreditation. Slowly but surely, the weight of it all led to the rise of the childcare professionals and mobs like ABC. Eddy was simply meeting a need that the public service had created.

Sounds a bit simplistic but there's more than a grain of truth in his comments. They could be applied to many other activities which were previously the sole domain of the community, or non-profit sector. Over the last 20 years or so the creation of markets for such services as child care, employment services and aged care has made it harder for smaller community based groups to survive, let alone flourish. Much Government funding is now allocated after competitive tendering, which tends to advantage larger organisations, both for profit and non profit ones. There may be some advantages in this, eg economies of scale, but when big ones like ABC ELC wobble, the entire apparatus starts to look shaky. I hope this doesn't happen but would like the government to review some of the policies mentioned by Magee which have contributed to the current situation. It's too much to expect a u-turn, but maybe not too much to ask for an easing of the rigid compliance standards which favour those who have large record keeping back offices over those whose primary concern is service delivery. Sometimes small can be better.

Update 29 February

Today's Australian has a piece by Andrew Fraser "Fast Eddy hits the wall" which surveys the rise and recent troubles of ABC ELC. Extract:

There's a strong school of thought that says child care should be run as a service, not as a profit-making venture.

The industry did not traditionally evolve around margins on earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. Most employees weren't keen on negotiating their contracts with an employer or negotiating a future employment path: most of them just liked looking after children.

The Australian's Elisabeth Wynhausen recorded some of the experiences of these workers: "(ABC Learning Centres) put some young childcare workers in a room with three company executives before producing the workplace agreement. Under the terms of that contract, minimum-wage employees earning about $13.30 an hour agreed to pay for their own police checks and first-aid training, and to purchase their own uniforms through the company."

Today's Crikey also recommended a piece by Ben Hills in the SMH a couple of years ago.