Entertainment that doesn’t offend.

Some of you may have read my little sputter of outrage in the October issue about the ABC axing the Religion Report, the Media Report and several other shows from Radio National. We heard about it a day or two before we had to publish and didn’t have time to get a full rant together, but what more appropriate place to put it than here in the Entertainment Issue?

The Media Report and the Religion Report have several things in common. They are intelligent, wide ranging, well researched programs, presenting many points of view that get little airing in the mainstream media. They also have a habit of rattling the cages of the powerful conservatives in their respective areas. One of the critics of the Religion report was the Anglican Dean of Sydney, Dr Phillip Jensen. For those of you who couldn’t give a toss about the politics of the Anglican Church, let me quickly fill in the blanks: he’s the nutbag who’s been ranting about how it is sinful for women to preach in churches and yelling for the Archbishop of Canterbury’s resignation because he is not burning homosexuals at the stake. Steven Crittenden on the Religion Report has interviewed both the new female Anglican bishops thus, apparently giving them legitimacy (because their consecration as Bishop by the church hadn’t already done that?) and Steven is no doubt already feeling the hellfires burning at his toes because of it.

The Media Report has had the audacity to criticise not only the Fairfax organisation, but also the ABC itself, for biased reporting, false economies and just generally dropping the ball.

Aunty, of course, flatly denies that this has anything to do with their decision to axe these shows, it’s all about numbers and those shows allegedly didn’t have a very big audience. It seems that the ABC only has budget for popular shows that don’t offend anyone. Funny, I thought that’s what we had Channel 9 for.

20 years ago religion was not that big a deal, you either did it or you didn’t and no-one really gave that much of a shit either way. Things have changed now though, the pendulum swings and suddenly more people are turning to organised religion to give them comfort or stability or help them make decisions or tell them who they have to love and hate. And then the media reports it and distorts is and we all lose perspective. Can anyone seriously argue that more information, more discussion and more understanding of different religions is unnecessary or irrelevant now? Yes, the ABC can!

In the radio stakes, Radio National doesn’t achieve anything like the same ratings as the FM music stations, particularly in the breakfast shows. Apparently most people prefer to listen to the FM howler monkeys throwing poo at each other between ad breaks than to listen to actual information or first hand interviews. I get that, mornings can be hard and you don’t always want to have to think about things.

But where Radio National has come into its own is in the new podcast market. Thousands upon thousands of us are downloading podcasts to listen to at the gym, on the train, in the car or during a particularly long session in the bog (No? That’s only Justin? Ok). The ABC, having noticed that the RN website gets a huge amount of traffic, has made a very rookie mistake and assumed that a sexy snazzy website is the key to a greater market share They’ve completely missed the point: the website is just a tool, it’s the content that matters. One of the most popular sites on the internet is www.gofugyourself.com, it’s a simple idea and it’s not even a website, it’s a blog. It has no moving parts whatsoever and it gets 4 million hits a week. Why you ask? Because it’s beautifully written, marvellously entertaining and incredibly simple. Content! Not marketing exec bollocks! Why are the ABC, with their years of genuinely good content behind them, making this idiotic and childish mistake? The marketing department has taken over the asylum.

You can just picture all the ABC marketing execs sitting around playing buzzword bingo and getting all very excited about the need for a singing dancing website, can’t you? Lots of planning for going forward with their stakeholders and increasing their internet footprint in the digital age. And then, the stumbling block – how are we going to pay all the hip consultants we’ll need to build our better mousetrap? Ah, whatever, we’ll hand that over to the beancounters while we congratulate ourselves again on how fabulous we are.

Then the budget committee gets a 350 page report on why they need to come up with 5 mill for the new sexy website, so rather than actually stand their ground, they go through the board’s shitlist, meekly put a line through the top ten, and everyone can break an arm patting themselves on the back again.

All good, until Steven Crittenden, who is on a whole lotta shitlists, spilled the beans on his program one morning, gets fired and a storm of outraged emails come flooding into the ABC.

The ABC is not supposed to provide popular content, it’s the public broadcaster, paid for by the government to give a space and voice to all the folk who don’t want to make it on Big Brother. It is supposed to present all points of view, not just the ones that won’t offend anyone. It is supposed to tell us things we wouldn’t otherwise know about. It is supposed to be different to the mindless pap that gets served up by all the commercial media. What the hell are they doing over there? Placating politicians and minority groups? Is that their new mandate? Pah! Tell us things we don’t already know about, give us a point of view that no-one else agree with, smack us on the back of the head a few times to get the hamsters running and the wheels turning a bit.

We’ve already written to the ABC to express our disapproval (yes, they now have a file on us) as have thousands of other people, but if you haven’t done so yet, please, please, please, get out your poison pen and send them a nasty letter. It’s fun, if enough of us write in it might actually work and it’s more proof that a small group of committed citizens really can change the world. Why? Because it’s the only thing that ever has.

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