Plus, the Fed Govt would have to cover the commercial costs of commercial content deals on the SBS side to fit in with the ABC Charter ban on advertising. Won’t happen. Would be like merging BBC and Channel Four in the UK, that won’t happen either, even though they are both public owned broadcasters. If anything, a future Govt may sell off SBS while they may still get some money for it.
I do wonder if there is scope for some cost sharing though through things like sharing facilities, or resources
that seems like a logical move to remove some duplication, and as has been thrown around for years as a cost saving, but there doesn’t ever seem to be any progress (or willingness) to go into that?
I would have thought that the ABC’s move to Parramatta (as controversial as it is) would have been an optimal opportunity for SBS to join in (or even take space at Ultimo that was allegedly freed up)
Like what? They already share the DAB+ platform. And are most likely to share a DVBT2 platform at some point in the future. SBS only has 2 sets of radio studios in Melbourne and Sydney and 2 TV studios in Sydney. If you know the set-up of both ABC and SBS in those cities, you will know that ABC Radio studios are mostly fully booked these days, especially more so now with added podcast output and TV News studios are fulltime reserved for their respective News services. Yes, back-office functions like HR and Payroll could be combined, but a nightmare if SBS and ABC stay as separate corporate bodies with separate policies and all, why bother? Very little money, if any would be saved with shared back-office functions. Reports going back 30 years say much the same.
ABC would be charging SBS commercial rates if they moved into Ultimo and rightly so. Much cheaper for them to stay at Artarmon in a building they fully own.
From above article.
Live news crosses for no apparent reason
If a road crash happened during the day, there’s a good chance you may see a news reporter on the scene in the 6pm bulletin in a Live cross. If only they had cameras there at the time.
Add another - live news cross to a location that has only a vague association to the news item.
This morning - cross to a Andrew McCormack in Melbourne standing near the Grand Prix facilities to discuss the Las Vegas GP.
