ABC Radio has begun a process of consultation with its regional staff as the national broadcaster prepares to introduce a new regional division that will combine news, rural and regional programming staff into one area.
Some staff fear they will lose their jobs as a result of the restructure.
The restructure comes as part of wider changes that begun when budget cuts were made in ABC funding under the Abbott government’s first budget.
The vision of the new structure is “to be the champion of regional voices in Australian conversations, culture and stories,” which will “reflect and develop regional communities and enrich national conversations,” according to a briefing document obtained by radioinfo.
The restructure aims to “create a network which remains connected to News and Radio, with strong links to other divisions,” which will “underpin high quality, timely and relevant content to rural and regional Australians.”
Better communication, resource sharing, improved training and clearer career paths are being promised in the new structure.
The new structure includes the proposed transfer of staff listed below into the new regional division:
• All regionally-based Local Radio program teams and managers (except in Gosford).
• All Rural staff – whether in a metro area or a region.
• All regionally-based ABC Open producers and some members of the ABC Open central team.
• All regionally-based cross-media reporters.
• The Radio training team, which will provide support to both divisions.
• Staff working for Australia All Over and Saturday Night Country.
News staff:
• All regionally-based News editorial staff (except in Geelong, Gosford and Ipswich)
• The editorial teams working on Landline and the new ABC Regional TV series.
Staff remaining with their existing divisions are:
- News Operations staff (eight camera positions in regional locations)
- Radio staff with principally national roles (such as sport)
- ABC Open producers in Darwin and Hobart
- Some staff in Radio multiplatform with roles aligned to Radio’s national networks
- Staff working in support areas such as administration and technology who will also provide services to Regional
A new Director of Regional will be appointed to oversee the new division, with a staffing structure that includes heads of various sections.
Most existing regional radio staff will fall into the regional content department, as shown in the detailed chart proposed in the briefing document.
36 Chiefs of Staff will oversee regional content gathering on a daily basis for an assigned location to meet changing coverage and content requirements across all platforms. They will report to the Regional Editor responsible for their state or territory.
The Chiefs of Staff in Newcastle, Gold Coast and Ballarat will be non on-air roles, due to the size of the teams and the complexity of the operations, but all others will have some content making responsibilities.
Rural and National programs, including Australia All Over and Saturday Night Country, will work to a Head of Rural and National Programs under the proposed new structure.
Regionally based Rural Reporters will liaise with the Chief of Staff in their location, but also work directly to the program teams they provide content for on a state and national level.
A new Regional Affairs Reporter will be appointed in Canberra, based at Parliament House.
A new team of Regional digital producers who will take on the responsibilities performed by the Rural Online Producer position, is proposed.
Some current roles will no longer exist, including Regional Content Directors and State Editors Multiplatform, who will face redundancy or redeployment.
The briefing document, obtained by radioinfo, says staff occupying these jobs have already had discussions with management and will be able to apply for new positions if they wish.
Many of their functions of the Regional Content Directors and State Editors Multiplatform will be split among new roles including Regional Editors, Regional Planning Editor and Manager Regional Content, Manager Broadcast Content Quality, Manager Digital Content Quality and Digital Producers.
The Regional Content Manager role will no longer exist.
Radio will retain responsibility for Emergency Broadcasting for now, but this will be reviewed in 18 months.
Staff and unions received the briefing document last Friday and a round of consultations will begin tomorrow, lasting one month.
On the 1st of July, as the new financial year begins, the ABC Regional Division will officially become operational, with budgets and assets being transferred from that date. A six month transition is envisaged in the plan.
One of the most annoying aspects of this website is the auto-refresh function which means you lose what you've typed if you're not quick enough to submit your content, encouraging hastily made comments. I shall try again:
It is ridiculous that the adjacent metro ABC stations such as 1233 Newcastle and the former Coast FMs based at Mermaid Beach and Maroochydore are lumped into this new regional hierarchy. These cities do not have the usual regional feel that is found in the next ABC area out from a capital city.
Being so close to a capital city creates a different community of interest as the generally good transport links encourage much travel between the metropolitian area and adjacent regions. The formats heard on those three stations also differ greatly to traditional regional ABC stations due to them finding a niche in what is a much more crowded media landscape due to large market size and metro signal overspill. These markets also do not take their state's midday rural hour, nor are they considered a rural area.
The number of flow charts and layers of management certainly have a touch of the MRN/FXJ radio merger, another poorly planned idea.
With the abolition of the Regional Content Directors (Bolts would be happy!), it seems there is not a loss of staff with there to be Chiefs of Staff in each station. Why not simply offer the RCDs the opportunity to transfer to this role or to move elsewhere?
There seems to be large focus in group radio and rural and no focus whatsoever on an increase in video content.
This is very poorly thought.
In an age where internet download demand is increasing expotentially due to video viewing and where commerical TV has cut local news coverage along with other cutbacks in local commercial radio news and newspaper reporting, here is a prime opportunity for the ABC to be doing exactly what they should be doing, filling the gap and going beyond it when there is market failure.
There should be a huge focus on more video news coverage, structuring radio news stories to double as video news packages (for internet or 7pm TV broadcast) which could be easily done and generally ramping up video news coverage and providing a platform to push such content to the audience so they could enjoy a short bulletin of sorts to replace the space that commercial operators have vacated.