Advertisements have appeared this week for the ABC’s new managing director following the resignation of Russell Balding. Recruitment is being handled by search firm Egon Zehnder International, which expects to report back to the board with a short list of potential candidates within the next six to eight weeks, after a global executive search.
The job ad asks for “a commitment to public broadcasting and to excellent and distinctive programming, [and a] strategic vision” to lead the corporation “in a changing media and communications environment.”
History will view Balding as a calming influence at the national broadcaster after the tumultuous short-lived reign of Jonathan Shier. Balding’s accounting and management credentials have gained respect from most ABC staffers, who were also pleased that he largely left programming to the senior output executives of the radio, tv and multimedia divisions, rather than micro-managing it as some former MDs had done.
The ABC Board will be seeking a different set of skills in the new MD, who will have to be a person who can steer the corporation further into the world of converged media. The new Managing Director will be faced with an organisation which has been moving forward in its programming, but still retains its historical management structures built around transmission outputs. In a new media world where transmission technology no longer defines broadcast content, the standard definitions of ‘radio’ and ‘television’ are now in question.
Radio these days is not only received on radios, in fact the word radio itself is becoming increasingly obsolete as a term to describe audio programming. Audio programs can now be heard via mobile broadband internet, timeshifted and downloaded by podcast engines and mp3 players, received on television and on mobile phones. Radio producers around the country are increasingly making tv and online multi-media content as well as their radio programs.
Television is now being received on DVB-H mobile phones and computers as well as on the traditional living room tv set. Digital radio has pictures, and digital tv carries radio services.
A new MD, whoever he or she may be, will be faced with the task of reshaping the corporation’s management structures, perhaps by program making type rather than by the traditional transmission outputs. A more forward looking management structure will be one of the things to entertain the mind of the new MD, just as it did with the ABA and ACA when they gave birth to the converged media regulator ACMA.
News and Current Affairs already has its own divisional head, perhaps in the future Documentary might become a new division, with audio and video documentaries sharing resources and producing multi-platform programming, as triple j is doing with ABC TV (see other radioinfo story).
The board will also want to explore entertainment production issues with candidates for the top job. Would a Head of Entertainment or Arts Production be better than a overarching Head of Television? Would entertainment or arts programs across radio, tv and the internet benefit from cross-platform synergies, or would one medium lose out to another in such a management restructure? Consumers might benefit from breaking down the current structure in favour of a more contemporary one that better reflects the growing platform-agnostic behaviour of Australian media consumers, who are choosing content that appeals to them across many broadcast, narrowcast and point-to-point platforms.
These are not just issues for the ABC, every media company in Australia is grappling with the same questions and is reinventing its own internal structures and resources accordingly. Even the School of the Air has just this week announced the final step in a restructure that takes advantage of new delivery mechanisms beyond its traditional delivery medium of radio.
A Managing Director with vision will not only have thought about these issues, but will be pragmatic enough to steer them through the labyrinthine structures of the ABC without disrupting the core mission and morale of the national broadcaster.
Broadcaster?
In the new world of media even that word comes into question. Internet transmission is not defined as broadcasting in Australia, yet it has become an important and respected part of the ABC’s output. Radio programs are broadcast, but also podcast and released on cd through ABC shops. TV programs now extend their reach and transmission time by using chatrooms and video replays online, which create new unique content to extend the original program beyond the limits of its tv timeslot.
Perhaps the national broadcaster is really a National Cross Media Program Maker and requires a name change.
But The Australian National Cross Media Program Making Corporation ANCMCPC might just be too much of a mouthful, so the new MD will have to think about that too.
Time will tell whether the new Managing Director has a way with words as well as multi-media corporate structures.