In March this year Kate Dundas was appointed Director Radio at the ABC and her immediate focus is to get digital radio up and running at the national broadcaster. Barry Melville interviews Kate for radioinfo.

As well as policy experience at the state and federal government levels Kate Dundas has held several senior roles in the ABC. She used to head up Radio Policy and Development, she managed Local Radio, was Head of National Networks and most recently she was Director People and Learning.

Barry Melville spoke to her about the challenges she faces and the direction that ABC Radio is heading:

My short-term focus is to really get digital radio up and operating for the ABC with an initial offering of eight services.

We’re launching digital radio on 1 July and we will simulcast our analogue services – the four national networks and the local services in those markets that receive digital radio – but we’ll also put up our DIG offering which is DIG music, ABC country and ABC jazz.

Strategically over the next three years, the integration of digital radio services, digital online services, broadband audio and broadband generally has priority.

In your corporate plan the ABC wants to “be recognised as the leading Australian public media space where people engage with issues and ideas”. What demands does ongoing audience engagement place on the various services both the current ones and the new ones you’ve just described?

A lot! We’ve got individuals and stations using Twitter and we met this week to discuss how are we going to engage, what sort of protocols we need to put around it, whether we need the same sort of editorial protocols.

User generated content in all its lovely forms whether that’s just uploading audio or video or blogging or whatever is really the space.

Radio has been doing talkback forever and a day, and that’s certainly defined audience engagement. The challenge is to make interactive engagement in different media as personal, as individual as it can be and where necessary, as community focused as possible.

Are you worried at all in terms of resources – directing activity away from areas that might be presently regarded as core into peripheral activity?

I don’t think it’s peripheral – it’s all about engagement and yes it does require resources. We’ve got online producers and web developers in all regional areas around Australia. In Local Radio we are moving the skills base from radio program makers to content makers.

Does it mean the same thing for Radio National as it means for Local Radio?

In a sense less so because Radio National has led podcasting in this country both their personnel and some of their audience are very tech-savvy.

Look at the kind of thing that our web-based initiative Pool (see link below) is doing in the exchange of material between local artistic communities and international artistic communities.

Radio National is really out there but they’re engaging not so much at that very local level but more at the individual and global level.

Do you worry about the numbers? You are pulling listeners/audiences in different ways, on different points of contact with your content but are you actually getting the sort of cohesion and brand recognition that you require?

We have to be very smart about brand recognition. I’ve watched the radio numbers for ABC radio go up both in reach and share. I also see that online engagement is increasing as well.

But I think about measuring the engagement of audiences much more than ratings. We look at how many people are going to concerts we put on, how many people are buying Triple J Hottest 100 CDs, how many people are accessing our online stuff, how many people are downloading our podcasts.

Over the next five to ten years will there be increased pressure to attach revenue streams to your offerings?

No, I don’t think so. I think, with radio, you may see a movement towards downloadable material, like the way, after a certain period of time we’ll put a program we’ve made on a CD or DVD and sell it in the shop. But are we considering selling ads on the radio pages for instance, or selling new content, with audiences having to pay for it online when you can get it free to air, the answer’s no.

In terms of the management shoes you have stepped into, are there any legacy issues you need to deal with?

I guess if there is a legacy issue, it’s that we have had to grow and diversify like topsy, and maybe now there needs to be a more coherent frame, but this is certainly not a criticism of Sue Howard’s regime at all.

A legacy issue perhaps but really, it’s a great opportunity. I think that the fact that we have a new managing director and there already has been a lot of change contributes to the momentum.

But there are retraining pressures?

Obviously we do not face the pressure of commercial income but I think that over time if you look at the way the ABC has been funded there is a gap in funding in real terms relative to cost of living and the cost of technology.

The government has certainly come to the party in terms of transition to digital technology but it’s increasingly hard and we do many more things with the money that we had.

We have a bid into government for content for digital radio. I’m not sure if it will be successful because I think we have to be realistic about government priorities and their horror budget and understand that the government has priorities and some of the ABCs priorities may not get up and I think that’s fair.

I know that under a certain school of thought some radio broadcasters defend their craft, their programs by saying that it is not content, it’s conversation, it’s flowing, it’s spontaneous, it’s ephemeral…

It can be and it should be. I think that any truly great broadcaster kind of likes to hear their stuff again and you can do that through podcasting. You can hear that fantastic interview on radio national breakfast which is a piece of content if you like or you can listen to a beautifully-crafted program or you can hear a piece of music or a concert or whatever.

The most widely-podcast content in the universe is Philip Adams who is amazingly popular with American and other overseas audiences.

Does that measurement of demand for downloads determine what is produced and repeated on radio?

It does tell us the interesting outcome of content and in fact people round here will have said that Radio National reinvented itself through podcasting. I actually disagree with that because the thing about RN is that it has a passionate national audience and there is no question that it always has had but it has always been programmed like a television station.

I think we need to do some good research and we need to work out where our audiences are and what they want. I’m keen to experiment a little so we’re not locking in a service until we really know what the mix is.

Do you see any changes in the blend between networked and localised services

We will configure ourselves to have our simulcast local services plus another local service in each of our markets but the rest will be national. We can mix and match those for instance on a second local service we can obviously put national programming onto it at times so if there was a national sports program or a concert or something similar we could actually put that onto the local service.

So taking Sydney as an example you can have essentially the same channel your digital radio and you’ll choose your 702 with the cricket service or with Richard Glover’s afternoon drive.

How well does the current ABC corporate culture serve you in terms of present and future challenges.

We have just rolled out new ABC workplace values. Last year, the ABC did quite an extensive process with staff right round the country to define what are the values that we work with here. It came down to it that the four values were integrity, respect, collegiality and innovation.

Are these present realties or are they aspirations?

We engaged with staff about the kind of organisation they wanted to work in but I do I think we already share such values throughout the organisation even though we can all improve, management included, in how we work together.

Is digital placing any strain on your personnel in terms of skills development or training?

Not per se but certainly integrating digital media and online activities means we need to invest in skill development for what will be the new content maker.

That doesn’t mean everyone has to become an online expert but it does mean they’ll need to be able to manipulate the media the way that audiences now manipulate the media.

How do sustain excellence technically and editorially through a period of such change?

Next week we are meeting with a large group of staff and starting what’s been called the Radio Review but really is a 3 year strategy. Every week I update staff around key areas that I think we need to look at and one of them is editorial leadership. We will be looking at our self-regulatory arrangements with a view to greater focus on editorial leadership.

It’s a hefty responsibility to be bound by legislation to inform, educate and entertain – but who makes the editorial decisions and whom do they consult?

We have an upward referral policy that I think works very well. I think you need to put the locus of decision-making at the point of production if you can. In radio we have 61 working mikes in any one day which is a lot so the idea that you can slow down radio which is a minute by minute proposition by getting all the decisions made at the top is (a) not do-able and (b) not desirable.

When lining up an interview, just say on a controversial issue, producers need to be sure that they get the right talent to achieve a balance of perspectives. If they are in doubt, our time-honoured tradition is to refer up and the referral up can go all the way to the editor-in-chief, the Managing Director.

It works well because it keeps the decision-making at the program level if it can for 99% of what happens that’s where it should be. Those people are experts. There is a discipline around it because they are professionals and they are well trained. All of that is about training, preparation and having good guidelines.

As part of the review, we are looking at key strategic areas. Editorial leadership is one of them as is marketing and innovation. We are also looking at 360 degree commissioning so that when we get an idea we look at how would it run, how would it run on television, should we be talking to Innovation or News about this, is there some sort of great online application we can add to it, is it just a radio program, is it a podcast, is it a podcast only, is it a digital radio program? So that kind of process, that kind of integration is what we’re developing as part of our strategy.