“We should move harder and faster and challenge ourselves,” the new ABC Chair Kim Williams said at yesterday’s Futurecast conference.

Discussing AI and digital platforms, Williams articulated audience focused priorities for the ABC. “We should populate our content onto whatever platform our consumers are using. Our content belongs to the people.”

With a background of championing technological change in the companies he has led, Williams sees digital technology as “a remarkably empowering force… it is transformative.”

Williams can also see “many terrifying aspects to digital technology,” but believes credible media organisations like the ABC have an important role to play in balancing out the negativism, disharmony and disinformation that are being spread by irresponsible platforms. He is also concerned about the lack of media literacy which he describes as “alarming.”

As the age of AI dawns, Williams says “artificial intelligence is an oxymoron.”

“The most essential element of intelligence is judgement… AI doesn’t have that,” he told conference delegates. AI is a “tool that is there for our service… I’m yet to be persuaded that there is a skerrick of creativity in AI.”

Williams believes the ABC should embrace AI, experiment and learn about it, as it does with all new technologies. After the organisation understands where AI can be useful it should then make informed audience or content focused decisions about how it will be used.

Earlier this week, radioinfo was one of several media publications that received an audio file recorded in an in-house discussion Kim Williams had with RN staff. Some of the leaked audio helps build further understanding of the way the new chair will guide the ABC during his tenure.

As well as a focus on digital platforms, Williams is also a believer in broadcast radio and is highly engaged with the serious content he believes should be a priority for the national broadcaster in this age of irresponsible social media, AI and disinformation.

In the staff forum he spoke about his aim to put Radio National back into “the ABC’s heartland,” comparing it to the success of the BBC’s Radio 4 network. “My aspiration is to actually see [RN] be a service that has a real impact.”

BBC Radio 4 has a similar format to RN, with a live daily news breakfast program, current affairs analysis programs at key points during the day and specialist 30-60 minute programs throughout the day.

While the audio consumption landscape in the UK is different from Australia, and competition from commercial radio has existed for many decades less in the UK than it has in Australia, Williams has ambitions for RN to replicate the impact of BBC UK Radio 4.

In the most recent UK RAJAR radio survey, Radio 4 had an audience of almost 9 million people, about 16% of the radio listening audience. Click the chart for the latest Rajar UK radio ratings.

RN’s audience in Australia is less than 2% of the population (see most recent GfK survey), but its quality in depth programs are similarly influential and in depth as those on Radio 4.   The Australian GfK ratings methodology is not the same as Rajar, with more of a focus on share, which captures flow format listening better than it does block programming formats such as RN.

Neither Rajar or GfK ratings measure podcast listening numbers.

In the latest Rajar survey (above), BBC Local stations, which have recently suffered cuts to local shifts, slipped a little to 7 million listeners, a reach of 12% of the UK population. BBC Radio 2, with a personality presenter music and talk, flow programming format, has the biggest audience of the BBC’s radio stations, reaching 23% of the UK population (13 million people).

Criticising the lack of international and state news in the day’s top stories on the ABC website, Williams said in the leaked audio: “In moments of public torment, crisis, division, challenges to leadership, [people have] a right to be able to access [news] from us reliably and immediately, and not to suddenly see a lifestyle story being number one two or three… I make no apology for the fact I think news should be prioritised appropriately.”

Williams encouraged all the ABC’s radio networks to better cross promote themselves. He is not in favour of closing any of the current services, but he wants them to be “more distinctive,” he told staff at the internal forum.

“Audiences are down across the board, and that is something we need to address, but I don’t think the way to address them is to progressively eliminate services, or to migrate services into different delivery technologies.”

RN is currently conducting a strategy review to respond to Williams’ aspirations for the network.

Williams plans to put a more effective funding case to Government and to advocate for more funds to deliver on the ABC’s important role in the Australian community during his board tenure.

“The last chair of the ABC that actually worked the rooms and worked the cabinet was back in 1988 with David Hill… I don’t think the decline in funding is unrelated,” said Williams.