Your ABC: proudly brought to you by your sponsors?

ABC's existing commercial activities

The ABC already engages in commercial activities, such as ABC Shops, ABC publications, recordings and DVDs. The ABC also has a number of licence agreements for:

• online delivery in terms of other sites that use some ABC content (for example, Bigpond, Yahoo);
• the use of ABC content on mobile phones;
• magazines like Delicious which can access ABC content under a licence agreement; and
• use of ABC content by the new emerging category including on trains, video on demand, and in shopping centres.

Last year, in July, the ABC created a separate website, Countdown, built around the popular TV Countdown program - which carries ads.

These threats from existing ventures, as well as carrying all the risks inherent in advertising, could be used, like the thin end of a wedge, to justify expanding ABC's commercial activities.

Creation of “ABC Commercial”

The different standards applied to ABC commercial ventures and to ABC journalism was illustrated by the ABC's refusal to publish Chris Masters' Jonestown: there was not reasonable certainty of commercial profitability. By contrast the Editorial Policies (PDF 1.65MB) which apply to news and current affairs state that: Editorial judgments are based on news values, not … on commercial or sectional interests … 

Can these two different standards co-exist? Or will one predominate?

The SBS experience

Let's take a closer look at SBS, often cited as an example where ads have not compromised its quality. Originally established as a multi-cultural broadcaster, SBS was closely connected with ethnic communities.

Errol Simper wrote:

[SBS] was a fine station when it began in October 1980 under its first chief executive, Bruce Gyngell, and the founding chairman, Nicholas Shehadie. It bought in some excellent overseas material as Gyngell ensured it was, as the then government intended, a televisual window on the wider world. It probably did much to break down Australian parochialism and geographic isolation. The Australian, June 8, 2006.

Although to many of us SBS is still multi-cultural - Mary Kostakidis is not the only presenter with a multi-cultural heritage - closer inspection raises queries.