So, after losing almost 50 per cent of the Radio National morning show audience that listened to Fran Kelly for many years, her replacement Patricia Karvelas is leaving after just three years in office.
Enough damage has been done, it’s time to find a new host. Apparently, the search continues.
It’s hard to really know whose decision Karvelas made to move forward. The official line is that the new presenter wanted to leave the role she longed for.
And ABC’s new president, Kim Williams, has made no secret of his desire to lift the flagging performance of ABC radio programming.
At the very least, Williams is clearly not distraught about losing Karvelas from the line-up that will aim to improve ABC radio’s performance in the coming months and years.
ABC’s declining audience is nothing to worry about, however, Karvelas will continue to host the (no longer) weekly TV show QandA, even though its ratings have also plummeted from what they were when Tony Jones was leading debates vibrant and interesting.
ABC has reduced its number of episodes each year from 40 to just 24.
It will return on October 21. I’m sure a handful of Australians have marked the date in their diaries with great anticipation.
Patricia Karvelas leaves as presenter of ABC Radio Nacional after three years in the presidency
I used to listen avidly to Kelly when she hosted the RN breakfast. I’m part of that 43 percent collapse in the show’s ratings.
Kelly was a brazen lefty when she was a host, but she was an equal-opportunity interviewer when grilling politicians.
And his style was the perfect start to the day: easy to listen to, providing high-quality analysis and guests.
More importantly, he led nuanced discussions that avoided lecturing listeners, telling them what to think.
The tone of the show back then was informative and enjoyable to listen to.
That all changed when Kelly left, so much of his audience left too, apparently uninterested in being lectured by his replacement.
While ABC likes to claim that it offers analysis, not opinion, in its on-air offerings that examine politics, that simply isn’t the case with some of its next-generation hosts.
The lines blur, lectures begin, absolutism about what is right and wrong is shoved down people’s throats, as if having an alternative opinion is morally unacceptable.
Therefore, listeners choose to receive their news elsewhere. Where they do not feel like an inferior being for occasionally disagreeing with the certainty of the opinions offered.
On commercial radio, opinions are encouraged, which can be sensational in nature. But on ABC, where opinions are left-wing, not mainstream, they sometimes get irritated.
Karvelas’ style is more irritating than most, so presumably he couldn’t retain those of us who never missed an episode of what Kelly previously served up each morning.
ABC’s new president, Kim Williams, has made no secret of his desire to improve the flagging performance of ABC radio programming. Above, with the Minister of Communications, Michelle Rowland.
When Karvelas took over, Radio National’s then political editor Alison Carabine also left the role, which would not have helped the new presenter retain the programme’s audience.
Like Kelly, Carabine was fair and balanced, whatever her personal opinions might have been.
He had been on the parliamentary platform for decades and knew what he was doing. It was a big loss for the program.
If ABC wants to get Williams’ vision of what the broadcaster should be right, management will have to step up.
He must take the blame for putting the wrong people in the right positions to make ABC programming a success.
News director Justin Stevens, who was appointed after Karvelas took over but has seen his ratings decline, has been mediocre.
And outgoing managing director David Anderson led from behind, letting inmates run the asylum rather than showing the backbone an ABC boss needs.
Otherwise, the proverbial tail of the dog wags the dog at the public broadcaster.
If the ABC wants to find a way to return to the high standards it previously set, a management cleanup is as important as a cleanup of unqualified presenters.
After all, it is the management that made the decisions to appoint the failed hosts. They should be as responsible for poor performance as a football coach is.
