AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION CORPORATION BROADCASTING AUSTRALIAN VOLUME II ANNUAL REPORT 2018 REPORT ANNUAL Yours, Now & into the Future ANNUAL REPORT 2018 Image: Tom Gleeson, Charlie Pickering, Adam Briggs and Kitty Flanagan in The Weekly with Charlie Pickering 2 AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION ANNUAL REPORT 2018 “As the national broadcaster, we are uniquely positioned to tell Australian stories and bring people together to explore and understand issues that matter to them, and to reflect Australia’s culture and diversity. There is something for everyone at the ABC.” David Anderson, Director ABC Entertainment & Specialist 3 4 AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION ANNUAL REPORT 2018 Contents Quality, Distinctive Content in 2017–18 6 Yours in the Community 40 Audience Engagement 56 Annual Performance Statements 80 Working at the ABC 90 Responsibility 114 Accountability 132 Financial Statements 142 Appendices 200 Compliance Index 260 Glossary & Index 262 In Volume I you will find: Welcome The ABC is Yours Yours for quality, distinctive content Purpose and vision Yours into the Future Snapshot of 2017–18 Highlights 2017–18: Extraordinary, relevant and valued content An outstanding audience experience Reaching more people Building a great place to work The ABC Leadership Team The ABC Board Contents 5 Image: Aaliyah, Jaral and Sharmika in Shame Quality, distinctive content in 2017–18 6 AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION ANNUAL REPORT 2018 7 Genre Teams Content team redesign The Investing in Audiences strategy is all about creating extraordinary content that is relevant and valued by all Australians. To this end, and to better equip ABC content teams to address fast-moving audience trends, improve collaboration and speed decision-making, new content teams were consolidated in February 2018 – arranged around content and audiences rather than broadcast platforms. Content-makers with different skills were Entertainment & Specialist brought together to collaborate around a The Entertainment & Specialist (E&S) team common area, and were structured into three brought together the genres of drama, comedy, content teams and a smaller, newly-created team: Indigenous, music, children’s, entertainment • Entertainment & Specialist and factual content across television, radio and • Regional & Local digital products and services such as iview, ABC listen and associated websites, apps News, Analysis & Investigations • and podcasts. The E&S team also includes the • Content Ideas Lab specialist genres of arts, science, education, Maintaining the quality and integrity of ABC society & culture, religion & ethics and ABC Audio content is key to this change, which seeks Studios podcasts. to deepen connections with all of the ABC’s E&S develops, produces, acquires and distributes Australian and overseas audiences. Australian stories across ABC TV, ABC KIDS, ABC ME, ABC COMEDY, the national networks of ABC Radio, ABC online, and audio and video apps. The redesign of the team has led to the production of more innovative, distinctive and engaging content, and has improved efficiency and flexibility, enabling E&S to better meet audience expectations for multiplatform content on-demand. Within E&S, the Specialist and Distribution teams have promoted greater integration across radio, television and digital content. Further collaborative opportunities have been explored between the Music and Entertainment teams across television and radio, and ABC Audio Studios is working with all teams on returning and original podcasts. Above: Todd Sampson, Wil Anderson and Russel Howcroft in Gruen 8 AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION ANNUAL REPORT 2018 Regional & Local Similarly, ABC Grandstand and ABC Radio’s The formation of the Regional & Local (R&L) team Gold Coast team collaborated to produce enabled content-makers with a common purpose outstanding coverage of the Commonwealth – to connect with local communities and tell the Games – one of the largest sporting-event stories of real Australians and their day-to-day broadcasts the ABC has undertaken since the lives – to collaborate more closely and share ideas Sydney Olympics. Local knowledge greatly and skills across all platforms. enriched quality sporting coverage, with Local Radio audiences also benefiting from additional Almost 800 staff from the former Regional, Radio sports coverage integrated into programming. and Television teams were brought together to Local programming reached a national audience form the new content team, and the grouping of through Grandstand’s digital channel and the skills and knowledge around content interests has ABC listen app. resulted in more effective content collaboration and distribution of content across multiple News, Analysis & Investigations platforms. The team is better able to respond The News, Analysis & Investigations (NA&I) team to the changing preferences of ABC audiences, is made up of content-makers long practiced ensuring content is available wherever and in a genre approach to content creation and whenever they want it. distribution, with multiplatform reporting by The R&L team’s coverage of Anzac Day 2018 news journalists established for many years, illustrated the benefits of the new approach, well ahead of other media players. with teams working together to produce Implementation of the restructure included a quality content for radio, television, digital drive for more effective collaboration with teams and social media, covering local and national across the ABC, which resulted in greater diversity commemorations, as well as international events of content from a wider range of sources. NA&I is including the Gallipoli Dawn Service and the continuing to work with colleagues in R&L and E&S Villers-Bretonneux Centenary Commemoration. to streamline knowledge sharing and specialist skills, and to standardise work practices and quality benchmarks. Genre Teams 9 Above: Sabra Lane presents AM Collaborations included the seamless coverage the best chance to reach all Australians. The of Anzac Day 2018 across Australia and the Equal Digital Life project is nearing the end world; the collaboration between Audio Studios, of its second year, and new teams have been Australian Story and News Online on ‘Blood on established to drive specialist investigative the Tracks’; the cricket ball tampering television and innovative output across all distribution and digital special Caught Out; Stargazing Live; platforms, driven by a passion for high impact Royal Wedding and Federal Budget coverage; and storytelling and the delivery of extraordinary, Four Corners’ ‘Mind the Gap’ collaboration with relevant content to all Australians. RN’s Health Report. At the local level, capital city newsrooms now work more closely with R&L colleagues in Local Radio, and NA&I is seeking to extend the opportunities offered by the Connecting Communities plan (see page 35). The result will be more diverse stories on local news programs, national broadcast bulletins and digital platforms. Some physical and organisational constraints have hampered collaboration in some areas. and the team’s capacity to capture performance data and convert insights into improvements faces challenges in both the scale of NA&I output and access to expertise and resources. Nonetheless, in accordance with the trust audiences place in the ABC, NA&I is continuing to ensure that high-quality journalism is given 10 AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION ANNUAL REPORT 2018 Content Ideas Lab The Content Ideas Lab, a new team formed in early 2018, focuses on content innovation by identifying and incubating new and distinctive ideas specifically aimed at the 30% of Australians who don’t consume ABC content on a weekly basis. It works collaboratively with other parts of the organisation. The purpose of the Content Ideas Lab is strongly aligned to ABC’s strategic priorities: • To create extraordinary content • To deliver an outstanding audience experience • To reach more Australians • To build a great place to work The Content Ideas Lab team oversee four streams: • The Great Ideas Grant (GIG) • ABC Life • Content Innovation • International Strategy. Great Ideas Grant (GIG) The Great Ideas Grant (GIG) was funded from efficiencies as part of the Investing in Audiences strategy. The content fund was available to issue grants to the best ideas pitched from employees across the organisation. • Unravel True Crime: Compelling investigative GIG sought big content ideas and fresh creative true crime stories which work across podcast, thinking in response to shifting audience video and online platforms. trends. The project encouraged collaboration • RetroFocus: Bringing ABC archives out of the with colleagues, and transparency in pitching vaults and onto Australia's screens. and judging new ideas. Employees were asked to Hey ABC: Content experiments for choose their favourite of the 212 pitches proffered • Conversational User Interfaces (CUIs) such and more than 7,600 votes were recorded in as Google Home, Amazon Alexa and Apple response. Nine projects were incubated in 2017–18 HomePod resulting in news, sport, finance, as a result: and btn bulletins delivered by voice command. • ABC Life • ABC Wild Oz: Continuous livestream of four • ABC KIDS listen: A new DAB+ radio station native animals in locations in Brisbane over and accompanying app, launched in two weeks in February 2018, as a proof-of- February 2018, aimed at working families with concept of livestreamed nature reality TV. 2–5-year-old children, tested with culturally and