The ABC spent $417,000 per hour broadcast on a documentary about an orang-utan called Karta at Adelaide zoo. Source: News Limited
THE ABC spent $506,000 a broadcast hour to make a documentary celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four’s Australian tour, and its two-part tribute to music TV show Countdown cost $363,000 produce each episode.
A documentary about an orang-utan at the Adelaide zoo came with an average hourly price tag of $417,000, and the Australian version of a program about restoring old houses cost $507,000 per broadcast hour.
Here’s Karta from the ABC’s orang-utan documentary chewing on the public broadcaster’s budget spreadsheet cunningly disguised as a giant toilet roll. Source: News Limited
Those and other details about how the ABC spends it billion-dollar-plus budget were revealed by managing director Mark Scott during a Senate inquiry in Canberra today.
The production costs partly explain why the public broadcaster is closing its small Adelaide production facility after the Abbott government’s funding cuts.
The ABC took a viewers on a $363,000 per hour trip down memory lane with this tribute to Molly Meldrum’s Countdown. Picture: ABC Source: ABC
South Australian Liberal senator Anne Ruston was not quite convinced, asking Mr Scott to provide a full list of programs made in Adelaide and how much they cost.
Many of those were cheaper than the examples Mr Scott raised, she suggested.
“My understanding is that they were run on the sniff of an oily rag,” Senator Ruston said.
Mr Scott replied that one-off programs and short-run factual series could be done more cheaply in collaboration with the private sector.
The ABC never wants us to forget that time The Beatles Drove Us Wild when they toured Australia, um, 50 years ago. This doco cost about half a million bucks to make each hour of TV. Picture: ABC Source: Supplied
For example, The War That Changed Us documentary series made in conjunction with the independent production sector cost $192,000 per broadcast hour.
It was best to have studios and staff working at full capacity, Mr Scott said.
To deal with its reduced funding, the ABC is sacking 400 staff, closing regional radio outposts, axing state-based editions of 7.30 and closing the Adelaide television production house.
Cabinet minister Christopher Pyne, who represents an Adelaide electorate, has asked Prime Minister Tony Abbott to force the ABC to keep the Adelaide studio open.
