By Chloe Sipeki
For the ABC, it all started with a radio broadcast in 1932.
It was the dawn of Australia’s very own version of the BBC, and across the nation Australians tuned their radios and hushed their children to hear Prime Minister Joseph Lyons present the ABC’s opening message.
Almost 100 years and a whole digital age later, the unprecedented rise of social media and on-demand services has meant that for most modern Australian households, the radio remains silent and the 7pm news goes unwatched.
For so long, the Australian Broadcasting Commission played an integral role in keeping the nation entertained and informed. Now that the ABC is competing with several alternate media sources, they have been forced to find an answer to the question: What happens if no one is tuning in?
One ABC journalist said: “If we keep doing what we are doing, we are not going to remain relevant.”
“The heyday is well and truly gone,” he said. “The average listener is 60 to 70 years old and every time I find someone in their 20s listening to radio I think ‘this is rare’.”
The ABC has been forced to branch out in order to prove to the nation that it is still an essential presence in the lives of Australians. For the ABC, this means transitioning from traditional broadcasting to what will be a digital-first organisation.
The first step, according to this ABC employee, is for the corporation to meet its audience where they are at.
“It’s not how people live their lives,” the journalist said of the ABC’s televised news. “If they watch a video, they watch it on demand, so they don’t need the news anymore. Tik Tok is where the audience is.”
And so, the world of social media has gone viral at the ABC.
Since establishing its presence in the landscape of “vertical video”, the ABC posts on three TikTok accounts and 21 Instagram accounts focusing on news curated for different communities and interests. Under the account name abcnews_au on both Tik Tok and Instagram, the ABC reaches an audience of just under 1.5 million people.
Lena Tuck is a content creator whose informative, yet comedic, videos are posted on multiple ABC social media sites.
“I think the ABC are following where the statistics are going,” Tuck said. “People are consuming social media and looking at their phones way more than they are watching traditional media. I saw the importance of it early.”
She works in a team of creators who each cater for a different niche in the ABC’s social media landscape. According to Tuck (and the Instagram algorithm) comedy, food, religion, and general goofiness are topics which have proven to capture the viewers’ attention.
But in the process of creating so much that is new, what happens to the old ABC? How much is too much change?
As a longstanding, reputable news source, this pivot in the organisation’s broadcasting methodology has the potential to compromise the ABC’s reputation. Now that the transition from traditional to digital has become do or die, the network must consider how it will save face amongst the abundance of frivolous content found on social media.
“Maintaining the integrity and the bias is the most important thing,” Tuck said. “There is a hyperbole of people who will make clickbait news that’s not fact.”
While she has found that the use of the ABC’s editorial guidelines pose a challenge in creating appropriate content that has viral appeal, Tuck completely supports the values of the network.
“I feel like I can learn from an institution like the ABC rather than influencing on my own. Fact checking and being on top of a balanced report is what I’ve learned is so important.”
As for the longevity of the ABC’s radio and television broadcasting, this may be the beginning of the end. A report of the ABC’s five-year plan suggests that by 2028, audience engagement will be mostly through digital products via the preferred platforms.
As for those traditional media outlets, the ABC journalist said: “Radio is stable but it’s going down slowly.”
The alternative being opportunities in community radio and podcasting.
“Journalism is changing but those basics of getting facts right and having knowledge is always going to be important,” he said.
Through the ABC, Australia is witnessing the beginning of a new age of digital media.
It means big changes, but what remains fundamental to the ABC is providing quality content for all Australians.
Featured image: Mobile news is available to everyone at anytime. Photo: Camilo Jimenez/CC/Unsplash
