Review urges Australia to end Asian radio, TV

Review urges Australia to end Asian radio, TV

CANBERRA (Reuter): An inquiry urged Canberra yesterday to shut down the Asian radio and television services of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), a quality public broadcaster slated by the government for inefficiency.

The ABC, a close equivalent of Britain's BBC, should also pare down its extensive management and also contract out much of its television production, inquiry chief Bob Mansfield recommended to the government.

Mansfield said the ABC should close Radio Australia, which serves 2.8 million Indonesian listeners each week, despite the Foreign Affairs Department's urging that the shortwave radio service to Asia advanced Australia's trade interests.

"The ABC should be released from the requirement to operate international broadcasting services and be permitted to direct the resulting savings to its core business of domestic broadcasting," he said.

Communications Minister Richard Alston told reporters that if the Foreign Affairs Department wanted to keep Radio Australia then it could pay for it, as the Foreign Office in London now pays for the BBC World Service in an arms-length arrangement.

Similarly, the government supports a low-rating satellite television service that the ABC broadcasts to Asia, Australia Television.

Mansfield said Australia Television should be handed over to the commercial sector by June or closed.

"There's an obvious expectation that domestic priorities should be a higher level of priority," he said.

The government is demanding budget savings from all its operations, and the ABC is expected to cut its budget of around A$500 million by about A$55 million next financial year.

The inquiry recommended that the ABC keep the A$20 million it would save from closing the international services, but Alston said there was a strong logic that "those funds ought to be applied in reduction."

But the inquiry saw other potential savings.

"The ABC managements ranks should be smaller, with managers assuming increased responsibility and accountability."

"The ABC should reposition itself as a program generator for television rather than necessarily a program maker -- other than in news and current affairs," the report said.

The ABC's news services -- independent from commercial interests and the government -- should remain untouched and the corporation should maintain its ban on advertising.

Critics of the ABC frequently demand that the corporation cut its government subsidy by taking advertising.

Its supporters say that would imperil its independence and inevitably lead it to pursue ratings rather than the quality programming demanded by the charter that sets out its responsibilities.

The critics ask why it should pursue "quality" that few people appreciate.

The ABC radio network that most closely fulfills the charter, Radio National, achieves extremely low ratings with its arts and other specialty programs.

Radio Australia has broadcast to Asia and the Pacific since 1939. It has an estimated weekly audience of 4.9 million, about 2.8 million of them in Indonesia and 700,000 in China.

It broadcasts seven hours a day in Bahasa Indonesia and five hours in Standard Chinese