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