Drawing on a wealth of academic research, statistics and interviews with
key Australian media people including present and former Australian
Broadcasting Corporation staffers, this book explores the transitions of
the ABC under various types of organisational re-strategising,
governance and political shifts.
The book provides the reader with an authoritative narrative as to how
the ABC has lost its iconic status in Australian society, and unfolds
how the ABC has strayed from its respected public charter which endowed
the ABC with a distinctive and important role in informing, educating
and entertaining the Australian public. Successive federal government
funding cuts have shrunk staffing levels and services while it has
pursued a corporatist model that mimics the trappings and practices of
commercial media. In that process it has become politicised and
trivialised, thereby threatening its demise. The book is a unique and
timely contribution at a time of dwindling interest for the funding of
public assets everywhere. There is no other book in the market that
addresses the decline of the organisation (the ABC) and analyses the
reasons for its demise within an organisational theoretical framework.
The book is written for an educated general audience, with academics and
media practitioners specifically in mind, and has everyday applications
for business organisations operating in the public sector by bringing
together important findings of public funding, budgets, management and
organisational strategies and evolution.
