The Mound - #21 - A Profitable ABC

Welcome to The Mound, a weekly newsletter in which we at Good One Creative pitch— for free — our solutions to the world’s problems

The ABC’s got a new Chief Content Officer and - careful! - he thinks the ABC can make more money. 

As the ex-Netflix executive somewhat alludes to, the major problem here is that the ABC’s prime directive is “to entertain, inform, and educate all Australians”. In some ways, it does a wonderful job; its news programs (both radio and television) do great with Australians over 60; and the ABC has a rich history of edu-taining children with shows like PlaySchool, The Bananas in Pyjamas, Round the Twist, and Bluey (for crying out loud). When it comes to entertaining, informing, or educating Australians between the ages of 10 and 60, though, the network has historically struggled. To fix that, Oliver-Taylor would suggest we get with the times and redirect money from the production of drama / comedy (an hour of which apparently costs $2mill to make) to - dun dun dunnnn - reality television. 

Series like Alone, he believes, serve as great inspiration for how the ABC can straddle the unspoken line between commercial success and public service. But with this approach he risks failing at both. 

Here’s how we fix it:

As pointed out by Oliver-Taylor, reality television’s big draw is that, whilst being cheaper to produce, it’s also a lot easier to sell overseas. People of all cultures will sit down to watch a man try and survive living in the woods - even an Australian man. And if an international audience doesn’t want to watch an Australian man, the concept for the show can still be sold for amounts that would shadow the ABC’s current sales.

In 2021-22, half of BBC Studios’ reported $3.07 billion (AUD) in revenue came from exporting its shows. In comparison, the ABC generated just $21 million in sales over the same period after spending $321 million on the production of said content.

With these numbers, we can safely say that the ABC isn't a great producer of internationally attractive content. That’s fine, Australia might say, because the ABC is meant to - say it with me now - “entertain, inform, and educate all Australians”. But if we charged the ABC with the additional responsibility of selling Australia to the world (yes, through content representative of our society) we might think about the problem a little differently. 

Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club is a wonderful organisation that does a lot of good - and makes Witherspoon an incredible amount of money. The simplified story here is that each month Witherspoon spotlights a book to her millions of members - but not before purchasing the movie rights to the book in question. She shares the book, sales go up, and so does the value of whatever IP she now holds.

Now whilst the ABC may not ever be able to produce a film like Ms. Witherspoon, they can do a great deal to promote emerging Australian authors (who in conjunction with a publisher will have already borne the initial risk of creating the IP). After pumping its value within Australia on programs across radio, television, and digital platforms, the ABC could then help sell the production rights to another, international production partner - as well as our locations, our talent, our everything. What’s the catch? Whilst the rest of the world can pay to see it, Australians with iView can watch it for free. Over time our writers could become something of a profitable, almost-natural resource and the ABC, now with a seat at the table, could slowly learn what works.

Happier writers, lowered costs, a stronger cultural standing abroad, and maybe even an invitation to the Emmys? Jeez.

You’re welcome, Australia.