WHY THEY’RE EXTINCT: Neanderthals may have been early risers: Genetic material left behind from extinct hominins could play a role in modern sleep patterns.
Sticking to the truth - Numbers Game
Can I tell you something? It can all get a little Much, no matter what your circumstances are. Job/$$, health, family, pets, art, friendships/relationships, The World At Large: it can get to you. I mean, it gets to ME, and I figure I’m not that different from the rest of you.
That’s what I wrote about in my previous post, after my 6-month oncology check-in & crisis of faith. What I didn’t tell you last week is that, for a brief moment, part of me thought, “What if I just SAY that my blood-test numbers were worse than they were?”
I mean, everybody thinks I know medicine for some reason, so I could’ve made up some blather about a pre-treatment protocol where my condition didn’t warrant pharma-intervention but did require that I take several months off from <waves hands> All This, and I could’ve gone into 2024 with an empty slate.
Morgan Housel: A list of ideas, in no particular order and from different fields, that help explain how the world works: “…Fact-Check Scarcity Principle: This article is called 100 Little Ideas but there are fewer than 100 ideas. 99% of readers won’t notice because they’re not checking, and most of those who notice won’t say anything. Don’t believe everything you read.”
Why the ABC canned The Drum (and Ita saved Q+A)Jenna Price
When a former student then working for the ABC panel show The Drum asked me to go on as a panellist, I said I’d rather plunge my hand into boiling oil. Anyhow, he said: you made me take risks when I was a student. He said: Julia [Baird] wants you to come on. Eventually, I said yes, filled with dread.
Off the air: The Drum, which hosted by Ellen Fanning (left) and Julia Baird, has been cancelled.
Off the air: The Drum, which hosted by Ellen Fanning (left) and Julia Baird, has been cancelled.
After the show, he gave me a C minus. Do better, he said. Interrupt. Be yourself. The cheek of the youngster who, from recollection, was a straight high distinction student. He says now he can’t recall if he actually gave me a mark. “But C minus would have been about right.”
Now The Drum is dead, a victim of the chaos the ABC now finds itself in. Audiences for the national broadcaster have shrunk. Weekly reach has dropped by nearly 8 per cent over nine years. Under the eye of Ita Buttrose, the budget for the ABC has withered and perished. Sure, Labor’s done catch-up since it was elected in 2022, but this is an organisation built to inform and entertain all Australians far and wide at a tiny cost to the population. That’s a huge role to fill and it costs real money. On top of this, the ABC is constantly harassed by News Corp commentators who, for all I know, get bonuses every time they demean the public broadcaster.
Chris Oliver-Taylor, newly appointed chief content officer of the ABC, said last week that the ABC needed to be braver, to make change, to be big and bold. That includes ditching a loyal “appointment television” audience. We are all meant to catch-up-watch-later. The ABC’s chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor says it can be better to know when to pull the plug on things. The ABC’s chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor says it can be better to know when to pull the plug on things.CREDIT: JOE ARMAO
In June this year, I heard The Drum would be cancelled. Strange, considering the loyal audience of middle-aged women watching the panel show each night out of the corner of their eye as they went about the frantic daily business of 6 to 7pm. Here was a program that had panellists not in the business of being powerful or rich.
It focused on diversity, successfully avoided blues and built a middle ground. Last Tuesday, with just three days remaining for this season of The Drum, staff discovered the show would not be recommissioned. Axing is always bad news but the timing was appalling for Annie White, who was in charge of The Drum. She was told her whole unit would be disbanded while she was on leave for breast cancer treatment.
Response from the audience was immediate. The ABC local radio text line was inundated with sad viewers. The ABC switchboard received 2104 contacts, one of the largest reactions ever. Petitions started. Notes sent to the ABC generated generic replies. None of this will work. It’s not like the ill-fated decision to have a national Sunday night 7pm news. We all want what’s local.
One senior person said to me: “There has been a complete loss of strategy in news.” That’s the purview of Justin Stevens, in charge of a flailing 7.30. Not to say he won’t fix multiple problems in the end. Almost every single person I spoke to mentioned his youth and brilliant people skills.
ABC chair Ita Buttrose will not seek reappointment to the role when her term ends in March 2024.
ABC chair Ita Buttrose will not seek reappointment to the role when her term ends in March 2024.CREDIT: OSCAR COLEMAN “He didn’t get so far so fast without being good at what he does.” Expect the 6 to 7pm slot to become someone else’s problem now.
Expect repeats of Australian Story or One Plus One, also decommissioned, to replace The Drum in the short term. The ABC has announced how its brilliant stars will be redeployed. Baird will work across a number of platforms. Ellen Fanning will join local radio in Brisbane and continue news presenting. Dan Bourchier, whose work as Voice correspondent was unimpeachable, will become an integral part of the ABC News channel.
Eliza Harvey,The Drum’s executive producer, has been approached to be the new executive producer of Q+A, a program in dire trouble. It looks like it will run in eight-week chunks, a chance to refine. Patricia Karvelas has been appointed host for another year but perhaps with room for guest presenters, such as Baird.
Karvelas doesn’t generate huge rapport with her audiences, but you don’t have to love listening to her hounding politicians to death and asking the same question over and over again to know she serves democracy well. Patricia Karvelas will continue to host Q&A next year.
Patricia Karvelas will continue to host Q&A next year.CREDIT: Now it turns out that Ita Buttrose, who has always loved chain of command and authority, a characteristic enjoyed by the previous government, is also a fan of Q+A as a flagship.
It’s been mucked around during her reign, moved from Mondays to Thursdays and back again. Host changes. Plummeting ratings. I’d love spontaneous questions rather than the preplanned versions we have now. Buttrose is mindful of her legacy, another of her longstanding
characteristics, and the death of Q+A on the way to another election would look terrible. That explains why expensive Q+A survives. Yes, managers make decisions at a micro level, but boards govern at a macro level. Rarefied. Dealing with those who have power and influence.
The ABC keeps telling us its content should be audience-led which makes you wonder why it is protecting the 7pm news and Q+A. Instead, why not lavish funds on investigations that deliver content to every corner of the ABC. Stop banging on about platforms. Do brilliant journalism at length and share it every which way you can. It can be about an alleged sexual assault at Parliament House or about homeless people in regional Australia living in tents.
I appeared on The Drum for the last time on Tuesday, the day its axing was announced. Even I have had countless messages across countless platforms about how sad viewers were. This time that former student gave me a high distinction. The cheeky bugger.
Jenna Price is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and a regular columnist
