With regard to the “ABC Cuts” lead story (May 14), I wonder if Lucy Wicks and her cohort of Liberal axe wielders were to cut the National Broadcaster to the absolute bone and simply replace all programming with a live feed from the BBC, would anyone really notice the difference.
As it is now, over 70% of ABC TV programming is British and the networks’ default setting has always been, ‘the motherland’. So it’s never terribly surprising to find that the cultural make up of people marching under the ‘Friends of Aunty’ banner present as more Anglo Saxon than piping hot crumpets and tea. As far as I can glean, up here on the Coast, the local arm of the ABC is nothing more than a bloke called Scott Levi; nice enough fella, but I always feel terribly cheated when his local broadcasting fires up and we miss out on James Valentine’s excellent show from Sydney.
Levi’s tedious stream of folk musicians from the Hut, chamber of commerce chest thumping or gnarly surf reports from Avoca serve to impart far less meaningful local information in three hours than does the 45 minute, nightly NBN news. And the commercial coverage costs the tax payer nothing. I’m afraid that many of the self-indulgent elements of the ABC are an exorbitance we can no longer afford, especially during a time in which we are being told that money for hospitals and education is at a premium.
Email, 20 May 2014
Andrew Stark,
East Gosford