Virginia Small - Strangling Aunty: Perilous Times for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Cover illustration: Richard Milnes / Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Gratitude for the extraordinarily generous and sustaining inspiration from Dr James Warn, Hamish Conroy, Edward Conroy and Patrick Conroy. Louise Kakti and Leon de Bord, thank you.

To the University of New South Wales Canberra, Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) School of Business for ongoing support and encouragement, especially former Head of School Professor Michael ODonnell and Professor of Finance and Deputy Head (Research) Satish Chand.

Thank you to the reviewers Maurice Newman AC and Dr John Cokley, as well as Palgrave Macmillans anonymous reviewer, for their invaluable feedback and perspicacious observations.

And finally, the generous time, insights and reflection by senior Australian politicians, former ABC senior leaders and former ABC senior staff who agreed to be interviewed for this research. Their confidential contributions are respected and highly appreciated.

This book is dedicated to my father the late Lloyd Small, an ABC audience member, true to the end.

Valerie Small, valete (2020) to my precious mother; and to Marion Edwards (2020), my irreplaceable Aunty.

This book provides a rigorous and timely analysis of the role of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) as a public service broadcaster by examining the impacts of changes and shifting dynamics in the external media environment, key political and business actors as well as the role of the internal staff culture, and the way in which this confluence of forces have begun to strangle the voice of Aunty (aka the ABC). It addresses a gap in the literature where previous publications on the ABC tended to reflect the cognitive scripts of the staff culture, and, as this book reveals, these understandings operate within the field and enact its norms in a defensive way, rather than providing a wider perspective as to how the staff culture serves as an actor in the operation of the ABC. Also, this book contributes significantly to the research literature with its rigorous analysis of the ways in which social media have transformed and dislocated the entire professional media environment and assesses the limited understanding that Australias politicians, ABC management and staff have had of this impact and its ramifications and consequences in terms of the ABCs necessary transitions, where the rush to change has overwhelmed all else. Drawing on Institutional Logics theory and Pierre Bourdieus field theory, this book extends the theoretical framing of the role of a public broadcaster as well as providing a richer understanding of the contested