Four out of five Australians wouldn’t pay for ABC TV if it were a subscription service
That’s how much we value our public advertiser broadcaster. But as it stands, at $1 billion dollars a year, on average $70 is taken each year from every *taxpaying* man, woman and child in Australia, or $280 for a family of four.*
In a survey of 500 Australians this week, more than half (52%) didn’t want to pay a cent. The situation got worse when they were asked if they would subscribe “like Netflix”? At this point the number of naysayers grew from 52% to 79%.
Truth be told, we all deserve a refund, and backdated 30 years
The cost to the nation of their ABC is not just a billion dollars a year lost, but their culpable-pro-rata-part in the billions of dollars wasted on policies that were practically pagan witchdraft which the ABC covered up. As leading failures of the fourth estate, the ABC consistently hid the incompetence of universities, professors and institutions like the BoM.
But according to the ABC, 72% of Australians say they are ‘Australia’s most trusted source of news and current affairs’. (I guess it depends on how you ask the question, trusted compared to what — the KGB?) With more careful questioning it turns out about 70% of adults think the ABC can’t be trusted to tell the right wing side of the story.
Two out of three people say that it’s biased to the left. Even 60% of Labor voters thought it leaned left. Even, wow, by crikey, 78% of Greens voters felt it “leaned left”. Was that them speaking the unspoken out loud? Are they proud that the national broadcasters uses taxpayer funds to represent just 5% of Australia? This might be a little window to the truth. In future surveys the Greens will learn to say, “the ABC is biased right” and blame Murdoch.
All up, most people would pay nothing, and those who might pay were only willing to pay $3 a month — meaning the ABC budget could be cut 75%.
The study was funded by the Menzies Research Centre, a right wing think tank. In comments on The Australian about the only response defenders of the ABC have is to accuse the Menzies Research Centre of being aligned with the Liberals. But we all know why the ABC haven’t run surveys exactly like this one.
The time to protest The ABC Swamp is coming.
Most swipe Left on dear Aunty
James Madden, The Australian
The majority of Australians believe that ABC television is not worth paying a single cent for.
According to an independent study conducted by True North Strategy, more than half (52.6 per cent) of those interviewed said if they had a choice, they wouldn’t be prepared to pay anything for access to the national broadcaster’s television content in its current form, while the other respondents said they would only be willing to pay (on average) $2.94 per month.
Did the ABC publish those “most trusted” survey questions, I’d like to see them if anyone can find them.
REFERENCES
The ABC Annual Report, Financial statement pages 116 onwards.
The ABC Annual Report, “Most Trusted” statistics p18
ABC: Chris Berg and Sinclair Davidson, Against Public Broadcasting: Why and how we should privatise the ABC.
h/t Skeptical Sam
*Corrected. To be more accurate, there are 13.5 million taxpayers in Australia so the cost is $74/taxpayer. h/t Lawrie