Tom Elliott, the son of right-winged Liberal bulldog John Elliott, has made ridiculous comments about Triple J and the ABC on this conservative radio program for Melbourne station 3AW.
Elliott hummed along to the often-repeated Murdoch tune attacking the ABC. Not surprisingly Elliott followed continued his self-interest ABC attack in the Murdoch owned Herald Sun. He suggesting that the ABC’s funding should be cut because Triple J is stepping into, apparently what Elliott believes is, the exclusive domain of the commercial networks, including his own employer 3AW.
In the Herald Sun, Elliott wrote, “Aunty’s role in big cities like Melbourne and Sydney is far less obvious. Why, for example, do we pay Triple J to play youth-oriented pop/rock music when several commercial FM networks already cater to that audience? The same argument can be made against the ABC’s AM band talkback stations; commercial entities (such as 3AW) already fill that niche. Why should they have to fight for listeners with a taxpayer-subsidised broadcaster?”
His solution is to move the ABC out of major centres and have the network cater for regional areas (ie: ones he does not broadcast into). “The ABC should focus on the less populated parts of Australia where commercial organisations find it unprofitable to compete. Media-rich capital cities, however, should be left to the free market, which can provide both talk and music in exchange for advertising (a necessary evil in our society),” he wrote.
His alternative is for the ABC charge people to listen to its stations. “If Aunty really wants to broadcast in metropolitan areas, it should do on a subscriber-only basis — and then see how many people are voluntarily prepared to pay for it,” he added.
As expected, Elliott took a battering for his fascist comments on Twitter.
@TomElliott3AW did you really just compare triple j to nova, fox and austereo et al?
— davethescot (@davehinnrichs) August 27, 2015
Triple J was the number one radio station in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth in the most recent radio survey. ABC AM station 702 in Melbourne challenges Elliott’s ratings every survey.
There is no doubt that Elliott’s dollar value, as a broadcaster, would increase if his perceived competition removed.
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