The most common case for public broadcasting is a fairly simple ‘market failure’ one: the market will under provide certain types of socially desirable broadcasting content. For many commentators on the left, that content is left wing or anti-corporate opinion which, it is argued, won’t be broadcast on commercial networks for advertising considerations. Some commentators on the right fear that ‘high-quality’ news and opinion won’t be broadcast: the challenge for the right that the high-quality content provided is balanced.

Different ends, but both cases are implicitly or explicitly based on the market failure argument. (Never mind that this argument assumes there is some sort of ideal mix of content in broadcasting - few people ever fear that the ABC might be over-providing left-wing or high-quality material, a distinct possibility when something is provided by the government.)

But the operation of the ABC does not reflect its rationale. Australian public broadcasters (including SBS of course) more often than not act as if they were simply another commercial broadcaster. ABC Commercial is the most obvious example - I beg anyone who is concerned about the demise of their audio book wing to search the internet for audio books, which are available not just cheaply, but often free. (See LibriVox.) Now the ABC has been convinced by a series of breathless, hyperbolic stories about Second Life that glorified chat-rooms are THE FUTURE:

ABC Island, the third-most-visited commercial site in the online game that has more than six million members globally, was found as a “bombed, cratered mess” yesterday.

Craig Preston, head of technology for ABC innovation, said only the digital transmission tower was left standing on the island, which cost the ABC tens of thousands of dollars to create. “It looks like we’ve had some enormous cyber-bomb set off on our site,” Mr Preston said. “Somebody has nuked us in some way, shape or form, and they’ve obliterated almost every object on the site.” (‘ABC’s virtual site ‘griefed’)

I’m not that concerned about the ‘tens of thousands of dollars’ it took to build the island: but why has the ABC decided that this sort of activity fits its brief? There does not appear to be any under-provision of idiots with money to spend in Second Life.

The term for this sort of behavior is ‘bureaucratic drift’. Public bureaucracies, which lack the profit motive of the private sector, have a tendency to pursue their own aims, rather than the aims of the legislative coalition which gave them their legitimacy. Depending on how that coalition is structured, it may not be possible to restrain the bureaucracy to its original purpose. The ABC displays this attribute clearly.

Another example: The Great Global Warming Swindle. As usual, discussion about the ABC’s purchase of this doco has been filtered through the usual partisan arguments - on the right, ABC bias, or the left, the ABC board - but why is the ABC showing this film at all? It seems odd that the public broadcaster would be competing to out-bid a commercial network for the rights to show anything. If it was going to be shown anyway, then why do taxpayers have to pay for it, rather than advertisers?

This piece says that Channel Nine passed on the documentary, which may or may not mean that Nine was outbid - but the existence of partial Australian commercial interest, as well as the fact that it was originally screened commercially, indicates that the market for The Great Global Warming Swindle probably hasn’t failed. And of course, it is available for free on the internet, so its already being provided to Australian audiences in some capacity.

But of course, the ABC’s economic and social rationale doesn’t provide its support. The ABC benefits from its place in the status quo of Australian political life. The ABC was founded almost by default in 1932, just because the intellectual zeitgeist thought that public broadcasting could encourage national harmony and social cohesion, which commercial operators could not possibly provide. That sort of lofty, naive nationalism may have disappeared, but the broadcaster remains.

Indeed, compared to its ideological sibling, the BBC, the existence of ABC receives little critical analysis. The BBC has been the subject of inquiry after inquiry, attempting to redefine its role in a marketplace littered with new competition from the internet and cable broadcasting. In Australia, we are still stuck on Maxine McKew, Keith Windschuttle, and ABC bias.

The Second Life stupidity and The Great Global Warming Swindle should indicate that the ABC is organisation that has drifted dramatically from its original rationale. Simply put, anything a commercial operator can do, the ABC shouldn’t.