From the Archives, 1985: Huw Evans to quit ABC after 14 years
When highly-regarded news and current affairs presenter Huw Evans announced he was quitting the ABC, he had some harsh words on the direction the national broadcaster was taking.
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on July 31, 1985
After 14 years, Huw Evans is to leave the ABC. He says it “lacks intellectual thrust” and is “nearly ungovernable” because it has run down and lost morale and talented staff.
He says it is now so dominated by the entertainment-type values of the marketplace – as exemplified by The National – that he doubts it can be retrieved as a broadcaster of hard-edged information.
Huw Evans yesterday … the ABC has become a “prisoner of the marketplace.”Credit:Stephen Holland
Evans is the compere of Pressure Point, which is to be abolished from the end of this year, against his wishes. The weekly television debate on social issues is one of the five top-rating ABC-produced programs, and, at an annual cost of $300,000, one of the cheapest.
Evans is one of more than 600, or almost 10 per cent, of the ABC's permanent staff who have volunteered to quit under its voluntary redundancy package, the deadline for which was yesterday.
However, only 210 of them will be made redundant because applications are accepted only where the position can be abolished.
The ABC has to cut staff by between 400 and 600 to try to save $10 million this financial year.
Evans yesterday strongly criticised the ABC board and management for their failure to give direction and leadership, and to argue the ABC's case strongly and cogently in public.
The news that one of the ABC's top interviewers has quit comes only two weeks after Jane Singleton was axed as the compere of 2BL's City Extra, a move that has attracted considerable protest.
Evans's contract ends this year, but he said he did not want to stay on. “I don't want to hang around the corridors moaning about the place," he said.
Axed … City Extra host Jane Singleton, pictured after getting the bed news.Credit:Peter Rae
Evans said his criticisms were not motivated by animus at the abolition of Pressure Point, but because of his concern that the ABC was not committed to public broadcasting as he perceived it.
He attacked the ABC for becoming "a prisoner of the marketplace" instead of "boldly and aggressively setting the agenda, saying which issues are important and then deciding how to present those issues".
“The National has adopted many of the formulas in commercial news. It reflects what commercial stations know to be a market reality - it treats news as a form of entertainment," he said.
"If the ABC accepts the entertainment imperative as do the commercial stations it breaches its trust under the Act."
Evans said there must be a role on the ABC for sophisticated arguments on issues, and Pressure Point had had many such arguments, which had drawn a wide response.
BBC directors-general always argued cogently and passionately the case for the BBC, he said. "We don't do this and we have very little credit. It is why people are now asking, 'why do we need the ABC?’."
He said his judgment after a long stint with the ABC was that the ABC was not up to it.
"They have misread their functions and been convinced by the imperative of the marketplace.
"Whether any management could solve the problems of the ABC is open to question, but if there is no leadership given or the case argued for the ABC's reason to exist, then it is in very deep trouble.
We get apple-pie motherhood statements at one end of the ABC and a commitment to the marketplace values at the other.”
As it turned out The National did not continue beyond 1985. Predecessors This Day Tonight (1967-1978) and Nationwide (1979-1984) would be deemed greater successes.