Pearls and Irritations

I’d like to think that ABC News’ revamped online iteration is like an ancient Aunty’s death rattle. Surely, its demise must follow.

To aim its first screen (front page?) at the broadcaster’s mostly intelligent consumers is an insult. It’s appallingly inept. The new look was introduced several weeks ago, and despite complaints that must have followed – I wrote to Kim Williams and have, of course, received neither acknowledgement nor reply – nothing has been done.

Let’s dissect it a little. First, ABC consumers hardly want or need the pretty pictures that dominate ABC News online. We are not children. Unless to our grandchildren and children, we do not read picture books.

This morning (25 November) my eyes are seeing the glory of someone dressed as a wizard, a woman shooting a pistol, a banana gaffer-taped to a wall, a hand holding a mobile phone, a close-up of a fly, and ‘hoof-like’ shoes. Can images get any more trivial? Yes, every day they do on ABC News.

Then there are headings beginning, ‘Live Top Stories’, the upper-case T and S amateurish in a so-called professional and national news resource. (The world is watching.) The ‘live’ top stories (what is a dead one?) number – with photographs – only three: India’s success in the first test, a share-market report, and Meta’s saying that an under-16s media ban is out of step.

Then we have two big blocks of logos urging us to watch ABC television news or listen in – as we used to say – to it on the radio. Does this suggest that the online iteration is inferior?

Next is an insult to consumers: ‘For You’, goes the heading, including another erring upper-case letter. In smaller font is the sub-heading: ‘Stories grouped to suit your mood’.

My mood? Do I read the news in a certain mood? Should mood affect what I consume? How I consume it? What species of idiotic thinking is behind this? I see a handful of ABC marketing executives sitting around their glass-topped Ultimo table – yes, of course it’s oval-shaped; no hierarchy here – deciding on the best word, ‘mood’ … Yeah, great, mood, yeah, like, great grab, like, when you get up in the morning. Yeah, great, good, mood, let’s use it.

More pretty panels are headed ‘Lifestyle & Culture’, ‘Mood booster’, ‘Learn something new’, and ‘Daily Mix’, the writers by now equivocating over whether to use capital letters in headings or not.

How dare those responsible for the national broadcaster’s front page presume to know what I’d most like to read. ABC readers range infinitely in tastes and interests. What arrant stupidity (and its implied insult) it is to guess what might interest the majority and reduce it to the individual. And apart from anything else, the best news services always used to provide expert decisions about what people needed to know, not what might titillate them.

It gets only worse. The next heading is ‘Video Shorts’. Below it are images of the black hoof-like pumps — separate compartments for big toes. A blurb beneath asks, ‘Why are these “hoof-like” shoes so popular?’ I had no idea they were, and it is of no interest to me anyway. Next up is a photo of a glamorous blonde and a story about a priest losing his job over a music video. The inanity continues with a story asking why western Sydney has so many acai (a palm cultivated for its fruit, leaves and wood) shops. A photo of a smiling young woman in a hijab holding what might be an ice-cream accompanies.

It’s only when we get to ‘More News’ than any serious issues are addressed.

Your imposts and mine pay for this ludic nonsense. Yes, the ABC is desperate. It tries to retrieve its past news-face, which was mostly reliable and good, with less money year upon year. But when desperation means wooing an intellectually bereft younger demographic I can see only ABC News’ bit-by-bit demise as a result.

ABC News’ natural audience is older and smarter than the corporation’s executives’ presumptions about its audience. We’re the ones with a history of consuming the national broadcaster’s output. We fail to wander the streets holding a device. We decline to use social media to obtain current affairs. We are not idiots.

For more on this topic, P&I recommends:

Redesigned ABC website overtakes News.com.au as top online news publisher

ABC delighted to be trivial

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