Australian Broadcasting Corporation

ABC TV Tim Minchin Opera House Broadcast Fail

The post below has been brought about by what I believe was very poor broadcasting by ABC 2 during tonight’s screening of Tim Minchin’s concert at The Sydney Opera House.

Now before I start, I want to communicate that it is my rule for myself, and anyone else that asks my advice, to not to be negative online. I simply feel it rarely solves anything. However tonight I am going to break my own rule. Tonight’s management of the Tim Minchin concert by ABC TV 2, was very bad in my opinion.

The situation:

At 8.30 pm ABC 2 started broadcast of Tim Minchin’s one off performance at Sydney’s Opera House. A highly publicised event, evidence in the fact that as you can see above it was the most prominent promotion on the ABC 2 website.

Around 20 minutes into the broadcast problems started. At first I wasn’t sure if the problems were my TV, or if it was part of the show. But a quick look at Twitter suggested others were experiencing the same issues. Being an avid watcher of MediaWatch I thus assumed that the ABC was having yet again more problems with its broadcast.

At about 9.00 pm, ABC 2 screened a pre-recorded message from Tim Minchin that explained a ship passing by the Sydney Opera House, may cause issues with the broadcast. At this time ABC 2 switched to a previous Tim Minchin concert. I believe at around 9.30 pm ABC2 returned again to the start of the scheduled Sydney Opera House performance, commencing again from the start. Though I cannot be sure of this as I had turned the volume on my TV down by then and moved onto something else.

Why I think ABC2 Failed:

I understand shit happens. Having worked in PR for some time now, I have managed crisis situations for a range of brands and clients. Whilst this instance is far from a crisis, one truth about any potential issue is; the way an organisation handles the problem has a massive impact on the public perception of how big the issue is.

Based on the broadcast and especially the pre-record, tonight’s failure was not something that was unexpected by the ABC. It seems it was such a real possibility that the broadcaster thought it prudent to create a pre-recorded message from Tim Minchin explaining the issue.

The pre-record begs the question; if the likelihood of broadcast failure was so great why had did it not warn the audience? And further more, if failure was so likely, why did it take around ten minutes for the broadcaster to screen its message acknowledging the failure and next steps on the resolution?

I assume there was not a simple technical solution:

I have absolutely no background in broadcast television, but I assume the ABC explored all options to direct the outside broadcast to another aerial that would not be obstructed by the passing of a large ship by the Opera House. I also assume the ABC had no control over shipping through the harbour during the broadcast. Thus one can assume there was nothing done wrong in this respect.

What I think the ABC could have done better:

Provide a warning and set expectations?

Again, I am not a broadcaster, but I think we can assume that the ABC could have screened a warning at the start of the program stating there was the potential the broadcast of the concert could be interrupted.

A simple message at the start of the broadcast communicating something like:

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the ABC would like to warn viewers our broadcast of tonight’s Tim Minchin’s concert may be interrupted. In the occurrence of such an event the concert will be replayed in full at the soonest possible time. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience that may be caused due to technical difficulties.

Had the program not been interrupted nobody would have given it a second thought. In the instance of interruption, which did occur, people would have at least been pre-warned and expectations set.

Moved to resolve the issue more quickly:

I think we can also assume that the ABC could have moved more quickly switched to the pre-recorded message and the pre-recorded concert. If so why not? The ABC obviously knew there was the very real potential of broadcast failure. Why did it take ten minutes for the broadcaster to respond to the issue? Why weren’t ABC staff watching the broadcast ready to instigate the pre-recorded message and concert more quickly? Again a quick resolution to the problem would have resulted in less audience confusion and less negative reaction.

Conclusion:

As I stated above, an issue is all about how you handle it and in my experience people react well to negative situations when expectations are set accordingly. Had the ABC pre-warned the audience, and acted more quickly to instigate its response I suspect the public’s reaction would have been supportive. As they didn’t, the reaction I observed on Twitter was highly negative. I also suspect their switchboard was jammed with complaints.

Of course this is a very first world problem. Nobody lost an eye, but still it erks me when simple things are not put in place to solve issues.

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Australia’s ABC ranks high in Twitter ranks

Teqnolog has prepared a whole heap of charts tracking the number of Tweets individuals and organisations are making across the globe. Within the charts it was interesting to see the ABC right up there in the top Twitter organisations globally.

Of course numbers of Tweets don’t mean much and don’t suggest conversation or engagement, but interesting in my mind none the less.
I doubt very much that the ABC is the world’s most productive news organisation – i.e. only four other news organisations create more stories than the ABC. As such this suggests they are pushing heavy into this territory more so than other organisations.

But on the other hand this stat tells us nothing about the value of the messages being tweeted or the way the ABC is using the medium to engage with its audience.

The ABC has a handy list of its Twitter accounts, but reviewing the majority of these the follwing counts are much lower than the follower counts and most push rather than converse. There are of course exceptions and ones that do provide conversation, but these appear to be in the minority.

Personally I have not really engaged with the ABC Tweets (but that may be my failure?) unlike I have with othe rmedia people like Renai LeMay (ZDNet Australia) and Jack Schofield (Guardian) who mix their tweets that drive to stories with conversation, opinion and true engagement.

What do you think? Have you engaged with the ABC online? Is the organisation using it effectively?

HT to Trevor Young who directed me to the Teqnoblog post.

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