ABC Underground
by Darce Cassidy
As ABC staff have felt under attack from governments, pressure groups or their own managment they have responded both in a traditional trade union manner, but also through mimeographed newsletters and through a special ABC art form - the false memo.
Sir Henry Bland, budget cuts and Alvin Purple
Sir Henry Bland was appointed Chairman of the ABC by the Fraser government. In July 1976, shortly after he took up the position, he issued a memo to all ABC staff. His reference, in this memo, to the ABC providing value for money was seen in the context of savage cuts in the ABC budget, and government suggestions that the budget cuts should take place primarily in the current affairs area. He was also critical of the rather racy content of the ABC comedy program Alvin Purple, which he suggested "may excite the few, but offend the many". A few months later another memo was published over what looked like his signature.
A natural sculpture?
Click here for the story behind program makers agitation to be located near broadcasting facilities, and this sculpture in the courtyard of the St James Building, the ABC's Melbourne headquarters in the 1970s
Broadcasting from the back blocks - ABC run out of town
In the seventies and early eighties the ABC Board and senior management planned to move the ABC to the outer suburbs in the major cities. Land was purchased at East Burwood in Melbourne, and a site in the vicinity of French's Forest was considered for the Sydney headquarters.
Click here for the story of the long battle by ABC program makers to maintain the ABC's presence in the city, and to protect the ABC's connection to economic, political and cultural life.
Which senior ABC people were known as Servalan, Captain Queeg and Sir Toady?
Many of the underground newsletters which flourished in the ABC of the seventies, eighties and early nineties were polite, if not always respectful of senior management and the ABC board.
Publications included Rampages (Radio Action Movement), Aunty (the Aunty Committee), Grapevine, No Relocation News. and the the right-wing Broadcaster (believed to be linked to Santamaria's National Civic Council) as well as material published by the ABC Staff Association.
However the irregularly published Steam Power, in its later years, took to printing the salaries of senior executives it criticised in brackets after their names. Dame Leonie Kramer, Chair of the ABC board, became known as Servalan, after the ruthless and autocratic figure in the science fiction drama Blake's Seven. Russell Warner, the bad tempered and authoritarian head of radio current affairs became Captain Queeg, while Sir Talbot Duckmanton was unfairly dubbed Sir Toady. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to call him Sir Humphrey.
