Musica Viva’s Artistic Director says current cutbacks betray broadcaster’s Charter and will cripple classical music industry.

The Artistic Director of Musica Viva Australia has sharply criticised ABC Classic FM for what he sees as fatally damaging cutbacks in live broadcasting. Carl Vine, who has headed Australia’s chamber music powerhouse since 2000, says that a lack of consultation and misunderstanding of the ABC’s charter is “ripping the guts” out of an industry that has increasingly struggled to make its voice heard in recent years.

Vine’s chief concern is with the swingeing cuts that have been made to ABC Classic FM’s live broadcast unit. “About six years ago, there were, I think, 600 concert broadcasts a year on the ABC,” he explains. “For 2016, that’s been reduced to 300 a year. I believe that this year it’s going to be 100.”

Late last year, Limelight was given statistics by the ABC that confirmed figures for 2016: “By the end of 2016, ABC Classic FM will have broadcast roughly 300 new Australian concerts, it will have repeated roughly another 300 and under our agreement with the EBU it will have broadcast approximately a further 300,” the broadcaster said, adding that commissioning for 2017 “will be aiming for similar numbers and a similar ratio.”

However, this doesn’t tally with the figure of 100 that Vine has been told in face to face meetings. “Those are the figures that have been suggested by the people at Classic FM that we as a concert presenter deal with,” he says, adding that at no point has the broadcaster ever engaged with Musica Viva with respect to the impact of any cutbacks. “That is not a consultation, that is saying this is the figure for next year,” he declares.

Although the general impression is that the reduction in Classic FM’s live broadcast commitment is as a direct result of the July 2015 federal budget cuts to the ABC, in actual fact the broadcaster has been considering reductions in this area for longer than that. The ABC and SBS Efficiency Study, commissioned from Peter Lewis by the then Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull MP back in January 2014, makes it clear that significant cutbacks were already on the cards. The draft report of April 2014 clearly states that “in calendar year 2013, around half of the total Classic FM budget was expended on 610 live concerts… It is understood that the ABC is considering a reduction in the number of live recordings on Classic FM to 370 in financial year 2014-15.”

The report considers that, given the “low average weekly audience of Classic FM” the reduction in numbers could “assist in lowering the cost per listener,” but warms of the “potential impact of recording a lower level of state symphony orchestras, ACO and Musica Viva concerts on the classical music industry, the public and state governments.” It clearly believes that a minimum of 370 recordings would be necessary to allow the ABC to continue to meet its Charter responsibility of encouraging and promoting the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia – a condition of the devolution of the orchestras from the ABC and a key recommendation of the 1996 Mansfield review.

Not that Vine doesn’t appreciate the need for Classic FM. “It is a really important part of the whole ecosystem of classical music,” he says. “We now believe that if we fail to have a broadcast on the national classical radio station, its dramatic impact on sales of single tickets is massive. There can be a halving of the number of tickets we will sell for an event if it doesn’t go on the national broadcaster. So for us not to broadcast at least every concert tour is a massive blow. Like the ACO, the Brandenburg Orchestra and others, we are a national organisation, so national coverage is absolutely vital to our ticket sales.”

Vine’s concerns tally with the warnings in the Lewis report, which plainly recognises the importance of airplay to drive government investment in Australian classical music. “A reduction in the volume of live music recordings may reduce the level of output for original content and reduce the quality of service to Australian audiences,” it says.

“To me, there’s a misunderstanding of the basic Charter of the ABC, which is to ensure a vibrant artistic life that is otherwise not covered by commercial enterprise,” says Vine “Of course, classical music in this sense will never be covered by a commercial enterprise. However, it has to represent 200,000 to 400 000 people in Australia – that’s anywhere from one to two percent of the population. In terms of other audiences, it’s a small audience, but it is not insignificant.”

Despite the ABC’s reassurances that it has no immediate plans to reduce live broadcasting further, Vine believes the writing has been on the wall for some time and the damage has already been done. “This is already an evisceration. It’s a defamation of services and it’s ripping the guts out of what Classic FM should be doing,” he says. “And it’s not just in the last few years, it’s been going on for decades, and it’s bilateral. Both political parties have done the same thing.”

“If you go back 20 years, the ABC quite rightly used to pay musicians two or three thousand dollars for the right to broadcast concerts. That has been cut down to a few hundred dollars, or occasionally nothing at all. A broadcaster really has the responsibility to pay the people who provide the content, but because it’s such an incredibly important service, musicians are currently saying, ‘well, you should be paying us but you’re not, but we’ll put up with that because the only alternative is not being broadcast at all’. So it’s not just the number of broadcasts, the entire system is being dismantled piece by piece.”

The Lewis report would back Vine up and dispute any cutbacks based on perceived smallness of audience size. “The ABC considers that Classic FM relates directly to its Charter in relation to the encouragement and promotion of musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia and as such may be open to more qualitative benchmarking rather than quantitative,” it says.

“I actually sympathise with the senior managers at the ABC because they are suffering continual cutbacks, but this is attacking the lowest hanging fruit,” Vine says. “This is the easiest thing to cut and they’ve gone through quite viciously and looked at the lowest audience numbers and said ‘okay, we’ll cut them’”.

Meanwhile, Vine believes it’s the Australian public who are finishing up as the losers here. “In the end, it doesn’t matter if Musica Viva or the ACO or the ABO ceases to exist, because those places will be taken up by other organisations,” he believes. “But to lose the national broadcaster is an incalculable loss. And at this point, if these cuts keep happening, ABC Classic FM can no longer function as a national broadcaster.”