ABC Chairman Allegedly Warned Triple J To Keep Hottest 100 On Aus Day Over Funding Concerns
An ABC chairman reportedly told triple j that "activists can get burnt at the stakes".
During yesterday’s senate inquiry into the ABC, it was alleged that former chairman Justin Milne pressured triple j into keeping the Hottest 100 on Australia Day.
Triple J moved the Hottest 100 in 2017, moving it off Australia Day after conducting two separate listener surveys that found majority support changing the date. It followed a grassroots campaign led by Indigenous activists, which took off in 2016, partially due to A.B. Original’s song ‘January 26’.
But yesterday’s senate inquiry reveals what’s long been rumoured: that the decision was unpopular within the higher ups of the ABC.
As per The Guardian, Triple J’s content manager Ollie Wards told the inquiry that then ABC chairman Milne warned radio executives and former ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie that the government would remove funding if they moved the date.
According to Wards, Milne said it was “too controversial”, and that, despite the public surveys, “activists can get burnt at the stakes”.
“He was talking about Galileo, the astronomer,” Wards clarified, “that he had gotten burnt at the stake for saying that the world was rotating around the sun.”
It has been public knowledge that Milne opposed the date change, but Wards now revealed that the issue was directly linked in the meeting to protecting the government funding of Jetstream, an ABC digital infrastructure project that cost $500 million. According to Milne, it was more important.
Wards said that Milne said he and other executives should “take one for the team” and “look after interests of the whole ABC”, despite the year of conversations the station had had with its listeners.
Guthrie didn’t step in to support the triple j, but the board eventually allowed the station to make its to own decision.
Back when the decision was announced in November 2017, then-Liberal Communications Minister Mitch Fifield wrote to the ABC asking them to return the Hottest 100 to January 26. Cory Bernardi also made his own Hottest 100 on Spotify of Australian music which, among other suspect choices, featured the national anthem.
It’s noteworthy that Wards made these comments, by chance, on the 30th anniversary of the first-ever Hottest 100, serving as a not-so gentle reminder that the countdown hasn’t always been held on Australia Day.