ABC Online's History and Role
www.abc.net.au
 
The ABC's situation, regarding translation of broadcast material into an online form, is a little different from that of its commercial broadcasting peers. For a start, the ABC is both a radio and TV broadcaster on a national level. It also creates a wide range of information-rich material which translates well into text and which can exist as on-demand audio (unlike commercial or ABC metro radio strip-programming).
 
We are not trying to make a profit from the Web, nor are we having to grapple with problematic advertising strategies. In this we are not so unusual: many commercial web projects are very highly subsidized and are not expected to return profits.
 
The ABC has had an Online arm since 1995 and it's now formally recognised as a national network, on a par with TV, Triple J and other such ABC networks. ABC Multimedia acts in a co-ordinating, advisory and special projects, but the vast majority of web production is done by the broadcast production units themselves - the people who make the programs. It's the enthusiasm, skill and dedication of many hard-pressed broadcasters that has made ABC Online the success it is today.
 
There is strong support at board and senior executive level for online activity and for intranet development as well. Most critically, many program makers now regard the Web as a useful adjunct to their broadcast activity and are prepared to devote resources - however scarce- to a Web reflection of their projects. This is more true in radio than in TV.
 
The ABC Online service is consistently in the top 5 domestic web sites visited by Australians, and that includes search engines like Anzwers and Alta Vista. Currently running at over 38,000 pages of material on the site and upwards of five million page accesses per month, ABC Online is a very significant player in Australian online content.
 
ABC Online's approach has a number of features:

• Distributed production: the people that make the broadcast programs usually make the websites
• TV and radio sites which reflect the programming and add information for existing users but which do not attempt to replicate the experience of either TV or radio on the web
• High levels of interactivity and currency in many sites ( Triple j, News, BtN, Radio National)
• No advertising
• Special event sites ( elections, sporting events, political events) providing extensive coverage
• Production guidelines emphasising high accessibility and cross-browser compatibility as well as reluctance to use plug-ins
• Live streaming of selected audio output: Radio Australia and Triple J

The most popular sections of the ABC site are the News Online service and Triple J. Both attract hundreds of thousands of hits per week .