The ABC is expected to announce as many as 100 job cuts on Thursday, before a major restructure of the corporation kicking in on 1 July.
Guardian Australia understands some ABC staff have been notified of meetings with management and the managing director, David Anderson, will be making an announcement about job cuts before the end of the financial year.
The ABC is diverting resources away from traditional broadcasting towards improving its digital platforms – ABC iview, ABC Listen and ABC News – and promoting their use as part of its five-year plan, released on Friday.
The ABC declined to comment.
Anderson foreshadowed last month the restructure would lead to redundancies in both management and staff ranks.
“Change is never easy,” Anderson said in May. “Clearly this restructure impacts some of our leaders. Where this occurs, we will seek to redeploy as many affected employees as possible. But we expect there will be some redundancies and consultation with those leaders who are impacted is under way.”’
The biggest restructure since 2017 will see regional journalists moved into the news division, while radio networks, including Radio National and Triple J, will move into a single content division alongside television.
The powerful new content division under the recently appointed Chris Oliver-Taylor will be responsible for all screen, audio and digital content while news programming will be managed by the news director, Justin Stevens.
Oliver-Taylor, the former Netflix director of production for Australia and New Zealand, was appointed in March.
The cuts come in the same week as staff at the public broadcaster received their first pay rise after a lengthy industrial campaign, taking home a 4% increase on their base rate of pay and a one-off bonus of $1500. Another 4% will be delivered in October.
The five-year plan will involve major changes to work practices with redundancies expected across all divisions as the corporation moves into a digital-first model, sources say.
Technology, audience behaviour and demographic changes mean the ABC has to undergo a “significant transition” from maintaining both traditional broadcast and digital processes towards becoming an integrated digital operation, Anderson said last week.
“By 2028, the ABC will serve more Australians on the platform of their choice with made-for-digital content and journalism on ABC News, ABC iview, ABC listen and on major third-party platforms,” Anderson said.
“Australians trust and value the ABC and this will not change. As we move through this period of digital evolution, Australians can continue to rely on us for the content and services that inform, educate and entertain.”
The cuts are the first mass job losses at the corporation since 2020 when the ABC cut 250 staff across news, entertainment and regional divisions to meet a $41m annual budget shortfall.
The former Coalition government imposed an indexation freeze in 2018 which effectively cut $84m after repeatedly slashing the ABC’s budget to the tune of $783m in funding since coming to power in 2014.
