Hitting back...ABC chief Mark Scott.
MEDIA companies have only themselves to blame for their woes and should stop attacking the ABC's expanded services, according to the public broadcaster's managing director Mark Scott.
The slapdown of his industry critics came just days after it emerged that the BBC was to scale back its operations, including scrapping some radio and overseas services and reducing its website.
In recent months, Mr Scott has announced the ABC's intention to expand its overseas television service and establish a 24-hour news channel using its high-definition signal.
Last month he launched the ABC Open website to produce expanded regional content.
The expansion has come under sustained criticism from private media operators such as Sky News and Fairfax Media, owner of The Age, which argues the expansion is a threat to the survival of private media in regional areas.
"I do not believe it is the role of the ABC to disrupt the commercial landscape by building empires with public funds," Fairfax chief executive Brian McCarthy said last month.
Others have argued that the ABC has exceeded its charter, which makes no mention of the internet. But Mr Scott, writing on the ABC opinion website The Drum, said the interpretation of the charter ''has not altered''.
''What has altered in recent years is the attitude of some of the commercial media companies,'' said. ''Threatened by the pace of change, the inflexibility of their own business models and their reluctance to invest, the critics now demand that the ABC pull back.''
He argued that the increasingly vocal criticism from commercial rivals underscored the need for the ABC.
''The blatantly commercial agendas on display simply reinforce the need for a strong independent media voice,'' he said.
He dismissed the idea that the ABC should be privatised, noting it would ''become yet another commercial broadcaster competing for advertising, with a programming strategy to match''.
