The ABC’s digital transformations: a continuing (hi)story.

Digital media convergence is changing the relations of production, relationships with the audience and concepts of professionalism within broadcast production. The digital environment is undiscriminating: words, sound and pictures can all be created or collected, manipulated, stored and replayed using the same medium. Digital media can appear on the ‘old media ’ platforms of print, radio, television, but the Internet is central to the dissemination of multimedia content. This paper explores how a public service broadcasting organisation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is introducing cross-platform skills in regional radio, and the implications for traditional work practices and workplace relations. It also considers the ways in which broadcast journalists using digital media think about their professional roles and the changing nature of the relationship with their audiences. The first part of the paper begins by analysing the traditional prevalence in media production of a Weberian division of labour, between ‘artist ’ and ‘artisan’. It goes on to argue that technological developments and reductions in public funding were together responsible for two significant changes to industrial relations of production a