Metablogging

The ABC listens

John Quiggin13 Comments

Following complaints by readers, which I shared, I emailed my contact at the ABC about the fact that the sound from ABC programs is available only in RealPlayer. As I said in my email

The sound version of the talk is available on the ABC Website only in RealPlayer format. RealPlayer is a real pain – it’s hard to download the player without being harassed about paying for it and it seems to need upgrades every other week. If the site is going to have a single choice it should be Quicktime, but a better option would be to offer all three major formats. I can’t believe that this would be a huge effort compared to the cost of producing the content in the first place, including the time contributed by the ‘talent’.

Having complained about websites before, I expected, at best, an autogenerated reply. I was very surprised therefore, to get an immediate phone call from Paul Bolger of the ABC who explained the situation. Quicktime is ruled out because it can’t be operated in a way that stops downloading, which is problematic for the ABC because their programs typically contain copyrighted music (yet another thing wrong with copyright, IMO, but I digress). The initial choice of RealPlayer over WindowsMedia was based in part on the commendable desire not to extend Microsoft’s monopoly any further, but it’s likely that WMV format will be made avaiable sometime soon.

Meanwhile, there are more exotic possibilities such as MP3 (the problem again being the need to excise music content) and Icecast, a format derived from Ogg Vorbis an open free format of which I was vaguely aware, but have never used.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I’ll be glad to pass them on. In the meantime, I can only say that if this kind of responsiveness was par for the course, consumers would be a lot happier.[1]

fn1. The snarky economist at the back of my brain points out that, if this kind of responsiveness was par for the course, we’d all pay more. But I’m not convinced that the cutback in customer service symbolised by the rise of the call centre and automated phone response systems is economically efficient. First, I think there’s an externality effect. It’s hard (or at least I find it hard) to keep track of which companies and institutions are particularly bad and which are just having a bad day, so the general effect is to increase general dissatisfaction rather than dissatisfaction with a particular company. By contrast, I find it easy to remember and react (maybe overreact) to bad service on the premises. A second point is that you mostly call when you’re having problems, so the company has an incentive to get rid of you. In effect, by cutting back on consumer service after the event, it’s reneging on an implied term in the sale of contract, but you can only detect this if you already regret entering the contract in the first place. The cost for the company is that people with minor problems, who’d be grateful for having them fixed and would be a source of repeat business, are also annoyed by their bad treatment.

13 thoughts on “The ABC listens”

  1. Have you been to Real’s site lately? The prominent orange button hast this text around it:

    Presenting RealOne™ SuperPass. The easiest way to play brillant audio, amazing video, and the best subscription-only content on the web…all in one place. All you need is One. RealOne.

    FREE 14-Day Trial

    That is not the free player, instead It is a free trial SuperPass. Now, let your eyes wander over to the girl with the pearly whites. What’s that over her head?

    As for the “frequent upgrades”, just turn off the message center in the preferences (under Tools).

    While I commend you for complaining to ABC, you should also complain to Real. I’m curious what that experience will be like.

  2. John,
    The excellent response was probably because either you have a personal contact there or because you are a public persona. Over the last year or so I have made about a dozen email complaints / comments to the ABC. Every response I have received has been a variation of the following:

    1. You are wrong.
    2. The ABC is as pure as the driven snow.
    3. A bit about something on the topic that the ABC has broadcast but which fails to address the original complaint / comment.
    4. An incomprehensible coda about the ABC’s role, of the sort that Don Watson is so scathing about in “Death Sentence”.

    I would like to know how to get past the corporate persona and actually connect with human beings. Of course I appreciate that the ABC is probably in “defence” mode and that there are reasons for it all, but it drives me nuts.

    Ross

  3. How do I ‘save’ a file from the ABC’s web so I can replay it to myself some time later and generally move files around? Perhaps its easy, but I haven’t figured it out. Any suggestions?

    NG

  4. How do I ‘save’ a file from the ABC’s web so I can replay it to myself some time later and generally move files around?

    You can’t. As I point out in the post, this is to prevent you downloading music. Let’s hear it for copyright, once again.

  6. As a former (THANK GOD!) employee of ABC New Media — and certainly no advocate of its management, I’d like to point out that it does run one of the largest websites in Australia on aprox. 14 actual web developers… and at least 3x their number of middle management. The continuing attrition inside new media (and their policy of making life so vile for those with ideas etc that they’ll just shut up and go away), means that they do have individuals that have time to answer audience complaints personally…. they don’t have anyone left to manage. On the other hand the format argument is a furphy… but there certainly isn’t staff to process streamable media in multi-formats… for a start there is probably still only 1 computer with a video card.

    Of more importance is the fact that they have stopped supporting content creation in a range of areas…especially the arts. Arts Online is now just a shell running old material because management have taken the part-time developer from it, made the producer redundant… and are pretending to the punters that it’s business as usual.

    Standard for the arts across abc networks of course…

    Instead of fretting about copyright, put some energy into requiring ABC to meet its charter obligations…. between the FTA and increasing anti-intellectual rhetoric from all quarters we’re in danger of losing Australia’s creative community.

  7. Thanks John.

    Perhaps they saw you in your Karate uniform and that’s the reason for the quick response. I assume you go into the studio to record your pieces.

    Mole – my experience of RealPlayer is that it doensn’t let you off that easily. Perhaps it’s improved. I’m not willing to risk it as it also used to be difficult to uninstall completely.

    Shame, as they had a big lead over MS in the early days. I think they’ve blown it though with their intrusive marketing.

  10. The really silly thing is that it’s trivially easy to circumvent RealPlayer’s restrictions in any number of ways as discussed here – either by connecting a recording device to your sound card output, or using tools that can capture the digital stream going to your sound card and recording it to hard disk.

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