Of the few items that might have a commercial value, I think there should be some independent assessment of the extent to which paid access would reduce community value (because it would dramatically reduce the number who would get access to the material).

If there’s a substantial commercial benefit (rather than a very marginal one) it should go up for free, and otherwise the ABC should put them up for sale on the website and in their shops on a ‘use it or lose it’ basis. For as long as they can demonstrate substantial commercial value in having paid access they should be able to maintain the policy, and when they can do so no longer the material should be made free.

The relevant amounts we’re talking about should be transparent so that the government could be given the choice to buy the content and donate it to the public domain, as the amount of money we’d be talking about would be very small beer.

As a first-time reader of your blog I must say I’m impressed by your ideas and I wholeheartedly agree. The only suggestion I can add is that they also broadcast ABC Grandstand on-line, the football as well as the cricket, and all other sports too, both men’s and women’s, of course. Also, would you proposed podcasting of the entire ABC catalogue include old programmes such as Countdown, Aunty Jack, etc., or just the latest ones?

Rhys.

Or for some model to promise he or she will use the airtime to strip naked.

I apologise for my earlier criticism - this is clearly a fantastic idea and should be adopted immediately…

Never mind manipulation by Channel Nine. All it would take is a single meme to sweep the internet to skew the result. Or for some model to promise he or she will use the airtime to strip naked.

Markets are places where people have a choice. If something is compulsory it is not a choice. I should also have the right not to participate if I do not want to. The issue that whate raised which I was trying to address is the “market manipulation” when you have a system where people do not have to participate.

Like all markets if it is open and transparent then we are relying on the good sense of those that think about these things to make sure they put in their choice. If there are not enough of them to go the way they think things should go then that is life. I get the feeling that some people think market manipulation in this situation is where the end result is not what they would like.

The problem with NG’s and the current scheme is who and how do you decide on what programs to fund. It seems to me that giving “the people” albeit “the interested people” the chance to vote is preferable to having a more select group of people decide through a not very transparent process which is subject to a lot more manipulation. Just witness what has happened at the ABC over the years.

I trust in the good sense of the people for them to decide what is best as they perceive it both for them and the community. They do not have to do very much to register a vote - except make a phone call and I expect a lot of people will vote. I think people underestimate the demand. My guess is promoted properly we would get a majority of people participating.

How any economist can argue against giving people a choice where they currently have no choice leaves me puzzled. I can understand the worry about market manipulation but I believe I have put up a suggestion that will stop it. In the unlikely event that it doesn’t then we can try something else but simply because something may happen is not a good enough reason not to do something. If we thought this way then we would never do anything.

To come back to the evil Channel XXXX there is nothing to stop another group organising themselves to try to defeat XXXX and I would expect and hope it would happen because people would be involved.

With respect to your PS quote I was not criticising NG’s proposal on that ground. Just making a point about not expecting any system to be perfect and to plan for it to change.

Further what is proposed works quite well with NG’s proposals and is not a criticism of them. It makes no difference to them.

Kevin, no-one is suggesting we have compulsory voting on ABC programming. Can you see the problem with voluntary voting where the only voters are people who care to go and click on the website?

I can’t imagine a valid reason for making the outcome of these votes mandatory. In the absence of making them mandatory, I can’t really see why one would not just leave NG’s system as is - it would, in effect, function like a more sophisticated feedback system than straight voting.

PS: this is entirely compatible with NG’s comments as I read them:

You do NOT try to define the system completely before you start. What you do is to define the minimum functioning system or you take an existing system and modify it. You start it up and you modify it and let it evolve according to the problems and opportunities that you encounter.

All markets can be manipulated and the ABC market as suggested is no exception. If it proves to be a problem then we can try to do something about it. My guess is that it will be harder to manipulate than you expect. Any voting scheme can also be manipulated but with secret voting (or buying) it is actually much harder than it appears unless - in the ABC case - you get corrupt brokers.

So our first and necessary step could be to modify the system so that brokers or people who use the money for others must make their votes public - otherwise the people who gave them votes could not know that they had done what they had promised. Going even further brokers should notify how they are going to spend their money before they do it. This then gives the rest of the community a chance to react to perceived manipulation.

This would make the whole community aware of the problem and if people decide that want the ABC to spend money on something that benefits Channel XXXX then that to me is not market manipulation but exercising free choice that they want viewers to go from the ABC to Channel XXXX (perverse but possible). If however, people sold their votes to a rival Channel then this should not be tolerated and if proven then those people - both buyers and sellers would be excluded from the market place. One way of making it difficult for people to sell their votes would be to make it impossible for a buyer to know the identity of the person who sold them the votes.

Again I will come back to the way successful information systems are actually built - and the ABC proposal is an information system. You do NOT try to define the system completely before you start. What you do is to define the minimum functioning system or you take an existing system and modify it. You start it up and you modify it and let it evolve according to the problems and opportunities that you encounter.

I will come back to a small but true anecdote. I was once part of a group that took control of a University student union by organising “the engineers” to vote. We won the first round but we were thrown out the next time there was a vote because people were aware of what was going on and the engineers were in a minority and they also appeared to desert the party:) It was market manipulation but it made the system better because there was more interest the next time around. If Channel XXXX was successful then all those people who did not take an interest the first time would be out voting the second time.

Perhaps the message is - we should not be afraid of doing something because there is a chance it will not work as expected. In fact it will NOT work as expected. It is how we react to these challenges that makes for very successful systems.

If this is not a satisfactory answer then I will try to come up with another possible modification that might work but I think secret voting, brokers declaring how they are going to vote, and seeing their actual votes before others vote will solve the problem that worries you. (Actually I have just thought of another way and that is to do voting incrementally and in stages)

I’m certainly not averse to public participation in decisions about what programs should be produced, but I don’t think it would be wise for ABC (or SBS) to bind itself too strongly to produce programs irrespective of the TV professionals’ judgments about what will work.

You’re not listening to Ken’s point. He’s suggesting the market can be manipulated. You’ve not responded to that.

It is going to be very hard to get enough people to sign up to make flower arranging a hot topic and good luck to you if you can. If people say they want something who are we to decide they should not have it produced. This is after all part of the magic of markets. They tend to throw up the unexpected.

Voting for ABC programming

Let me float an idea based on the idea of giving “the public” choice in how the ABC spends some of its money. Let me first define how the system might operate and I will leave it to others to speculate on what might happen.

The ABC decides that it will allow “the public” to vote on where some funds should go. It allocates some amount ,say $50M, of its own money to this fund. It then calls on people to optin to be given some of this money to vote where the funds are to be spent. Let the ABC open up the market to program content providers and for those people to put up proposals for programs or content. Programs could be existing programs or could be new ideas and anyone who had opted in to the system could put up a proposal. When a proposal is put up then the minimum amount of money needed for it be viable is noted. They also put in the maximum amount of money that they can spend. They also say how the money they receive will be spent (this might vary depending on the amount received. They also specify performance measurements on how they will measure success.

People now vote with their money for the programs of their choice but do it in the same way as optional preferential voting. Thus there is a maximum number of votes that a program can receive which is the amount specified and there is a minimum amount of money that the program has to receive to be viable.

Now divide the money from the ABC equally between all the people who had opted in. People can buy extra votes with their own money. Let those people now vote using a multiple optional preferential system on where their money is to go. Each person who votes can put as much of their money as they wish on different programs. They also say where their money will go in the case of a program being oversubscribed or not get enough money to be viable.

People can set themselves up as brokers. People can anonymously transfer their money to brokers. We set the system lose and see what happens. In effect we would have a gigantic election but the election would be for programs and content that the ABC might present. The funding would be for some period of time. There would be provision for what to do in the case a program does not fulfil its contractual obligations that it specified in its bid. The contractual obligations could specify some performance measures (number of viewers, number of podcasts downloaded etc).

In practice the system would be easy to operate and could go along the following lines.

People would optin to the system - by calling a phone number. They could at that time give their money to a broker.

The total amount per optin would then be calculated.

People could then add in more money of their own.

People would then vote the money under their control by voting remotely.

The voting would be done anonymously and the results tallied and the winners announced and the programs produced and broadcast.

Nicholas, that’s a big use of the ABC logo. It’s in your post, up top. It’s a visual thing: branding of that sort, visually, that way, beholds that you’ll meet what it stands for up-front in what you have to say. This reader’s thoughts are, in added response: take that branding on by all means, but ffs don’t ignore it, from the top. Glad you saw it is but one reader’s comment, of no real import, as this, as no doubt expressed poorly.

Cheers anyway and thanks for not seeing the negative. Seems you’ve sparked something of interest - will read it through.

You have come good. You have obviously completed your punishment and are now full bottle on The culture of the Integral. I’ve been wanting to know how the program went for some time. Please fill us in on its contents - preferably in under two words.

The feedback idea might not need to be expensive. I thought podcasting the back catalogue was expensive before someone on Troppo suggested BitTorrent. Likewise here I’d be very surprised if there were not open source packages around. Also, it depends on the architecture. Facebook is now becoming a very promising architecture for things like this. I know some people who were planning to develop a regional directory of rated services in particular areas - like plumbers etc. They estimated its cost at $500,000 till facebook came along. They now think they can get better functionality with an app in Facebook which could be built for $50,000.

This may not be practicable in this case, but the right infrastructure may come along. Any geeks want to give us a steer?

Amazon and ebay use these types of user feed back very effectively. But I suppose we are talking very expensive infotech add-ons here for what is afterall a “cash-strapped” organisation already fulfilling a myriad of demands bloody well.