Screen Forever 2025: Hugh Marks: “I don’t love this term, the ‘ABC audience.'”

Last week in an appearance at the Screen Forever conference, ABC managing director Hugh Marks was asked by moderator Virginia Trioli if he believes ABC has a key central audience on which most of its attention should be focused?

“I don’t love this term, the ‘ABC audience’,” Marks replied. “I understand it. There is a dedicated, obviously, following of the ABC. But you know, I have to regard all Australians as our audience. And that’s the way we have to operate, so that we are trying to reach as many and be more important to more Australians every day.

“Australian audiences, they want quality. They want to see their stories, but they want those stories to be told well. Telling stories well costs money, like, let’s be honest about it. So, I think as long as we tell stories well, we can reach more audience. We do need to redefine maybe the choices that we make and the sorts of stories that we tell and be more aspirational and reaching more Australians more often, across all of our businesses. But telling stories well, ultimately, will deliver audience.”

ABC Chair Kim Williams has recently noted the broadcaster needs to do better in attracting younger audiences.

“Younger people -it shouldn’t be a surprise- when you have a good show, young, old, left, right, rural, metro …. whoever they are, they all come to it,” Marks said.

“Anything that rates highly, gets a broad audience. It’s very difficult to just chase young audiences. We can lose sight of the fact that broadly-appealing shows on the ABC rate well with all demographics. And so that’s obviously something we want to do more of.”

He added, “There will be things that we do because we should, and there will be things that we do that are very audience focused, and the ABC, as opposed to other media organisations, needs to get that balance right. That’s just the constant discussion that we have.”