As I walked the 20 minute stroll to St Marys station, I imagined what it would be like inside the ABC office. I picture seeing a lot of people walking around, I picture a different floor for every type of show they produce. I picture walking down a corridor and looking through one-way glass to see playschool being recorded. I pictured myself feeling quite at home there considering I always had ABC on TV as a child. Oh boy was I wrong.
As I walked up to the group of University students already standing outside, I was extremely eager and excited to see what goes on inside the building. Through the glass entrance on one end, you could see big plush toys that were duplicates of the characters on playschool. After walking through the sliding doors and signing in as a visitor, we were then handed an official ABC lanyard. With my name printed on a sticker and stuck on the front it was official, we were visiting.
One of the guides took us to a room to take a seat and wait for everyone else in our student tour to sign in. Then split into three groups, we were taken around the office. There was no playschool studio in sight, mostly just desks. Our guide explained each section of the office, where it began and where it stopped. He explained exactly who the people were and their role in ensuring the ABC newsroom was current. For example, 6 o’clock news, International Affairs, Sports, World News, Breakfast TV. Above each run of desks, TV’s were attached to the roof. Placed back to back in a line of four, each television showing a different channel. The channels were based on what each section was reporting on. Sports games for the sports sections, overseas channels for the World news section and regular Australian news channels for current affairs.
As we moved around the newsroom, we got to see a small glimpse of editing suites were there were people hard at work creating news stories to be viewed that day. Our guide explained that many reporters were out on location, collecting interviews, footage and ideas for stories. In the furthest corner of the office, we found ourselves outside a small TV studio which was in the process of recording a segment. It was really cool to see how they can fit a studio in and create TV segments in a small area. As we walked back around heading to a different part of the office, I did spot a hand-written page on a pink piece of paper titled “Election Drinking Game” which gave me a little laugh.
The last thing we saw was the recording room, where the people inside explained that they are recording all Sports games on almost all channels. This area was designed to record 17 sports games at once. One employee stressed the importance of his job as you don’t want a reporter to come in and ask for footage of a particular game and you missed the opportunity to record it. The reporter would then not have the footage and may not be able to run his story.
With only a quick tour of the ABC, across one floor of the building, I learnt a lot. The fast moving tour showed a small snippet of what it would be like working in the office. Every person with a specific job and all as important as each other. The ABC works as a team to produce content around the clock. This ABC field trip was nothing like I imagined it to be, although we did only see one floor and one studio. I would have loved to spend a whole day walking around, exploring and observing what goes on inside only one of the ABC headquarters.
Western Sydney Development 