Cuts to ABC budgets have left Adelaide without a city-based orchestral music producer for ABC Classic.

While Hobart, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney have retained local producers specialising in the recording of concerts for broadcast, Adelaide – Australia’s UNESCO City of Music – now relies on casual producers to fulfil a reduced recording schedule.

The full-time producer role was left vacant in December 2022 when the incumbent resigned. The role was made casual, then redundant. This has led to a substantial drop in the number of recordings of Adelaide musicians and no live broadcasts at all, former ABC Classic presenter Simon Healy told Limelight.

Photo © James Kovin/Unsplash.

“There was a time when the ABC would broadcast at least one live recording from Adelaide a week,” Healy recalls. “In 2019, before COVID, in Adelaide alone, the ABC recorded 49 or 50 concerts. The COVID years weren’t typical after that, of course, but in 2022 that number dropped to 26 – and that was when we still had a full-time producer here.”

Since the producer position was made casual, the only concerts recorded for broadcast were from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and three from...