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The average ABC listener doesn’t much care for the reasoning behind a shift to paired breakfast hosts on radio (presumably to lift the energy levels and make the banter seem more “inclusive”, but decried as “FM-lite”). They just care that Red Symons is gone and Wendy Harmer is forced to share the microphone with Triple J alumnus Robbie Buck.

They don’t much care about the analytics that drove the Google veteran’s team to axe Lateline, Stan Grant’s The Link and science show Catalyst last October. They only care that old favourites were being decimated, and that the new offerings seem to betray a complete lack of understanding of what the ABC is. Or was.

And there’s the rub. As Louise Higgins, chief financial and strategy officer under Guthrie, told the Senate Estimates hearing in May, the ABC is no longer the 8 cents per day Aunty of yore.

“Thirty years ago the ABC had five platforms and 6,000 staff,” Ms Higgins said. “Today, by contrast, we have six times the platforms and 4,000 staff. Our per capita funding has halved during this time.”

The ABC, in other words, is trying to do vastly more with considerably less. And that means making some tough decisions about where to focus those depleted per capita resources.

Meanwhile, its audience has turned decidedly grey; the average age of an ABC TV viewer, according to research unveiled at the Screen Forever industry conference in 2016, was 66 (SBS was 61; Seven, 52; Nine, 52; Ten, 46). Radio suffers from much the same affliction – a declining share and an ageing audience.

None of which sat easily with Guthrie’s stated intention of making the ABC relevant to 100 per cent of Australians.

Her solution was largely focused on delivery: if they’re not watching TV and listening to radio, hit them where they live. Hence the focus on niche digital channels (ABC Kids, ABC Comedy – actually the same channel, at different times of day), ABC Me (for older kids), and so on. And hence the beefed-up iview: people are increasingly consuming drama and comedy via streaming services (which the ABC pioneered in this country) – and so it is that we can now binge an entire series of Mystery Road or Get Crackin’ as soon as the first episode has been broadcast on terrestrial TV.

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Behind the scenes, personnel were re-organised into content areas (sport, health, entertainment, politics) rather than platforms (TV, radio, online). Again, audiences don’t care, so long as the content they deliver is undiminished. But with the critics in the Murdoch press and the government – including the minister responsible for the ABC, Senator Mitch Fifield – continually impugning the impartiality and quality of that coverage, confidence has begun to waver.

Attempts to lure younger audiences have sometimes rubbed hard against the expectations of the traditional older audience: Corey White’s Roadmap to Paradise and Tom Ballard’s Tonightly were bold and innovative programming choices, but neither delivered big numbers and the latter in particular offended some with its hard-edged satire (seemingly tailor-made for sharing via social media platforms). Tonightly was canned earlier this month, with the broadcaster saying it was time for a “fresh approach”.

The pitfalls of the infatuation with younger audiences and digital platforms, though, were nowhere more evident than in the launch of ABC Life in August. With its focus on food, sex and relationships, family and so on, this lifestyle-focused website lobs into an already-crowded space in the market – and does so at the reported cost of 18 journalists, roughly the same number axed form ABC newsrooms earlier in the year as part of Guthrie’s investment in “digital strategy”.

In short, Guthrie was right to see the need for the ABC to engage a younger audience, and right to embrace the digital platforms she knows so well in a bid to reach them. But she was misguided in disregarding the concerns, needs and likes of its existing audience in chasing the chimera of this new one.

Audience renewal is a challenge for all legacy media. But throwing the baby boomer out with the bathwater is not the way to achieve it.

Karl is co-host of the weekly pop culture podcast The Clappers.
Follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin