Acclaimed Four Corners executive producer Sue Spencer will step down from the flagship investigative program next March after a record stint of seven and a half years.
Spencer has reigned over what many believe has been a golden era of the program, and her decision is a blow to an ABC already reeling from budget cuts.
Although Spencer told her staff she was leaving in the week in which her program was hit with budget cuts, she insisted it had nothing to do with the Coalition’s $254m cut.
“It’s purely coincidental because Monday was the last program for the year and we have an end of year get-together on the Wednesday,” Spencer said. “I think it’s time that I move on and think about what I do next. Even though I absolutely love this program I think it’s time to move on.”
“I’m going to take some leave initially and then decide what I’m going to do,” she said. Spencer said she had not decided whether to stay on at the ABC.
“It’s a full-on, 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job. I think myself and [former EP] Bruce Belsham have both lasted seven years but the others lasted three, or four or five years which is indicative of the fact people don’t last much longer than that.”
Four Corners, on air since 1961, is one of the current affairs shows to be hit with a budget cut as the news division loses $6m of its budget this year.
“We’ve had a budget cut which is unfortunate,” Spencer said. “It will mean that we are going to really count the pennies, which will mean less overseas trips. And with domestic trips we’ll be making sure we watch our expenses budget. But we have no staff losses, so really what it is about doing our stories smarter or more efficiently.”
Spencer first worked on Four Corners in 1985 and has also worked on Lateline, Foreign Correspondent and Australian Story. She produced and directed the award winning series, Labor in Power in 1993 and The Howard Years in 2008.
Spencer nominated Sarah Ferguson’s 2009 Code of Silence about sexual assault in rugby league and 2011’s A Bloody Business as highlights of her tenure. A Bloody Business was an exposé of the cruelty inflicted on Australian cattle exported live to Indonesia.
Liz Jackson’s 2009 Walkley Award winning investigation, Who Killed Mr Ward?, was also a great achievement of the program’s she said. It told the story of a respected Aboriginal leader in outback Western Australia who died in the back of a prison van.
Recent programs she is proud of include Geoff Thompson’s story about Rosie Batty and domestic violence, Rosie’s Story, which she said was “extraordinary”.
Spencer also credited new Four Corners recruits Linton Besser and Caro Meldrum-Hanna as brilliant reporters. She said Meldrum-Hanna’s The Boy with the Henna Tattoo which aired this year was brilliant.
“And it’s not just them, the reporters, it’s also the producers who work with them. It’s just an exceptional team who work here.”
The current team is Marian Wilkinson, Quentin McDermott, Thompson, Stephen Long, Meldrum-Hanna and Besser.
