Next year will be, ABC head of television Richard Finlayson said recently, "A pretty interesting year." To show how seriously he was taking the impending change of the Australian TV landscape, he added: "It's a bit of a banner year for TV. It's a watershed year."
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At the time, he was talking about the imminent arrival of Netflix, Stan (the Fairfax/Nine Network joint venture) and other video-on-demand services.
But what he must also have known was the way the ABC was about to be hit by job and programming cuts.
Now, with those cuts revealed, it's understandable he wanted to repeat himself.
As well as new digital competitors, the ABC will shed about 400 jobs as it copes with a $254 million funding cut.
Finlayson's boss, Mark Scott, has promised programming will, where possible, not suffer and most of the savings will be made away from what the viewer sees, but warnings are emerging that some shows will still be affected.
The jokers of Twitter predicted "Pay School" would replace Play School, that the Bananas in Pyjamas would be reading the news. Jokes aside however, do the cuts mean we'll be seeing even more frequent repeats of Time Team, Eggheads, QI and Grand Designs?
Does it mean, as with Lateline, that shows will be aired on more than one channel of the ABC platform? Why not! The bean-counters could argue, if it fills one timeslot admirably, why not two! Or more!
And how will those minor channels fill their time? Outside of children's programs, ABC2 is already being populated with the likes of repeats of That '70s Show, brought in to replace the locally produced The Roast, and Spicks and Specks episodes so old they're hosted by Adam Hills.
We will be watching the program guides closely to see what appears and what goes missing. It will be, perhaps more than any show broadcast, pretty interesting indeed.
