The Australian media industry is falling to pieces with mass sackings but meanwhile, the ABC gives itself a payrise.

What an amazing irony.

The least performing, least watched, and worst rating bunch just keep on banking the bucks while hundreds of their colleagues in the self-funded commercial sector are being laid off.

It’s truly one of the greatest injustices – but that’s the ABC.

Channel 9 got rid of 40 TV staff today.

Their newspaper arm (Financial Review, The Age, and Sydney Morning Herald) will let around 90 people go.

Channel 7 is making 150 staff redundant.

News Limited plans $65 million dollars’ worth of staff cuts.

Even 2GB, 3AW, and 4BC are cutting employees.

It’s been a disastrous week for the media sector.

And just as they all clean out their desks, the already bloated ABC workforce will get yet another payrise .. it’s third increase in as many years.

It’s a fool’s paradise.

And the smug ABC types can’t even hide their contempt.

Retiring Mediawatch host Paul Barry was quick off the mark with his usual smart-arsery:

“Cuts, cuts, more cuts. Australian MSM in heaps of trouble” he tweeted, probably from the golf course.

The usually decent ABC chief business writer Ian Verrender spoke of the “chill winds blowing through the world of commercial media gathering pace”.

There’s always a tone of superiority.

What these ABC-types ignore is the struggling commercial sector helps pays their way and their wage rises.

Taxes on operating revenues and the profits of Nine, Seven, News Corp, and the old-Fairfax newspapers have sent billions over the years towards financing the ABC to compete against their business interests.

Everytime the ABC staff or their management squeals about needing more money, it has to come from somewhere.

Then there’s the continually impotent media union, the MEAA, once again parking the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

Rumours of commercial TV job cuts have been in the news for weeks.

The union is always late to the party.

They’re decided it’s time for action … only after the redundancy letters have gone out.

“Australia’s largest commercial media organisations must commit to quality journalism rather than look for easy savings by cutting editorial jobs”, says the union.

If they knew the business, they’d be aware there’s nothing much else left to cut in commercial TV.

News and live sport is about all they produce locally other than a few ‘dull as dishwater’ reality shows.

The public has lost trust in the mainstream media.

It’s been slowly dying for a long time - but unlike the ABC, at least it’s paid its own way.

Commercial TV mightn’t be everyone’s cup of tea but it still near-doubles the ratings and engagement of the best the ABC has to offer almost every night.

ABC TV likes to refer to itself as the “National Broadcaster” but in the eyes of the public, vastly more people don’t watch it than do.

So, to the comrades of the ABC, enjoy your pay rises and keep looking down on the sector that’s helped pay your way.

The thing about other people’s money is; one day it’ll run out for you too.