How many Bluey episodes could the ABC have made with the money they wasted on the Lattouf case?

Final figures from the ABC have been released for just how much they wasted trying to defend the unlawful sacking of Antoinette Lattouf, clocking in at over $2.6m. Which begs the question, how many seven minute episodes of Bluey could the ABC have made if they had different priorities?

Since ABC bosses felt it was a priority to defend sacking the presenter from a five day radio stint for sharing a Human Rights Watch post about Israel starving people in Gaza, lets see what could have happened if they, for some reason, wanted to use the taxpayer money to make children smile instead.

Season 1 of Bluey cost a reported $6m to produce and ran for 52 episodes, meaning a production cost of around $115,385 per episode rounded up to the nearest dollar. Now lets give the ABC the benefit of rounding down the legal fees to a clean $2.6m, purely because it makes it easier for me.

With some basic math that comes out to enough money to make 22 episodes of Bluey (plus some extra on the side) spent losing an easily avoidable legal battle. Incredible work ABC. However that isn’t the whole story…

See the ABC doesn’t pay for the full production of Bluey, as during season one some genius bosses with incredible instincts decided to sell the soon to be multi-billion dollar distribution and merchandise rights for the show to the BBC in exchange for 30% of the production cost. Which fun fact, for a season of Bluey, is less than $2.6m, showing some unique priorities from the decision makers.

So, if we assume the BBC would cover their 30%, since they obviously would because Bluey just prints them billions of dollars and only a fool would let that sort of money go for no reason, that’s actually 36 episodes of Bluey (again with some money left over) that could have existed.

While the money could have been used for 36 episodes of bringing joy to kids and probably making adults cry, at least we can rest comfortably with the knowledge that it was instead used to fail to defend a bunch of media executives who already left the broadcaster. Who’s to say which option would have warmed hearts more?