The Abbott Government has broken its promise not to cut funding for the ABC, announcing that its budget allocation would be slashed by a total of $254 million.

The Government has also reduced funding to SBS – another broken election promise – and opened the way for the multicultural broadcaster to make more money from advertising.

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Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Wednesday that the ABC would receive $5.2 billion over five years rather than $5.5 billion, a reduction of 4.6 per cent.

On the night before the 2013 election, Tony Abbott pledged (see the video below) there would be “no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS”.

But Mr Turnbull said these comments needed to be seen in context. He said that, in the lead-up to the election, there had been calls, including from competing media organisations, for the Coalition “to take an axe to the ABC”.

He said that both he and Treasurer Joe Hockey had said this would not happen, but made it clear that if efficiency cuts had to be made, then the ABC and SBS would not be exempt.

There is no need for Peppa Pig to be sacrificed, says Malcolm Turnbull.

“Unless you believe that Mr Abbott was, in that one line, intending to contradict and over rule the very careful statements of intention made by Mr Hockey and myself, his remarks can only be understood in the same context,” Mr Turnbull said.

“Is it seriously argued that the public broadcasters should be exempt from the spending cuts that apply to almost all other government departments and services?”

Mr Turnbull said the cuts could be made without affecting programming and in line with the efficiency review conducted for the Government by Peter Lewis.

He said suggestions that popular programs such as Peppa Pig or Lateline would be axed had been overblown, and said it would be “cowardly” if ABC management were to blame the cuts for programming changes.

“The ABC management know that they can meet these savings without reducing the resources available to programming – furthermore they know that the Government and their board know too.”

Media Watch reported on Monday that cuts could result in: the loss of 400-500 jobs; the axing of the Stateline versions of 7.30 on Fridays; cuts to Lateline; cuts to overseas bureaux in Tokyo, Bangkok, New Delhi and New Zealand; the loss of television production in South Australa; cuts to Classic FM.

In addition, Mr Turnbull proposed changes to the governance of the public broadcaster.

He said he would recommend than the roles of managing director and editor-in-chief, currently held by Mark Scott, be separated.

“It creates the impression that the Managing Director is directly in charge of ABC News and Current Affairs which he is not, and given the wide range of his responsibilities, could not be.”

He also called for greater transparency to ensure that material presented by the ABC was “accurate and impartial”.

He said the board should take responsibility for this, and was critical of board members who said they did not want to get involved in such matters. “If they do not want to get involved, they should resign,” he said.

ABC Friends said the cuts came on top of already inadequate funding and called on supporters of the ABC to ring their local Coalition politician to protest.

SBS’s budget will be reduced by $25.2 million, or 1.7 per cent over five years.

But Mr Turnbull said the changes to the advertising rules meant that “the total savings returned to the budget” would be $53.7 million, or 3.7 per cent.

At present, SBS is allowed to run five minutes of advertising per hour.

Mr Turnbull said this would be changed so that the five minutes per hour could be averaged out over the day, with no more than 10 minutes in any one hour, but increasing the capacity to earn advertising revenue.