Mr Kimball was the only ABC staff member to speak at a public rally in front of the network's Dickson headquarters on Thursday morning as part of a nationwide union-led campaign calling for the national broadcaster to be spared budget cuts announced by Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Wednesday.

A crowd of close to 100 people, including several ABC staff, gathered outside the ABC 666 studios to protest a $254 million funding cut to the ABC over the next four years ahead of a rally at Parliament House on Tuesday.

Many drivers registered their support by sounding their horns and cheering on the small but vocal group.

Mr Kimball said staff would have more certainty about the impact on jobs at the Canberra headquarters on Monday when managing director Mark Scott briefs all staff.

"We only know what we've seen on Media Watch and Q&A," he said.

"We've been consistently told no decisions have been made… we hope they'll look at all the support and all the value people are placing in the programs and take that into consideration when they make a decision."

Mr Kimball said there had been talk about changing the way state-based current affairs were delivered but he said the weekly 7:30 program would be difficult to replace.

"For us having the anchor of a program, that's the place people know they're going to get that content, is important," he said.

"[7:30 ACT] is so production intensive for three people to keep coming up with the ideas, to keep churning it out.

"In terms of the bang for the buck that's being delivered, already our stories are being re-broadcast on other [ABC] programs so they get huge value from our stories."

Mr Turnbull maintains the ABC cuts should not affect programming, while ABC's management says content will be impacted.

Mr Kimball said the reality lay in the middle.

"The government is probably being a little bit unrealistic if they think cuts of that size could be managed through back office," he said.

"But also the ABC has a clear programming agenda it's looking to develop and that means taking resources from traditional areas and putting them into digital and new media areas which has to be funded from somewhere."

But Friends of the ABC ACT's Catherine Henderson said the government was being dishonest by blaming programming changes on ABC management.

"The ABC Friends have heard a lot of the Lewis report that the public don't know and I think if Malcolm Turnbull was honest he would release the report and it would show that these [cuts] are much deeper and there's another agenda," she said.

"The [ABC] board... has bent over backwards to make savings.

"This is a lean, mean, efficient organisation. We shouldn't cut it."

Ms Henderson said the cuts were impacting freedom of speech and media diversity and people from all sides of politics should fight the cuts.