The Media and Communications in Australia - (23 Public Service Broadcasting)

Chapter
Public service broadcasting

23
maUrEEN BUrNs
Copyright © 2014. Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Predictions about the future of public service media institutions in Australia and
elsewhere usually and necessarily include discussions of digital media, participatory
culture and globalisation. Such discussions ask how will organisations that were
designed to be national, one-to-many analogue broadcasters adapt to a globalised,
participatory, digital environment. Do we still need Australian public service media in
such an environment, and if so, then how are we to think about their futures? Should
the ABC and the SBS provide participatory sites for deliberative democracy, and can
they do so more effectively than exclusively online providers (Flew et al. 2008; Iosifdis
2011)? Should the future be one where public service media institutions provide news
and current affairs content (among other branded items) to commercial providers
(Burns 2012)? Should public service media provide searchable digital archives, as has
The Media and Communications in Australia, edited by Stuart Cunningham, and Sue Turnbull, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014. ProQuest Ebook
Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usyd/detail.action?docID=6264187.
Created from usyd on 2023-10-28 02:40:48.
328 THE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS IN AUSTRALIA
been suggested by Andrejevic (2013)? Should the ABC in particular maintain and
reinvigorate its focus on local content as has been suggested by Manning (2004)? Is
the role of public service media to manage difference, and to allow for the creation of
publics, as Hawkins proposes (2013)?
The answer to these questions is ‘yes’—and more. The very diversity of these issues
illustrates the perils of making predictions about public service broadcasting. These
questions are historically specifc—some could not have even been imagined at the
inception of public service broadcasting, and others need our very recent media envi-
ronment to make any sense at all.
Public service media do more than provide news and current affairs, despite the
news and current affairs focus of much academic and policy discussion. They do more
than screen high-quality wildlife documentaries, and they do more than adapt and
adopt new technologies. They do more than allow for discussion, and they do more
than ‘refect’ national culture. I argue that the strength of public service media institu-
tions (as, arguably, of other public institutions) lies in the productive tension they
afford between stability and fexibility. This position relies on several well-rehearsed
arguments, such as that public service media institutions—given adequate budgets—
can take risks that commercial operators cannot, and that they can, on occasion,
subsidise less fnancially successful experiments with those that are more successful.
They can act as research and innovation divisions for the industry more broadly. Their
value—even if understood only as devices to provide what cannot be provided in the
commercial arena—is signifcant. Public service media have demonstrated a remark-
able level of technological fexibility as new platforms, media and business models
emerged (Burns 2000; Martin 2002), in some cases building on lessons learned through
innovation failure (Burns 2012). They are also important institutions for reminding
the nation of its forgetfulness of its own past. First, though, some historical details.
Since the 1920s, when Lord Reith argued that the newly founded BBC should
inform, entertain and educate, public service broadcasters have either been criticised
as elitist and paternalistic, or defended as institutions that offer equal access to all citi-
zens. The future of public service media institutions has been questioned frequently
and almost continuously since their inception, though for varying historical reasons.
Over the past few years, commercial operators such as Rupert and James Murdoch
have challenged the continuing need for public service broadcasters in the digital era.
Given that increased media diversity in a digital era should address market failure,
they argue, public service media organisations are at an unfair advantage because they
receive government funds that are not available to commercial players. Such argu-
ments became louder as media outlets and technologies proliferated, and as media
moguls learnt to reconstruct and manipulate the digital media economy.
PUBlIc sErvIcE BrOaDcasTINg 329
There is certainly not much merit in defending either of Australia’s public service
broadcasters by claiming that they have a ‘pure’ public economy—that is, no commer-
cial entanglements. As well as being statutory authorities that function at ‘arm’s
length’ from government, but receive government funds, both the ABC and SBS have
complex commercial arrangements that are easily identifed, even on their web pages.
Nor can they be understood merely as broadcasters. Indeed, if you refer back to Part
II of this book, with reference to the ABC and SBS (see Chapter 10), you will note that
both organisations are involved in many of the industries listed. The ABC and the SBS
publish magazines, have online, mobile and web applications including games, and
offer broadcast radio and television services. Both the ABC and SBS offer multiple
media platforms—although the ABC, with a much larger budget, is ahead of SBS in its
adoption of new technologies, having been one of the frst media institutions in the
world to have an online presence (Burns 2000).
Innovation in digital media at the ABC and SBS is ongoing, with staff continu-
ously redefning what public service media are, and are for. Very soon after the ABC
implemented its online service, it offered the frst online forum, Frontier Online—which
was presented along with the three-part documentary television series Frontier in early
1997. Henry Reynolds’ (1996) history book on which the Frontier television series
and website were based documented the wars between white invaders and Aboriginal
people. Before its publication, the accepted history had it that Aboriginal people gave
up their land without a fght. The book, and then the television series, documented
the ferce territorial wars of that period, rewriting what had been a history of ‘settle-
ment’ into one of ‘invasion’. After each episode, there was a live online forum with
Henry Reynolds and Professor Marcia Langton. On this site, public memory was
negotiated in between the exemplary one-to-many interaction of the public service
broadcasting idea and the many-to-many networked interaction of the internet idea.
Both Frontier the television series and Frontier the web forum were designed to help the
public understand its future by an understanding of its past and present. They existed
very much in the public arena, and the web forum enabled different perspectives. In
turn, the major thrust of commentary was not the past but serious contemporary
matters of Indigenous–non-Indigenous relations. The forum made for confronting
reading about Australia’s race relations. On the Frontier forum, the interactivity and
accessibility of the technology enabled an easier and faster intersection between the
vernacular and the offcial. In exchanges about beliefs and ideas of the past, serious
matters in the present were discussed—in this case, race relations.
Satirical television series and online site The Games is another example of the ABC
using what were new technologies to examine the future through the present and
the past. Early in 2000, when Prime Minister John Howard was refusing to apologise
330 THE MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS IN AUSTRALIA
on behalf of non-Indigenous Australia for injustices done to Indigenous Australians,

and when the hype about the upcoming Olympics in Sydney was inescapable, the
ABC screened a mock documentary TV series called The Games. The Games satirised the
bureaucracy of the Sydney Olympics, and interrupted the accepted relations between
ABC television and ABC Online. Until this point, online services were secondary to
television and radio. In this instance, however, the scripts for each television episode
were ‘leaked’ to The Games website before the television show was screened, so ardent
user/viewers could get a ‘scoop’ on ardent viewers. In one episode, an actor (also named
John Howard), after eulogising the advantages of Australia including the fact that
Australia has the longest coastline in the world, apologised to Indigenous Austral-
ians. The responses to this speech on The Games website were amazingly supportive
and impassioned. One even compared the speech to Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a
dream’ speech. Here is another response:
John Howard’s apology to the Aboriginal people, that was posted on your site, exhibits
a depth of insight, foresight, and feeling that is wholly unexpected when one bears in
mind the vapid appellation of your commentator. But while your Mr Howard appears
to exhibit the promise of embracing ‘the whole vision thing’ with much more gusto
than his lesser namesake, he does however share the latter’s habit of getting the details
wrong: Canada boasts the world’s longest coastline. (Lostsole 1999)
Authority was not always entirely vested in the public service broadcaster, but could
be gently mocked. The Games website encouraged the viewer/user to ‘bat on’, encour-
aging an irreverent attitude to the ABC and to the jingoism that accompanied the
upcoming Sydney Olympics. The television program and site, like the Frontier site,
also revisited the past to discuss serious issues of race in the present. The Games (TV
series and online site) unravelled the more prevalent Olympic yarn of a unifed nation.
The historical cases of multi-platform projects Frontier and The Games demon-
strate some of the complexities of imagining futures for public service media. Since
then, there has been a general shift in thinking at the ABC from one where the ABC
imagines itself as speaking to the people, to one where it imagines itself as being in
dialogue with its publics, to one where it sometimes imagines itself as being outside
the conversations that evolve between self-creating publics. According to an ABC
producer for the ‘Pool’ interactive art site, for example:
[T]here’s a lot of work going into how we design a site that allows people to fnd and
communicate with each other easily. But it’s just one piece of the puzzle. We’ll still use
Flickr and Vimeo, we’re on Twitter and Facebook, we’re experimenting with Instagram
PUBlIc sErvIcE BrOaDcasTINg 331
and Freesound. What we’re interested in isn’t just about connecting people with the
ABC online, but ultimately about how the ABC can help people create meaningful
connections amongst themselves. (Dwyer 2012)
There are still, however, instances where one-to-many platforms take precedence. In
2012, the ABC screened the six-part television series Redfern Now. The series featured
Indigenous Australian theatre, flm and television stars, including Deborah Mailman,
Leah Purcell, Dean Daley-Jones and Miranda Tapsell. It was produced by Blackfella
Films and funded by Screen Australia, Screen NSW and the ABC. The ABC offered very
little by way of user created content options, or virtual interactive elements (an actual
street party was held in Redfern for the premiere), though timeshifting via iView was
possible. The production and screening of this series is perhaps an example of what
Hawkins (2013) describes as the ABC ‘pluralising the mainstream’. Hawkins argues
that the advent of digital media and multi-platforming allowed the ABC to resist its
homogenising tendencies, and this was perhaps the case with the examples of Frontier
and The Games cited above. The appearance of high-end television drama Redfern Now
so late in the ABC’s history suggests that the regime of choice allowed by the digital
multi-platform era affords scope for such series that did not exist before. What might
this old-fashioned high-end television drama series tell us about the future of public
service media in Australia?
Perhaps, as I have argued above, it demonstrates the ways in which a stable public
service institution affords fexibility across platforms and content areas. Such fex-
ibility, diversifcation of services and technological innovation are afforded by the
stability of an organisation that can absorb some level of experimentation—a capacity
that is less likely in either the commercial or community sector. If there is to be a
future for public service media institutions—and this is perpetually in doubt—it will
be one that maintains this balance between stability and fexibility, and allows for
examinations of the future to be based on re-examinations of the national construc-

tion of the past.

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Chapter

Public service broadcasting

on behalf of non-Indigenous Australia for injustices done to Indigenous Australians,

examinations of the future to be based on re-examinations of the national construc-

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