Abc Submission

Presenting Australia to the world: A submission to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy in response to the discussion paper ABC and SBS: Towards a digital future by Ken Westmoreland 16 November 2008

Should consideration be given to expanding or enhancing the overseas services provided by the national broadcasters, and if so, in what form and to which countries? The overseas services of the ABC should indeed be expanded and enhanced, not only in countries beyond the Asia-Pacific region, but ones in the region itself, which have traditionally been overlooked, such as New Zealand. While the ABC’s domestic television channels or Australia Network cannot be broadcast in New Zealand, owing to rights issues, there is a great deal of excellent ABC programming that could be carried on a dedicated channel for New Zealand, where it would reach an appreciative audience. Below is a schedule for an ‘ABC New Zealand’ channel, comprising a mix of original programming from ABC1, ABC2 and Australia Network.

06:00 Lateline 06:35 Lateline Business 07:10 Four Corners 08:00 Focus 08:30 Inside Business 09:00 Play School 09:30 Here's Humphrey 10:00 News 10:30 Focus 11:00 Inside Business 11:30 Asia Pacific Focus 12:00 Offsiders 13:00 Insiders 14:00 Midday Report 14:30 Play School 15:00 Here's Humphrey 15:30 Bananas In Pyjamas 16:00 Parliament Question Time 17:00 Gardening Australia 17:30 The New Inventors

18:00 Offsiders 19:00 The Einstein Factor 19:30 Talking Heads 20:00 Enough Rope With Andrew Denton 21:00 Australia National News 21:30 7.30 Report 22:00 At the Movies 22:30 Four Corners 23:20 Media Watch 23:35 jtv 00:35 Lateline 01:10 Lateline Business 01:40 Closedown

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Even many Australian TV dramas have never been shown in New Zealand, for example, the 2006 mini-series Answered by Fire, set in East Timor in 1999, which would have had as much resonance with New Zealand viewers as Australian ones. (Unfortunately, the ABC did not have the international distribution rights to the series, which, sadly, has not been shown in the UK either.) Australia Network’s news bulletins are already carried on the Stratos TV channel in New Zealand, which is available free-to-air on the Freeview digital platform nationwide, as well as on community stations in Auckland and Wellington, although as these are shown at 5pm on weekdays, they have a limited audience. However, even that took years of negotiations, because the ABC claimed that reception of Australia Network (then ABC Asia Pacific) in New Zealand was unintended and unauthorised. Similarly, Television New Zealand’s digital channel, TVNZ 7, carries the ABC’s Four Corners series, but owing to disagreements with Sky Network, the channel cannot be received by most satellite viewers in the country. The impression that I have, from my correspondence with the ABC is that it would be unlikely that the federal government would fund an ‘ABC New Zealand’, but the proposed ‘ABC 6’ or ‘best-of-overseas’ channel, could form the basis of a transTasman channel, allowing ABC programes to reach an audience in New Zealand, and TVNZ programmes to reach audiences in Australia. (TVNZ has considered broadcasting its own channel for the Pacific Islands, as well as a channel for Pacific Islanders living in New Zealand. ) This could be similar to the ‘Arte’ cultural channel in Europe, jointly operated by public broadcasters in France and Germany, which has co-produced documentaries with SBS in Australia. Another model could the reciprocal arrangement between Sweden and Finland, by which SVT and YLE broadcast terrestrial channels to Swedish speakers in Finland, and Finnish speakers in Sweden respectively. However, following the end of analogue transmissions in Finland, ‘SVT Europa’ is now only available as a pay-TV channel. (Despite its name, the channel is available outside Europe via the Thaicom satellite, and can be received in Australia.) Nevertheless, an ‘ABC New Zealand’ could operate on exactly the same commercial basis as BBC Worldwide’s growing portfolio of TV channels, available on satellite and cable subscription packages locally. These receive no funding either from the UK government’s grant-in-aid or from the licence fee.

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The channel could be a joint venture, similar to that between BBC Worldwide and CanWest in Canada, which operates the BBC Canada and BBC Kids channels. Despite the BBC branding, BBC Worldwide only has a 20 per cent stake in the channels, the same as it had in UK.TV in Australia and New Zealand until June 2008, when it asumed full ownership of the channel. As regards countries outside the Asia Pacific region, channels similar to Australia Network would enhance the image of which, regrettably, still falls victim to tiresome stereotypes. These would probably have been reinforced by an ‘Aussie Gold’ or ‘Downunder TV’ channel, which has been mooted in the UK over the years, but neither have ever materialised. There is more to Australian television, and culture generally, than Home and Away or Kath and Kim, and people in the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada South Africa, and elsewhere, should be made more aware of that. At the very least, the ABC should offer an overseas version of its iView service, allowing people from outside Australia to access its programming, as SBS plans to do, possibly as a subscription-funded service.

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What is the appropriate relationship between Australia’s foreign policy objectives

and

the

overseas

broadcasting

activities

of

the

national

broadcasters? An ‘arm’s length’ relationship between broadcasters and governments would be the best approach. Australia Network and Radio Australia should always be seen as representing Australia, not the Australian government. The arrangement by which Australia Network is subject to a competitive tender is one that should be reviewed after 2011. While the ABC does not have a monoply on quality programming, it is better placed than other Australian broadcasters to provide an overseas television service, and certainly one that is publicly funded. The practice of contestable funding is a wasteful and unnecessary one, which has had a detrimental effect on public service broadcasting in New Zealand. The ABC has been well known and respected in the Asia-Pacific region for decades thanks to Radio Australia; so it is therefore entirely appropriate that it should operate a television service drawing upon the ABC’s television output, although this should not preclude it from carrying non-ABC programming, be it from SBS, NITV or the commercial networks.

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Is there a need to reconcile Australia’s priorities for engagement within the Asia–Pacific region with the requirement for the editorial and operational independence of the national broadcasters’ overseas broadcasting activities? No. The ABC, not least Radio Australia, has faced far greater problems in this regard in the past than it does now, for example, in the case of Indonesia under the Suharto regime. While governments in the region may take exception to unfavourable reporting by the ABC, this is the same for CNN, the BBC and other Western media. Similarly, while other broadcasters have not had to resort to self-censorship, they have had to be mindful of cultural and political sensitivities, in order to secure carriage for their channels in markets such as Singapore and Malaysia.

This

accounts for the fact that Australia Network has had difficulty securing carriage on Astro, Malaysia’s main pay-TV service, which will not become available in that country until next year. The introduction of subtitles in Asian languages on Australia Network is a very welcome, if long overdue, development: BBC Worldwide already offers subtitling on its BBC Entertainment and BBC Knowledge channels, so it is surprising that a channel that describes itself as being ‘from the region, for the region’ should have taken until now to do this. Nevertheless, it demonstrates a regard for the language and culture of host countries, and that Australia Network is not targeted solely at Western expatriates.

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