Liberal Rules OK?

For the last few days SBS has been heavily promoting Liberal Rule: The Politics that Changed Australia, a weighty three-hour retrospective on the Howard era of Government. This was always threatening to be compulsory viewing not only because of the sociological claim in the subtitle but also because many of the biggest Liberal politicians and staffers contributed: John Howard was in it as was Fraser, Costello, Downer, Reith, Staley and Sinodinos. Here would be some good insights into the business of government.

This morning, anticipation was lifted up another notch when Gerard Henderson in the Sydney Morning Herald called the documentary “a shocker and a disgrace”. Henderson is a Howard supporter and plainly didn’t like the authors’ “layers of subtext” which he saw as code for left wing. He sportingly said the left got “free kick after free kick” and then played the man not the ball when he said Norm Abjorensen's book John Howard and the Conservative Tradition has sold fewer than 100 copies in a year.

But I’m thinking Henderson should be on the SBS marketing payroll if he isn’t already. By publicly bagging the program, he was drawing splendid attention to it. And it was a program he was in. In his SMH attack he leaves out any discussion of the layers of sub-text of his segment. This suggests the filmmakers treated him fairly. Henderson did show he was more accurate than SBS in one key respect - he got the time of the show right. SBS were sending out online ads in Crikey and elsewhere all day saying it was on “SBS One Wednesday 8.30pm”. But Henderson got the facts right in his article – It was aired at 8.30pm tonight (Tuesday).

Apart from unnecessarily losing out on audiences, the SBS mistake also undermines the fact that Liberal Rules is likely to become good history - assuming the quality does not dip in the next two episodes. As Henderson rightly criticised, it did not interview any Labor or National politicians and overcompensated with leftwing critics such as the unfortunate Abjorensen, Judith Brett and Mark Davis (whose praise appeared on the blurb of the ad with the wrong day). But so what. In three hours of television, there will be a wealth of great historical material to choose from the political interviews.

This is a necessity the filmmakers turned into a brilliant virtue. Joint filmmaker Garry Sturgess had brought his skills as a senior researcher on ABC’s Labor in Power to do a similar job on the Howard era. But Sturgess found it difficult to open old doors. He and partner Nick Torrens struggled with sibling rivalry on the public purse when they tried to gain access to ABC’s treasure chest of news archives. It was the job of ex-SBS employee Alan Sunderland to deny the request on the grounds that their “primary responsibility is to make programs for the Australian public.”

So Sturgess and Torrens stacked the program with talking heads. This is difficult to make exciting and they wasted no time showing the questions or questioners inanely nodding. Audiences had to work out what was going on from the guiding of the anonymous narrator, the taut editing of the film, and the surprisingly candid answers themselves.

Howard and the other Liberals agreed to take part because they knew this would be a film about legacy and they were keen to shape it. As the film itself says, the Liberals are all about leadership. From Menzies to Turnbull the ethos of the party is that leadership is central to its identity. Liberal philosophy changes with the winds unburdened as it is by any -ism. What was most of interest in this film was how Howard and the rest approached their decision making.

For example Costello was brutally honest about the spoils of power. He would go to meetings where there might be 15 or 16 or people. The difficulty of getting them to do something for him was that all of them there were appointed by Howard. All that is, except him. “I was the only one elected”, he said. Ever since he backed Downer for the leadership in 1993, it was clear Costello always preferred to be the message rather than the messenger.

What mattered was not who did things the best, but who announced them best. And John Howard was always better at that than Costello. Howard was more ruthlesss for starters and served a tougher apprenticeship learning for the top job. In the 1970s, he was a young and generally hopeless Treasurer. In the 1980s, he wrestled with Peacock for the right to lose to Bob Hawke. And in the early 1990s, he watched as the newer leaders Hewson and Downer were gobbled up and spat out by the “street brawler” Paul Keating. Downer resigned in 1995 as the party stared at a sixth election loss. Costello was kept as deputy but it was Howard – battle-hardened but just 56 year old – who was chosen. He came out by Costello’s side to tell the media he had been appointed “unanimous leader”. His body language suggested supreme confidence he was going to be the next Prime Minister and he crushed Keating at the election a year later.

Howard was the master of the small agenda but his inability to look up almost made him a one-term premier. In trouble in the polls, he turned to his tax agenda and decided to run hard on getting a mandate for a Goods and Services Tax. While this overturned an election promise, he got away with it because Labor though an election could not be won selling a tax. Despite the fact his victory over Beazley was narrow, it was was a turning point. Although Howard would have to reach into his bag of tricks again to find another issue to win in 2001 (Tampa), it was the GST election that cemented his place in the party’s pantheon.

After that second win, he had carte blanche to do what he wanted. Howard used the twin drivers of the mining boom and a trillion dollars worth of personal debt to get the government back in the black. He then increased public spending on favoured projects and dished out largesse in the budget much to the chagrin of the more economic rationalist Treasurer. Neither of them did much on climate change. It is this sense that Liberal frittered away their years in power that bothered Henderson about Liberal Rules.

He says the left have won the victory of ideas because unlike the Liberals, they take history seriously. Henderson took the example of Opposition frontbencher George Brandis who complained in The Spectator that that Liberals are not celebrating the 100th anniversary of the formation of the inaugural Liberal Party. “But Brandis could have arranged such a celebration himself,” Henderson said. As Malcolm Turnbull and all the others before him showed, the Liberals are not about ideas, they are about actions.

Clutter's underbelly: SBS and advertising

I’m trying hard to enjoy the new second series of Underbelly on Channel Nine but am finding the number of ads are making it almost unwatchable. As a general rule, I avoid watching the free-to-air commercial channels live - their ad breaks are too destructive to the momentum of any program. So I pre-recorded Underbelly. But even then, I was annoyed by the number of times I had to fast-forward through the clutter of fifteen second ads. Ad buying in such numbers is huge business for broadcasters, but has the potential to destroy audience by over-saturation.

Advertisers themselves are aware of the problem. The dilemma is that few of them are prepared to pay premiums of up to 40 per cent to ensure fewer ads. Nine also admits there might be a problem but are hiding behind the early success of Underbelly’s 2.4 million audience. “We may need to take a position on the price of 15-second ads to reduce the clutter, “ Nine's network sales boss, Peter Wiltshire told the SMH. “But judging from Monday night's [ratings] performance, people are not too worried about it." The question, Peter, is whether 2.4 million will be still watching after another two or three weeks of this over-exposure.

Over at the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), the marketers are convinced high clutter ads are counter-productive. The state owned station has regulatory limitations on how much commercial airtime and claims this makes it attractive to advertisers. Last week they launched a trade press campaign called “avoid the clutter”. The campaign urges advertisers to switch to SBS because their commercial breaks are the shortest on Australian free-to-air (excepting ABC), and therefore, claims SBS, the advertisers will “get 83% better recall and an audience that’s 45% more engaged.”

The press release does not reveal where those percentages are sourced from, but it is a clever ploy to turn a necessity into a virtue. SBS has become a much savvier commercially-aware network under managing director CEO Shaun Brown. While his innovations since taking over in 2005 (most notably introducing in-program ads) have divided the station’s audiences, he has been steadfast in his desire to reposition the station. Under his leadership, ratings have become a critical measure of the station’s performance - though they remain stuck in the five to six percent region. Nevertheless, as his publicity manager Mike Field said of him, “Brown likes numbers”.

Brown first arrived at the station two years earlier as head of television. He told the authors of “The SBS Story” that when he started he found an organisation captive to the “Anglo arthouse” camp. He criticised the station’s focus on documentaries and foreign movies. “I’ve got no problems with any of those programs, but they are not exactly defining of our charter,” said Brown in the book. Instead he wants an emphasis on locally commissioned content and a shift away from international acquisitions to meet its charter obligations.

The problem is that a major point in the charter is the need to “contribute to meeting the communications needs of Australia's multicultural society.” Firstly with radio and then with television, SBS has become the key cultural institution for ethnic communities in Australia for the last 30 years. But while movies, documentaries and sport have long been core multicultural programming on SBS TV, that type of content has been threatened by the new delivery platforms of the 2000s. New competitors in the form of Pay TV, broadband Internet, DVDs and digital TV have led to a general decline in television viewing (particularly among the young).

SBS has responded in three ways; by programming more populist, imported English language shows (Mythbusters, Top Gear, South Park), enhancing the brand’s online presence, and most crucially, giving greater prominence to advertising. Brown defends these measures by saying the channel must become more relevant “for all Australians”. As he said in his speech to the Press Club in 2007 (attachment of speech opens in document format): “How can we be relevant, justify the public expenditure and meet our Charter obligations if only a fraction of Australians are tuning in?”

The question of public expenditure becomes relevant again later this year as SBS Triennial funding comes up for renewal. The review has re-opened SBS’s whole raison d’etre. A couple of years ago, Paul Sheehan ruffled feathers when he called the station “an indulgence we don’t need”. He said the international news, sport and entertainment pay TV channels didn’t exist when SBS TV was conceived in 1979. Sheehan said the Government could raise billions by selling SBS and its digital spectrum. “SBS is now standing in the way of quality,” he said.

Brown disagrees and argues the new SBS model creates quality content. He says the advertising revenue generated by programs such as Top Gear cross-subsidises innovative locally commissioned content. For him, commercialism enhances the station’s public service mandate. But there is a tension between the two that must be negotiated. SBS’s core principles of difference and diversity remain valid. In-program ads not only increase revenue but also allow for effective cross-promotion of other SBS programs. The problem is that the station may sacrifice its distinctiveness in the search for all-encompassing advertising revenue. Perhaps the clutter argument is an acknowledgement is that less is more for a public broadcaster.

Note: article cross-posted at my new Wordpress blog

Turn ABC and SBS into hyperlocal content hubs, says review submission

Yesterday, I wrote about Pay TV’s submission to the government review of the two national broadcasters, ABC and SBS. Today I want to look at another of the 2,400 submissions; this time a less self-interested but no less well argued one from four prominent Queensland academics. The submission is called “Social Innovation, User-Created Content and the Future of the ABC and SBS as Public Service Media” and was written by Terry Flew, Stuart Cunningham, Axel Bruns, and Jason Wilson.

The submission calls for both ABC and SBS to focus on user created content and redefine themselves as media organisations rather than broadcasters. The latter call is timely as The Inquisitr reveals that a 2:1 majority of Americans watched the Obama inauguration on the Internet rather than TV. The public service remit, argue the authors, should not be confined to specific technology like radio and television but to the services they provide – regardless of platform. They go even further and suggest that now is the ideal time for the ABC and SBS to change their emphasis and become participatory public media harnessing the power of citizen journalism.

The authors are making these recommendations from personal experience and research. Since 2007, all four have been intimately involved in an Australian Research Council Linkage Project called “Investigating Innovative Applications of Digital Media for Participatory Journalism and Citizen Engagement in Australian Public Communication”. The title is a mouthful but in a nutshell it is an investigation into the possibilities of citizen journalism using established industry partners such as SBS and Cisco. The project’s aim was to devise prototypes for “emergent forms of political citizenship and public communication in 21st century Australia".

The project began by creating an aggregated citizen journalism site called youdecide2007.org for the 2007 federal election. They provided tools and resources to enable hyper-local citizen participation in partnership with national organisations and then set to work documenting their findings in the wider international context of citizen journalism and web 2.0 developments. The project also researched attitudes (see attached pdf) within SBS about user-created content, a subject the authors saw as a crucial development for both national broadcasters.

According to the submission, the question of how SBS and ABC respond to changes in the media environment due to technological and cultural reasons is a matter of ‘social innovation’. By this they mean the application of a new idea (or a new application of an existing idea) that delivers lasting social value. The two areas driving social innovation are the technological revolution (as exemplified by the Internet) and cultural activity (increasing the number of voices in a democracy). The two areas are blurring as innovation increasingly comes from the margins and a network economy emerges that is both distributed and co-ordinated in a many-to-many fashion. The often non-commercial aspects of these activities deliver social, cultural, and public value and are mirrored by the public service aspects of the charters of ABC and SBS.

The challenge for the public broadcasters in the 21st century, say the authors, is to continue delivering unique and compelling content while also being conduits for user-led social innovation. To that end, the charters need to redefine the organisations as media rather than broadcasters, providing media services. They should then make the leap to become ‘participatory public service media’ to harness and encourage social content creation. In effect, they want to see ABC and SBS become an Australian digital commons.

Both ABC and SBS already have a strong digital presence and bring considerable strengths to a web 2.0 environment. They are trusted brands with informed audiences, they have access to large networks of media professionals, have good reputations as innovators, and large archives that could be digitised. ABC has already taken some small steps in collaborative culture with its Pool initiative which allows users to share and remix content. ABC has also allowed public feedback in long form in forums such as Opinion and Unleashed. But the authors say they could do more to encourage participation without harming their traditional public broadcasting function.

On the contrary, the authors say that enabling citizen journalism will allow organisational resources to be harnessed better in the traditional functions. The benefits will be in the areas of expanding direct participation in democratic processes and providing local communities, particularly remote ones, with a means of communication. The authors say the ABC should transform its national network of local bureaux into hyperlocal hubs for content created by local communities. As the experience with youdecide2007 showed the researchers, citizen media provided an outlet for the stories of remote communities, disadvantaged groups, and minority political opinion in a way “more traditional media sources could not match”. Flew, Cunningham, Bruns and Wilson’s submission is one of the more radical, imaginative and exciting visions for Australian public media among the 2,400 voices and deserves some serious merit. If ABC and SBS won’t provide the platform, it will simply go elsewhere. But if it does, the nation will be the loser.

Twitter and public broadcasting issues under one mumbrella

A real breath of fresh air on the Australian blogging scene is Tim Burrowes at Mumbrella. The former editor of B&T magazine is one of the few bloggers who actually breaks stories and he broke two good ones today. Just minutes ago, he revealed that the viral Twitter messages that a plane on fire caused Melbourne airport to close this evening were a gross overreaction. While it was true that a passenger reported seeing fire from the left wing of a Boeing 767 this evening, the plane was cleared after eight minutes and there were no further consequences. But while Burrowes confirmed there was no fire with a quick phone to the airport, the Twitter world was happier just to repeat the "plane on fire" news ad infinitum in an Australian version of the Hudson plane landing incident. But in this case, the airport press office was justified telling Burrowes that “unfortunately the Internet is full of gossip.”

In scotching the rumours, Burrowes exemplified the remarks of Jason Wilson’s provocative post at Gatewatching last week by showing that “journalists use telephones”. Burrowes was also on the phone earlier today after he read one of the more contentious entries of the 2,400 submissions to the review of Australia's two national broadcasters, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). The government will review the submissions ahead of the broadcasters' next funding review in July this year.

Burrowes’ interest was in the submission by Astra, the peak body representing Australia’s subscription TV industry. In their submission, Astra were critical of the plan to give six new digital channels to ABC and SBS. Astra picked on the point made by ABC’s managing director Mark Scott that the new channels (in areas of news, children’s entertainment and foreign language programming among others) addressed a “market failure”. Astra denied there was a market failure and said they were (or will be soon) delivering similar products to what ABC planned to deliver. It was a persuasive argument if you leave out the fact that just two million Australians subscribe to pay TV and that leaves a potential market failure for 19 million others.

Nevertheless the newsworthy element that Burrowes noticed was an Astra comment that the public broadcasters are doing aggressive deals that lock out pay TV from showing up-to-date content. They claim “ABC and SBS have included pursuit of commercial terms which seek to ensure longer than industry standard ‘hold back’ clauses in production and acquisition deals, and in some instances the ABC in particular has been willing to pay more for content to ensure this happens”. The result is that pay TV has to wait longer to get content for re-run and Astra says this is contrary to ABC 1983 charter goals (a charter Astra says is out of date as is the 1992 Broadcasting Act).

Once again Burrowes picked up the telephone and spoke to both SBS and ABC today for comment on Astra’s accusation. SBS firmly denied the claims and gave examples where SBS and Pay TV have cooperated in acquiring broadcast rights. Their spokesperson also told Burrowes that they often allow World Movies Channel and other pay TV channels to run content first. The ABC spokesperson was similarly dismissive: “The ABC is not sure how ASTRA can justify such claims of warehousing when there are many examples of rights sharing of programs between the ABC and the subscription channels” he said. But this controversy is not likely to go away and Burrowes may have reported on what is likely to be the opening salvo of a long running debate between the public broadcasters and the Pay TV industry for hearts, minds and control of the digital spectrum.

National broadcast wars: ABC refuses to provide footage to SBS

Last Monday’s Media Watch reported a stoush between its host station ABC and fellow national broadcaster SBS. Australia’s two public television networks are involved in an ugly squabble over the rights to footage for separate documentaries on John Howard’s time in government to be aired on either channel in the next 12 months. The footage required belongs to ABC who have reneged on an earlier deal to supply SBS in order to protect the ratings of its own product. Given that the taxpayer pays for both channels, the stoush is all the more ludicrous and counter-productive, and the fault is almost entirely that of the ABC.

The SBS project was conceived in 2006 when Sydney documentary filmmakers Nick Torrens and Frank Haines approached the broadcaster to make a make a three part series called “Liberal Rules” on the Liberal Party over the last 30 years. The documentary would be presented by Gary Sturgess, journalist, lawyer and a fellow documentary maker. They then attempted to secure funding and approached ABC in April 2007 to acquire archival material for their show.

Media Watch obtained the email correspondence which showed that ABC offered to provide 60 minutes of footage at a discount price of $160,000. While the generous offer was half of ABC’s normal going rate, Torrens and Haines had not fully secured their funding. They thanked the ABC for the offer and promised to get back to them. Fast forward one year to May 2008 and the SBS team had their funding in place and were ready to activate ABC’s offer. But something had changed in the interim. Haines’s email to order the material encountered only a deafening silence from ABC library sales.

Finally weeks later, they responded. And the response was brief and to the point: “After discussion with our News and Current Affairs division we have decided that we cannot supply footage for your production at this time.” A stunned Haines wrote to ABC Managing Director asking for an explanation on the change of heart. Scott responded sticking to the line that the ABC maintained it had not agreed to licence the footage. The ABC library manager followed up with another email with a softer line that suggested ABC would be prepared to licence the material on the condition that the use of the material “would commence on date not before January 2009”.

As David Tiley points out in his excellent and scathing article on the stoush, the production company had no power over that question, which is the province of the broadcaster. And SBS were unhappy with the embargo, planning to show the series later this year. Torrens and Haines followed up on this point with Media Watch stating reasonably that as the ABC archive is a publicly funded resource it had no justification for placing an embargo on the use of its material by independent documentary producers.

When Media Watch addressed their questions to Scott and the ABC board, they were referred to ABC’s head of national programs, Alan Sunderland. Sunderland began his response by talking about the ABC’s own documentary called The Howard Years which ABC was now scripting and editing. He said the ABC would require exclusive access to the archive and claims no agreement was reached in 2007 with the SBS team. It was his idea to put in place the embargo. He claimed the use of ABC footage by outside parties was always of “secondary importance” and said SBS had its own extensive archive. According to Sunderland, the ABC was under “no moral obligation” to make the material available.

Sunderland’s reply was incorrect on many counts. Firstly he did not accurately state the nature of SBS’s reply to ABC’s offer (though in fairness, Haines email was ambiguous and he should have explicitly agreed on the spot, pending finance). Secondly SBS’s archive is nowhere near as extensive as ABC’s (as Sunderland would well know as an ex-SBS employee) and the broadcaster itself did not exist prior to 1980. Thirdly, it makes no reference to the fact that SBS is also a public broadcaster, whose primary responsibility is also to make programs for the Australian public. Tiley called the response “arrogant horseshit” and said the ABC has a responsibility to make available the heritage of its program making, as part of the Australian cultural fabric.

The SBS filmmakers were equally unimpressed and are now scrambling to find the material they need from the commercial broadcasters (at probably much higher cost). They released a statement saying the ABC had no justification to place the embargo, and turn down commercial opportunity of archive recoupment in the process. “For us, this is a clear and salutary reminder of Australia’s new and commercially competitive public broadcasting environment,” said the filmmakers. “The implications for filmmakers, audiences and taxpayers of these decisions and events are dire and of great importance.”

SBS dancing with the devil

Australian public broadcaster SBS has made a major operating change this week. For the first time, advertising breaks will appear mid-program, rather than just before and after TV shows. The time limit is currently five minutes of advertising each hour and must occur in “natural breaks” in programs.

The change occurs because SBS were losing too many viewers in the long ad breaks that were scheduled between programs. Although there is no increase in the overall amount, the change will be more lucrative for the network. SBS says it generated $29 million in revenue, on top of the Federal Government's basic funding, last year When Shaun Brown, the broadcaster's managing director, announced the move in June, he said it would raise an extra $10 million in the first year, because ads in the middle of programs were more valuable.

SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) started test broadcasting in 1979 in Sydney as a foreign language service for that city’s multi-cultural population. It was based on the success of Radio stations 2EA in Sydney and 3EA in Melbourne. These stations started in 1975 initially as a temporary service to explain government health services in various languages but they took off in their own. By the end of the decade the then Malcolm Fraser Liberal administration realised there was an audience for multi-language television and SBS was born. Throughout the eighties, it slowly expanded its reach out of Sydney and Melbourne and onto Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra and Newcastle. Because it was broadcast on the UHF frequency, it wasn’t easy to get reception and many regions received poor coverage. A plan to amalgamate SBS with the ABC, the other public broadcaster was turned down by the Hawke Labor government in 1987. By the early nineties it had established itself in all the Australian state capitals and many regional centres.

The network now gets on average about 3-5% of the nightly Australian TV audience. In 1991 it started to place advertisements. Since then, these ads have provided 15% of its funding from the five minutes an hour of advertising the network has been allowed. The advertising quotient was put in place under 1991 SBS Act and the law needs to be amended if they are to increase the overall amount of advertising on the station. In 1990, SBS started its long association with football when it broadcast its first World Cup from Italy. Its nightly flagship World News is another core offering.

British-born Shaun Brown was brought in from TVNZ to be the head of SBS television in January 2003. He redefined its goals, looking for a broader audience with more younger viewers and more women. Brown explained why: "If you break our audience into four, very broad parts - men over 50, men under 50, women over 50, women under 50 - since 2001, three of those blocks have been in decline. The only area that's been in growth is men over 50”. He dropped the introductions to movies citing the concept of presenters as "slightly old-fashioned". He wanted to move SBS away from its heavy factual content towards a “more balanced programming”. Critics saw this as dumbing down of the network and have alleged that foreign language movies, arts coverage and documentaries have been marginalised. Two of its highest profile presenters, film critics Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton quit to go to the ABC in 2004. Pomeranz who had been a writer-producer for SBS since its inception, told the ABC why left the rival network: "All organisations go through change and SBS is heading in a new direction. As a passionate supporter of public broadcasting, I did not feel comfortable with this new direction”.

SBS has borrowed most of its new commercial break guidelines from the British media regulator Ofcom. The new guidelines defines a “natural break” in drama or comedy as follows:"(i) there is an obvious and dramatically significant lapse of time in the action, or (ii) there is a change of scene, with a significant break in the continuity of action." Whereas, a natural break for documentary or information program is: (i) a change f topic, (ii) a change of method or treatment, (iii) recorded inserts in live programs, or (iv) new participants in a discussion program are introduced. It also goes on to define natural breaks for entertainment, programs with prizes, music programs, news and current affairs, sport, outside broadcast, acquired programs and overseas broadcasts. For 30 minute programs, there will be 2 breaks and for 60 minute programs there will be three breaks.

Its another step on the long slippery road to full commercialisation. Expect SBS to lobby the government to increase the 5 minute an hour limit sometime after the next election.