Australian Indigenous Television Public Service (‘National’) and Community – Are Difficult to Manage in the Indigenous Context

[ TV and MEDIA] in other words, was bottom-up, not top- down. Then, in 2006, Indigenous television was allocated $50 million by the federal government. The remote television groups were hoping the money would be spent on refitting their existing, somewhat clapped-out, television service. Instead what they got was a trade-in. ICTV considered it a bad deal. The money was not allocated to ICTV but to a new entity, National Indigenous Television (NITV). The name suggests that the station is being screened across the nation, gather- ing audiences under an Indigenous vision of country and culture. NITV, however, is ‘national’ in name only. After a persistent campaign by Indigenous leaders and filmmakers,N ITV was funded and licensed – but it was not allocated the nation-wide, free-to-air television channel it needed. The government’s failure to put aside a separate channel for NITV meant Making that it had to use existing Indigenous media infrastructure and distribution technologies. The remote community television service It On was effectively forced to vacate the satellite channel it had been using since 2001 in order to make way for NITV. The drama surround- Your Own: ing the launch of NITV demonstrates that the three tiers of broadcasting – commercial, AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS TELEVISION public service (‘national’) and community – are difficult to manage in the Indigenous context. For one thing, in this context the words ‘nation’, ‘community’ and ‘commerce’ carry dif- Two years on from the controversial ‘usurping’ of Indigenous ferent meanings and political imperatives than Community Television by National Indigenous Television, Ellie they do for mainstream Australia. Combine Rennie traces the complex history of Indigenous television in them with the messy, bullish and desper- Australia and ponders where it might go from here. ate grab for digital television channels taking place in the media industries and the picture becomes very fuzzy indeed. N THE ORIGINAL Bush Mechanics opens with an elderly man recalling his first documentary of 1998, Warlpiri man encounter with car tracks and wondering The advent of NITV IFrancis Kelly and his mates show us what strange monster had descended upon how to repair a flat tyre using spinifex and his lands. In the 1980s, when a satellite nick- NITV commenced broadcasting in mid July replenish brake fluid with Omo soap powder. named ‘the bird’ was launched to bring tel- 2007. At first $50 million over four years The Bush Mechanics carry on as men with evision to Central Australia, remote groups sounded like a substantial amount of mon- cars generally do: arguing over who will feared its impact on traditional culture. In the ey to a sector that was used to surviving on drive and trying to resolve the eternal ques- end, however, they managed to make it work very little. Soon it became clear that it was tion of whether Holdens are, in fact, better for them. Remote communities started their nowhere near enough to fill a full television than Fords. It has to be one of the funniest own television services using basic technol- schedule with new, high-quality programming instructional videos ever made and also one ogy, inventing new production methods and (let alone the question of how to sustain the of the smartest, teaching non-Indigenous distribution systems to suit their cultural prac- service when the four years is up). The NITV audiences of the ingenuity and lifestyle of tices and geographic conditions. Eventual- funding is only about half of SBS’s annual the desert people. Old traditions, in this ly, the satellite enabled them to network their government-derived television budget. What story, generally improve upon modern tech- own content across vast distances. aspired to be Australia’s third public service nologies. There are still moments, of course, broadcaster, after the ABC and SBS, is now as the men reverse their old bomb for miles Indigenous Community Television (ICTV), as calling itself a ‘content aggregator’, forced along a dodgy road, that we wish they would the remote service was known, existed large- to source programs that have already been just get out and walk. ly in spite of government policy and with no screened elsewhere, with only a small amount dedicated funding. It was underpinned by a The documentary is, in part, an allegory of philosophy of community ownership, local L-R: DAVID BATTY, FRANCIS JUPURRULA KELLY Indigenous television itself. Bush Mechanics production and regional collaboration. ICTV, AND JACK JAKAMARRA ROSS; BUSH MECHANICS 104 • Metro Magazine 158 of commissioned content. As two nationally terrestrial transmitters so that everyone with available digital channels (‘A’ and ‘B’) were ▐ Remote communities a television set could receive it. The content being sized up by prospective commercial started their own was being collated and uploaded onto the occupants, our new ‘national’ broadcast- television services satellite by a community media organization, er began transmitting its signal to a potential PY Media, from offices in Alice Springs. audience of around 220,000 viewers. In No- using basic technology, vember 2007, the station managed to extend inventing new While I was there I put in a request to visit its audience by securing airtime on Foxtel. If production methods Warlpiri Media Association in Yuendumu you subscribe to Foxtel and haven’t noticed and distribution and was granted permission. It was one NITV, that is because it is not listed with the systems to suit their of a number of Remote Indigenous Media other two public service broadcasters – it is cultural practices and Organisations supplying programming to buried on the third page of the ‘entertainment’ geographic conditions. ▐ ICTV (others included PY Media, Ngaany- section of the electronic program guide. atjarra Media and Top End Aboriginal Bush Broadcasting Association [or TEABBA]). An- Nonetheless, NITV is attempting to do what thropologist Eric Michaels once summed up national broadcasters were created for: get- and methods of national broadcasting are Yuendumu’s television station as a dramatic ting the best of everything to the greatest a significant departure from what came example of ‘the potential diversity of things number of homes. John Reith, who headed before. ICTV was looked upon by the gov- we call TV’. up the BBC before the Second World War, ernment as an experiment and a trial run in set the standard with his mission ‘to inform, preparation for ‘real’ television. It was a bumpy four-hour journey to educate and entertain’. We expect cultural Yuendumu in the bush bus, which makes leadership from institutions such as the BBC That perception is understandable, in that the 300km journey twice a week from Alice or ABC; they should be bastions of quality it can be difficult to see the use and role of Springs, stopping at a few smaller commu- content, elevating our tastes and educating community-based, local media. Small-scale nities and outposts along the way. Warlpiri us on what’s happening in the world. Aus- communication is easily overshadowed by Media was easy enough to find. The large tralia’s newest television service has Reithian the towering achievements and power of concrete compound is painted in bright ambitions. NITV’s mission statement speaks the mass media. Only when you are right up murals depicting the reach of their radio net- of television ‘that informs, entertains and ed- close, in the local setting, can you see why it work, which serves the five languages of the ucates all Australians about Aboriginal and matters. Being in remote Australia, watching Pintupi, Anmatyerre and Warlpiri lands over Torres Strait Islander people, their customs remote television, makes the mass media 480,000 square kilometres. Warlpiri Media is and the things that interest them’. seem very distant indeed. For remote com- a non-profit organization, owned by the lo- munities, ICTV simply mattered more. cal community. The full-time staff, most of The arrival of NITV shows the enduring allure whom are non-Indigenous, are directed by a of mass media and its apparent effective- The introduction of NITV has been a disaster committee of local representatives, some of ness at getting large portions of a population for the existing community media groups. It whom have been involved in Warlpiri Media watching and thinking about the same issues all stems from the temptation to see commu- since its inception over two decades ago. at the same time. It is certainly unfortunate nity-based media as merely a pre-commer- The organization’s turnover is around $1.3 that NITV has been cast as a kind of usurper cial incubator, or as something ‘pre-public’, million but that fluctuates depending on to the ICTV service when they had originally amateur and alternative. When communities whether there are any large productions or set out to achieve an independent, nation- do well, we feel it is time that they became grant-based projects on the go. wide channel. A satirical opinion piece by something else. In spite of the astounding Noel Pearson in The Australian (28 July 2007) success of citizen-led media – everything The place was well-equipped and bigger described it as ‘a deal done behind closed from Wikipedia to eyewitness mobile phone than I expected. White Macs covered in doors’ that was ‘genocidal in its audacity’ – a videos in traditional news – bottom-up devel- red dust sat among the dishevelled desks claim that NITV did not find funny and strongly opment has no real political support. And that and studios. People wandered in and out, denied. What is interesting in the case of In- goes double for Indigenous development. including Warlpiri DJs organizing to do a digenous media is that NITV’s somewhat old- slot on-air.

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