Locally Significant Content on Regional Television
Locally Significant Content on Regional
Television
A Case Study of North Queensland Commercial
Television Before and After Aggregation
John Michael Flynn
B. Journalism
A thesis submitted to the Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
for the degree of Master of Arts (Research)
2008
Abstract
This thesis is an exploration of the fate which has befallen the regional commercial television industry in North Queensland in the wake of the aggregation policy introduced by the Federal Labor Government in 1990. More specifically, it examines the effectiveness of policy outcomes which stem from the Australian Broadcasting
Authority’s 2001 inquiry into the adequacy of regional and rural commercial television news and information services.
The research is primarily concerned with the quality of local content provided by regional commercial broadcasters in response to the implementation of the Australian
Communications and Media Authority’s points system for broadcast of matters of local significance. The policy outcomes are balanced against an historical context, which traces the regional commercial television industry in North Queensland back to its very beginning.
Regulatory reform has resulted in a basic level of news content being maintained.
However the significance of elements of this news content to local viewers is minimal.
The reduction in local information content, despite being identified in the earliest stages of the ABA investigation, has not been adequately addressed by the reform process.
i Acknowledgements
This thesis may have withered on the vine without the support and encouragement of the
senior academic staff at the QUT Creative Industries Faculty at Kelvin Grove in
Brisbane. To my supervisors Doctor Lee Duffield and Doctor Angela Romano, a special
debt of gratitude is owed for their steering role in the project and the commitment to see
it through to the finish with professionalism and sustained vigour.
A special thank-you also to the television industry professionals, in particular, Dick
Chant, John Baker, Andre Heise, Michael Mahin, Rodney Tindale and Paul Smith, who gave so willingly of their time to assist with documenting a small, yet significant chapter
in the history of Australian television.
Lastly, a heartfelt vote of thanks to the staff of the Cairns City Library, for selflessly
opening up their newspaper archive for this project. I will remain forever apologetic for
the fate of the microfiche viewer.
ii Table of Contents
Abstract i
Acknowledgements ii
Table of Contents iii
Statement of Original Authorship v
Chapter 1. Introduction 1
The Genesis of Aggregation 2 The Australian Broadcasting Authority Review 4 Purpose and Structure of This Thesis 5
Chapter 2. A Methodology for Researching Regional Television News. 8
Applied Methodology 14 Interviews 16 Submissions to The ABA Review 19 Theoretical Grounding 20
Chapter 3. The Role of Regional Television as a Public Sphere Institution. 22
Journalism, News and Democracy 23 Television News and Democracy 25 A Media Model for Liberal Democracies – Introducing the Public Sphere 29 Politics in The Public Sphere – the Theory of Communicative Action 32 Communicative Action – the Mass Media 34 The Public Sphere and Regional Television 35 Localism in The Global Era 35 Localism, Diversity and Regulatory Policy 41 Formative Research on the Impact of the ABA Regulations 46
Chapter 4. Regional Television in North Queensland – an Historical
Perspective. 48
iii The Genesis of Local News and Information Programs in North Queensland 50 The NQTV Era 58 Local Programming and Commercial Goals 65 The Aggregation Bloodbath 66 The Desperate Scramble for Network Affiliation 74 The Newsroom Closures 82 The Industry Flashpoint 85
Chapter 5. Local News and Information Programs in Cairns. 89
WIN News – Weeknights at Six P.M. 89 Seven Local News – Weeknights at Six 90 Southern Cross Ten News Updates 90 Textual Analysis – The Search For Meaning 92 Sample 1. Murder On a Cairns Street 92 Sample 2. Road Fatality, Smithfield 98 Sample 3. The Water Crisis – Reviving The Bradfield Scheme 99 Sample 4. Coverage of Local Sport 105 State Focus – Southern Cross Broadcasting 118 Water Recycling 127 For a Few Dollars More 130 Critical Observations and Qualification of Journalistic Merit 131
Chapter 6. Nourishing The Public Sphere. 134
The Future of Local News and Information Services 134 The Lessons of History 135 Aggregation 136 Textual Analysis – Summary of Findings 138 Southern Cross Broadcasting 139 Addressing the Lack of Local Information Content 143 Burying the Myths – Mounting a Case For Regulatory Reform 144 Locally Significant or Significantly Local 147 The Four-Point Regional TV Recovery Plan 149 Regulation, Protection and Competition 151
Appendix I State Focus interview, John Metcalfe. 153
Appendix II State Focus interview, Peter Beattie. 157
References 163
iv Statement of Original Authorship
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution.
To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.
Signature
Date
v Chapter 1.
Introduction
This chapter provides an overview of the research topic. It also provides a backgrounding to the issues discussed in this thesis by outlining the key findings of the Australian Broadcasting Authority’s review into the adequacy of local news and information programs on regional commercial television.
On November 22, 2001, the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) commenced an investigation into the “adequacy of local news and information programs provided by commercial television services in regional and rural Australia”
(Australian Broadcasting Authority, 2002). The investigation was a direct response to a public backlash which followed a wave of regional television newsroom closures in Queensland and New South Wales.
The closures, instigated by publicly listed companies Southern Cross Broadcasting and Prime Television were not the first to hit the regional television industry. A similar wave of newsroom closures occurred between 1991 and 1995, shortly after the dawn of aggregation (a process further discussed below). In Queensland, these earlier closures predominately involved the Queensland Television (QTV) and
Sunshine Television licensees.
Aggregation is a term used to describe a regulatory process, overseen by the (then)
ABA, which saw the number of commercial television licensees increase from one
1 to three, for the bulk of regional television license areas in Australia’s Eastern
States. In Queensland, aggregated commercial television hit the airwaves on
January 1, 1991 with regional audiences in coastal areas between the Gold Coast and
Cairns gaining access to the same ‘diversity’ of programming as viewers in
Australia’s capital cities.
The Genesis of Aggregation
As a concept, or perhaps more correctly an ‘ideal’, aggregation traces its genesis to the Federal Labor government of Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer (later
Prime Minister) Paul Keating in the 1980s. The regional television equalization or
‘aggregation’ policy was closely tied to a broader policy concerning cross-media ownership laws and was at the heart of the Keating “mantra” of diluting Australia’s concentrated pattern of media ownership. The Keating doctrine can be found in the parliamentary Hansard of the time:
The previous Government said to country people, ‘you can watch one channel and, not only that, in some places you can actually watch the channel owned by our person, read the newspaper owned by our person and listen to the radio owned by the same person’. That was what the previous government believed in. (Parliament of Australia Hansard, 1988, p.2)
The new aggregated markets, where network affiliates provided a relay of services from the Nine, Ten and Seven networks (notionally supplemented with local content), replaced the previous system of ‘one station towns’. To generalize, prior to aggregation, major coastal centres in regional Queensland were each serviced by a
2 single commercial television licensee, which ‘cherry picked’ program content from the three major networks at vastly reduced cost.
Cities which hosted the ‘solus’ broadcasters included Cairns, Townsville, Mackay,
Rockhampton, Maryborough, the Sunshine Coast and Toowoomba. These enterprises were recognized as being highly profitable. Given the pool of available funds, the programming mix was supplemented with a variety of local information shows which fitted within the ‘journalistic genre’, including news, sport, local entertainment, travel, cooking shows and children’s programs.
This thesis will present evidence that with the arrival of aggregation, the immediate profitability of these largely ‘local’ enterprises diminished because of the advent of competition in each local market and the home-grown content (aside of news) on regional television sets in Queensland largely disappeared. The new players in the aggregated markets in Queensland (Win Television, Sunshine Television and QTV) initially persisted with local news programming, but it too started to vanish.
WIN Television, a Nine affiliate which enjoyed the backing of the nation’s highest rating network, was the only company to persist with news for the entire period post- aggregation. As outlined above, at various stages, newsrooms associated with
Sunshine Television, QTV and more recently its successor Southern Cross
Broadcasting, closed their studio doors.
3 The Australian Broadcasting Authority Review
The ABA review of Regional Television News and Information Services found the following:
• An overall increase in the quantity of news content and a decline in
competing sources of news since the mid 1990s.
• A Significant decline in local information (other than news)
• Legitimate community concerns regarding lack of diversity in broadcasts of
matters of local significance and lack of competition in delivering local
news and information.
• Some regional television broadcasters were not sufficiently responsive to
audience needs for local content.
(Australian Broadcasting Authority, 2002, p.10)
To remedy this the ABA made the following recommendations:
• Require each licensee in the aggregated markets to broadcast matters of local
significance in each of the sub-markets, meeting a minimum of 90 points per
week and 960 points per sub-market per eight weeks.
• Enable licensees to accrue points for the broadcast of matters of local
significance: 2 points per minute of local news and 1 point per minute of
local current affairs or local information, all within specified time zones
(Monday to Friday – 3 pm to 11 pm; Saturday and Sunday – 8 am to 11 pm).
4 (Australian Broadcasting Authority, 2002, p.11)
What did the broadcasters do?
• Win Television continued its 6.00 p.m. Win Local News and several
syndicated regional network programs including fishing and leisure.
• Seven Queensland reinstated the half-hour Seven Local News services in
Cairns and Townsville which were axed in 1995.
• Southern Cross Broadcasting introduced 30-second evening Southern Cross
News Updates to meet quota requirements and produced a syndicated weekly
half-hour ‘current affairs’ program, State Focus .
Purpose and Structure of This Thesis
It is the purpose of this thesis to critically evaluate the quality of local news and information content presently being provided by the regional commercial broadcasters and to balance this with an historical perspective, determining the quality and diversity of local content offered prior to the aggregation policy. I will frame this research around a central question. What lasting outcomes did the ABA’s inquiry into regional television news and information services deliver for viewers in
North Queensland?
This dissertation will assert that the Regional Television Industry, as it existed prior to aggregation in North Queensland, was, at the time of the ABA inquiry, falling
5 into a state of ruin. Such a standpoint is reinforced, not only by the ABA’s 2002 inquiry findings (which are based upon thorough research), but the imposing physical cultural relics that the industry has left behind post-aggregation. On The
Strand in Townsville and Mulgrave Road in Cairns, television studios - city landmarks once purpose built for providing local television program content - have been gutted and sold. In their place are new sales offices and broadcast centres, constructed for the primary purpose of relaying national network signals to regional audiences and generating revenue from local advertisers.
The purpose of this thesis, then, is firstly to sift through the ruins of the industry that once was and establish what position local television once held in regional
Queensland’s cultural landscape. Using this history as a frame of reference, it is then possible to determine the impact of the Australian Communications and Media
Authority’s policy initiatives in the years following the inquiry into the adequacy of local news and information programs on regional commercial television.
My research should not be seen as an attempt to discredit the television equalization policy, which delivered clear outcomes for regional viewers in terms of access to the same services as those available in capital cities. It will, however, present the hypothesis that there was an oversight in the enactment of this policy, which has led to a decline in local content, non-commensurate with community expectations.
The point of contest in determining the future for regional commercial television sits at the junction of community expectation, regulatory control and corporate
6 responsibility. What will be brought into question within the context of this thesis, is whether the regulatory response in the years following the 2001 inquiry has been effective in forcing regional commercial broadcasters to meet their (now) codified social responsibilities. The answer to this question is more complex than simply determining whether established criteria for local content are being met; it is a matter of determining whether the criteria themselves deliver suitable outcomes for the owners of the free-to-air broadcast spectrum, the viewers.
Chapter Two of this thesis will explore the research methodology used to conduct a detailed investigation of local television in North Queensland. This will include establishing the reasons behind the construction of an historical narrative and the presentation of a textual analysis of local news content.
In Chapter Three, I will examine the notional role of local television as a public sphere institution, supported by relevant academic and philosophical literature.
Chapter Four will present a detailed historical narrative of regional commercial television in North Queensland and this will be neatly balanced in Chapter Five with a textual analysis of purported ‘local’ content, presently on air in North Queensland.
Chapter Six will bond the elements of the thesis together, confirming the findings of material outlined in the earlier chapters. It will also propose on possible way forward for local television as one of the institutions which nourishes the public sphere.
7 Chapter 2.
A Methodology for Researching Regional Television News
This chapter outlines the methodology used in the construction of the thesis, including the establishment of criteria for textual analysis, the reasons for my conducting an historical study of regional commercial television and the boundaries applied to the research framework.
As a positioning statement, it is my intention as a researcher to apply traditional qualitative research methodology to answer the question posed in the introduction to this thesis. What lasting outcomes did the ABA’s inquiry into regional television news and information services deliver for viewers in North Queensland?
The research took the form of both interviews tracing the history of regional commercial television in North Queensland, backed by documentary sources, and a textual analysis of content presently airing on regional commercial television as local news and information programming.
The methodology is necessitated by my constructive hypothesis, which is that the quantitative methods employed by ACMA in its role as the local content watchdog are inadequate; a theme that will be explored to greater extent later in this chapter.
This inadequacy relates specifically to ACMA’s use of a self-regulated quota system to determine the amount of locally significant regional news and information content provided by broadcasters.
8 My starting point for determining a research methodology to apply in the analysis of local news and information was provided by an ABA press statement released on
November 7, 2004:
Regional commercial television broadcasters have all met their local content requirement in the first six months of the operation of the license condition imposed by the ABA in 2003. The license condition requires licensees to broadcast a minimum 90 points of local content per week and at least 720 points of local content over a six-week timing period (this averages out at 120 points per week). These quota points accrue on the basis of two points per minute for local news and one point per minute for other material, excluding paid advertising. (Australian Broadcasting Authority, 2004)
The new system for measuring local content, and the placement of minimum content guidelines, formed the core plank in the television industry regulator’s response to the complex issues posed by the ABA inquiry into the adequacy of regional television news and information content. The process, self administered by the regional commercial stations, required them to report back to the ABA - and later to the body that replaced the ABA, the Australian Communications and Media
Authority (ACMA) - at the end of each set period, describing how the requirements regarding local content had been met. A system of occasional independent auditing of random regional markets was put in place by the regulator as a means of keeping the system honest, but otherwise the broadcasters were largely in control of the evaluation process.
9 I do not contend that broadcasters have acted dishonestly in terms of their self administration of this process. In fact, a laborious attempt during preliminary research for this paper to tally the points in the Cairns and Townsville broadcast markets served to confirm ACMA’s on-going findings. Those findings being, as of the most recent report for the period, July 23, 2006 to February 3, 2007, broadcasters were continuing to satisfy the demands of the points system (Australian
Communications & Media Authority, 2007).
What I do contend is that the points system is fatally flawed by its failure to address key criteria set down in the ABA’s Regional Television News Inquiry Report. Most notably the system does not adequately measure whether the items included in the points calculations are, by definition, “matters of local significance” (ABA, 2002,
11).
Defining Matters of Local Significance
As I will discuss further in this chapter, determining whether material is locally
“significant”, at face value involves a process of subjective judgment. Logic dictates that what is significant to one viewer may not be significant to another.
In its 2002 report, the ABA defined “locally significant” matters as being, but not limited to, the following:
• News about people and events that happen in the local area; • Opinions or perspectives of local residents about events that happen in other places but that have an effect on locals or the local area;
10 • News about the local economy and local industry; • Sporting events that happen in the local area, or that concern sporting teams or participants from the local area or supported by the local area; • The weather, and its effects, in the local area; • Community services in the local area; • The activities of members of the community in the local area; and • Features of the local area such as the local geography, and local fauna and flora. (ABA, 2002, p.30)
Academics could spend months, if not years, fully determining a list of what is locally significant; even then, the list would be a matter of subjective judgment and biased in favour of what the researchers view as important within the scope of their life worlds. Bypassing the statistical definitions of significant (tools of quantitative research), the Encarta English Dictionary lists the meaning of significant as:
1. Meaningful – having or expressing a meaning, 2. Communicating secret meaning – having a hidden or implied meaning, 3. Momentous and influential – having a major or important effect. ( Microsoft, 2007)
Ignoring the “hidden or implied meaning” (inappropriate under the circumstances), it follows that a working definition of significance for the purposes of this research could read: items of news and information expressing meaning to, or that are capable of having an important effect upon the community. Presenting a definition in this manner takes us away from subjective determinations of what may or may not
11 be significant to individual citizens; instead it allows the researcher to analyse material, by asking the question: does this material have the qualities necessary to be recognized by the viewer as meaningful? To further illustrate the point, if, through ineffective discourse, information lacks meaning or fails to register as being relevant to the viewer, how then can it be deemed to be significant?
By developing an understanding of the meaning of the term significant , it becomes possible to analyse the qualities required to pass a test of significance, by way of textual analysis. To express meaning, or to be capable of having an important effect upon the community, items of news and information presented via journalistic discourse must satisfy key criteria. For the purpose of this textual analysis, I will refer to these criteria as the “test of trust”.
The “test of trust” is enacted subconsciously at the point of message transmission from reporter to viewer and relies, in the first instance, on the viewer being able to comprehend the information (the facts) as presented. I propose, that for this trust to be fully established, the following criteria must be met:
1. The author (originator) of the information must be clearly
identifiable.
2. The reportage must adhere to a discipline of verification, i.e. it should
contain, where feasible, attribution from those involved in, or who
witnessed the news event.
12 3. The facts (or hypotheses) presented must be explained sufficiently for
the viewer to clearly comprehend the circumstances of the news
event.
4. Where items of contest in the public sphere are presented, reportage
must attempt to explain the contested ideologies or circumstances.
If information presented by means of journalistic discourse fails to satisfy the above criteria, it is difficult to argue that a television viewer of sound mind could find such information to be significant. Fundamentally, a person who fails to comprehend information also finds it difficult to locate meaning in this information. Equally, if the source of information is unclear – wherein the viewer makes the connection – trust will be difficult to establish. Returning to our definitions, if information is to be considered meaningful or of relevance, the television viewer must be able to trust the source of the information and the information being presented.
One criticism of this methodology is that it relies upon the notion of the viewer having what might simply be described as “a nose for the truth”. This is precisely the argument being advanced here. Viewers of television news programs, both as a collective body and as individuals, do not (despite popular perception) simply believe everything they watch, or for that matter find everything they watch to be significant.
In the first instance, it is the obligation of journalists (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2001, p.13) “to strive to make the significant interesting and relevant”. Journalists are, of
13 course, not beyond reproach, in the sense that from time to time, information that is insignificant, incorrect, or simply uninteresting can be whipped into a well presented cocktail, capable of evading viewers’ sensory screening processes. In this context, objectifying standards also need be applied to the texts being analysed, to ensure they meet core news values, as applied by news practitioners in the liberal democratic tradition.
The texts being analysed will also be screened for the presence of the following core news values as established by Granato:
:
1. Conflict - It is in the public interest to know about acts of violence.
2. Disaster – Natural and accidental disasters are news.
3. Consequence or impact – An event that effects a large number of people.
4. Prominence - Big names make big news .
5. Timeliness – An important element of news is its freshness.
6. Proximity - The closer the event to home, the bigger the story.
(Granato, 1991, 31–34)
Applied Methodology
Having established the criteria to apply, I located a set of relevant texts to analyse.
Fortunately, due to the relatively small amount of local content (content deemed by the commercial broadcasters to be of local significance pursuant to ACMA regulations) in North Queensland, this process, though still protracted and laborious, was not as difficult as first expected. It involved monitoring and recording of four specific programs over a ten-day period between February 14, 2007 and February
14 23, 2007. These programs comprise the entirety of news genre programs on air in
North Queensland.
They are as follows:
1. Win News. 30-minute bulletin Weeknights at 6.00p.m.
2. Seven Local News. 30-minute bulletin Weeknights at 6.00p.m.
3. Southern Cross News. 30-second update, weeknights (time non-
specific)
4. State Focus. Southern Cross Broadcasting 30-minute
Current Affairs. 9.30 a.m. Sunday.
Originally I intended to record the programs over a ten-day period in December
2006. Following preliminary observations, this initial plan was shelved, given the content on air during December (heading into the Christmas period – a traditional holiday period in the regional T.V. industry) would not be representative of what is produced by the stations during the remainder of the year. Instead, a decision was made to return to North Queensland for a ten-day period in February 2007 (cyclone season) – a time when, typically, local broadcasters are operating at full capacity and the local news market is at its busiest.
A decision was also made to focus specifically on the Cairns news market for the purpose of the textual analysis. Issues involved here were, in the first instance, financial. While in the broader context, this case study is centred on both Cairns and
Townsville, preliminary observations also indicated there was no specific benefit to be gained as there would be unnecessary duplication. The Win and Seven
15 Queensland news services in each centre could be classed colloquially as “pigeon pairs”, while Southern Cross Broadcasting’s main contribution to the local content equation, “State Focus” is, as described, designed to cater for a state-wide audience, with subtle differences, from time to time, between news markets.
Interviews
Any attempt to develop an argument, whether it be that local news and information programming has changed for the better or worse, is contingent upon being in possession of a reliable recorded history of regional television news and information shows in North Queensland, prior to aggregation. Exhaustive library research failed to uncover any significant body of research on regional television content in North
Queensland prior to 1991. In the early stages of planning the thesis, interviews were decided upon as a core element in the research methodology, to assist in filling the lengthy gaps in regional commercial television’s historical narrative.
Given my twelve years of employment in regional television, and base of industry contacts, I decided to seek out interview subjects who could shed light on the history of regional news and information programming in North Queensland, dating back to its commencement in 1962. This was the most enjoyable element of the thesis project and although extremely labour intensive it produced results beyond expectation.
The interview participants came forward willingly, and in several cases made contact with me after “hearing through the grapevine” that research was being
16 conducted into the history of regional television in North Queensland. Eight of the ten interview subjects, whose recollections assisted the historical narrative, enjoyed more than 150 years of experience in regional media. All of these eight people played an important role in regional television news or information programs or station management. One is a current Southern Cross Broadcasting staff member whose identity has been kept anonymous at his request. This interviewee provided confirmation of the process involved in producing Southern Cross Broadcasting’s
30-second news updates and the State Focus program. The tenth interviewee was
Cairns-based Senator Jan McLucas, a long term advocate for reform of regional television regulations.
The quality of the data obtained also exceeded my expectations, not just in terms of the lucid memories of participants, some of whom were now of considerable age, but also in terms of the intellectual contributions advanced by several of the interviewees when discussing the relative merits of local programming.
It should be noted, an original plan to use interviews to cover the entire history of regional television in North Queensland was rejected by the researcher for ethical reasons. Several of the potential interview subjects, particularly those employed in the industry since 1991 (including those involved in the aforementioned newsroom closures) were my former workmates and contemporaries. Recognizing the potential to be influenced or swayed by the opinions of peers, I decided to trace this period of regional television history through documentary evidence – mainly newspaper archives – which proved to be comprehensive. Additionally, I have also
17 used personal recollections from crucial points in the aggregation time-line (in particular the set-up of WIN Television in North Queensland) to provide a clearer picture of the broadcasting landscape at the advent of aggregation.
The interview technique employed was a relatively unstructured form of open-ended questioning. Interviews were conducted face to face, and in the homes of the interviewees, or a setting that the interviewee found comfortable. This included workplaces and, in the case of two subjects, al fresco dining establishments.
Clearance through QUT’s Human Research Ethics Committee was granted for me to conduct this research.
With the purpose of the interviews being to gain historical knowledge, the interview subjects were asked to recollect their experiences of program production during their time working at regional television stations. On occasions, interview subjects were asked to elaborate on particular historical instances, or processes that were applied in the production of regional television programs.
Prior to the interviews being conducted, broadcast schedules were obtained from newspaper archives stored at the Cairns City Library, which provided background that allowed me to prompt the interviewees on memories that were fading.
Particular attention was applied to questions which assisted me in understanding the resources involved in program production and the relationship between the program makers and the audience.
18 The schedule for interviews conducted was as follows:
Interviewee Location Date
Richard (Dick) Chant Malanda 16/2/2007
John Baker Cairns 19/2/2007
Sen. Jan McLucas Cairns 20/2/2007
Rodney Tindale Cairns 20/2/2007
Renee Mickelbrough Cairns 21/2/2007
Andre Heise Cairns 22/2/2007
Michael Mahin Cairns 22/2/2007
Paul Smith Cairns 23/2/2007
Ian Gleeson Brisbane 12/10/2007
Anonymous Southern
Cross staffer Townsville 16/1/2008
Ultimately, the archival interviews were less about interviewing in the journalistic sense and more about the interviewees’ story telling. My focus was more on an
‘open interview’ structure, listening to the stories being told by the interviewees and copying down interesting points to return to later for further elaboration.
Submissions to the ABA Review
This thesis purposefully avoids any in-depth analysis of the submissions to the ABA inquiry into regional television news, for several key reasons. Firstly, numerous submissions were written by current and former industry colleagues, for whom there
19 would be risk of entertaining a perceived bias on my behalf. Secondly, given the thoroughness of the ABA’s inquiry, it presents as a largely redundant process to re- examine material which has been neatly summarised and acted upon by the inquiry body.
Thirdly, as Wilson rightfully points out (2002, p.129), “they (the submissions) come from people or organisations with a vested interest in the existence of as many news outlets as possible. They are in many cases media workers, unions or former workers, concerned about industry structures and job opportunities.”
During the process of selecting industry professionals to interview for the project, I have been careful to chose participants who were not actively involved in the inquiry process, or making submissions therein. I have also purposefully chosen interviewees whose roles in the industry have extended or still do extend well beyond production of “local news”, which at face value attracted the greatest attention and benefited most from the inquiry outcomes.
Theoretical Grounding
In the formative weeks of preparing this thesis, my supervisory team emphasized the importance of grounding the project in theory and conducting a review of relevant literature, which could later be used as a sounding board against which the data obtained could be balanced. In the first instance, this involved positioning the regional television industry as an organic institution within the framework of a
20 broader society and developing a more comprehensive understanding of the role the media plays.
In practice, finding an appropriate working model proved to be an exhaustive exercise, made easier by lengthy consultation with academics, including, but not limited to my supervisory team. This led me down the path of exploring the attributes of public sphere theory, academic interpretations of which form the basis for the literature study, and in turn, the reference point against which the findings of the data analysis will be balanced.
Ultimately, the process of building an argument - a thesis - that builds a case for the re-invigoration of a publicly owned, state regulated and corporate leased asset, begins with establishing a need for its on-going nourishment.
21 Chapter 3
The Role of Regional Television News as a Public Sphere Institution
This chapter positions regional television news within the framework of a notional public sphere in a liberal democracy and critiques the role of media institutions in the maintenance of a vigorous democracy.
Does regional television news serve any productive purpose from which society gains a benefit? Furthermore, should its disappearance be cause for alarm? At first glance, these questions may present as a gross simplification of a set of significantly more complex questions on the role of news media in regional society and social systems more broadly. Fundamentally, before undertaking any analysis of regional television news content, there is a need to understand the purpose of the material which is being delivered to the viewer.
Television news is to the early 21 st century what the town crier was to 18 th Century
England and what the message stick man was to Australia’s Indigenous nations of
40,000 years prior. It is important at the outset to question how this modern message stick is used within the context of a liberal democracy such as that which exists in regional Australia, and how in turn, this contributes to the maintenance of the social and political systems.
22 Journalism, News and Democracy
At the core of the political system in regional Queensland, as indeed for Australia in the broader context, is the notion of liberal democracy. It is characterized by a three- tiered system of local, state and federal Governments where officials are elected by way of ballot. Voting is compulsory.
Australian journalism researcher Romano provides us with a compact working definition of democracy, linking it directly to a concept I will later outline - the public sphere. She describe democracy as, “the capacity of citizens and organizations in the public sphere to gather information about conditions that impact upon their existence and to reach judgments on how to respond individually and collectively to such conditions” (Romano and Bromley, 2005, p.xi).
What has long been of interest to theorists, is how citizens acquire the information they need to make informed judgments (i.e. the information required to cast a vote and to regulate and advance their community) and how, potentially, this process can either be enhanced or as some critics may view it, corrupted by the mass media. In
The Elements of Journalism , Kovach and Rosenstiel (2001, p.17) position the role of journalism at the core of democracy: “The primary purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to be free and self governing.” This approach clearly reflects the more traditional American press ideology, which, it should be noted in this 21 st Century context, shows important distinctions in ideology and practice to the Fox News and CNN journalistic methods now permeating the U.S. system. Importantly, these two news organizations also form
23 part of the Australian media fabric through cable associations which extend to regional Queensland.
U.S. journalists and media academics have written and spoken volumes on the role of the media in a democracy and the terms ‘gatekeeper’ and ‘watchdog’ are recurring themes in the abundantly available literature. Indeed, some journalists may play both of those roles on a day to day basis, but applying the simple test of examining what stories journalists cover on a day to day basis, it becomes clear the gatekeeper and watchdog roles are merely part of the picture.
When asking the question, What are Journalists For? American journalism academic Jay Rosen talks in terms of the “public view” and a “consultable record”.
This is steering towards a more expansive, all-encompassing interpretation of the role of journalists, and where they might fit into a democratic society:
Journalists not only tell us about the world, they are part of the structure that holds it up. For if their accounts prove trustworthy, the entire society can trust that its affairs are being brought into public view, made part of a consultable record. The history that is happening to us, and the history we are trying to make, become more intelligible when news is made well. (Rosen, 1999, p.285)
The notion of journalists as torchbearers for democracy is an over-riding theme to which journalists in democratic societies at least pay homage. The concept is embedded, though not necessarily adhered to, in codes of ethical practice.
24 Journalists as ‘pillars of democracy’ is more than just a cliché. It is an ideal that is aspired to, though perhaps seldom reached and very often associated with education and a free flow of important information. “Democratic theory gives the press a crucial role. Education and information are the pillars on which a free society rests.
Informed public opinion is typically believed to be a weapon of enormous power – indeed the cornerstone of legislative government” (Christians, Fackler, McKee &
Rotzoll, 1991, p.29).
The Australian media tradition contrasts with that seen in totalitarian societies where media reportage of political matters is state controlled and suppressed. In a liberal democracy such as Australia, journalists act on behalf of the citizenry as carriers of political information, allowing them to make informed decisions, which can invoke something of the “pillar of society” view in serious media analyses. Tiffen notes:
Politics as we know it is inconceivable without the news media. They are the central forum of political communication in modern liberal democracies. Battles for favourable news coverage are a major arena in political conflicts, and the news provides a common reference point to which the different sides relate in their subsequent actions. To overstretch a dubious metaphor, the news media are the central nervous system of the body politic. (Tiffen, 1989, p.178)
Television News and Democracy
Televised news and information has had a profound impact on politics since the commencement of broadcasting in Australia in 1956 and in regional Queensland
25 from 1960. Television journalism brought a new dimension to the treatment of politics and has given both those holding public office and those seeking public office an unprecedented level of exposure.
In Western countries, television has largely taken over from mass public meetings and other forms of public canvassing of ideas, like sermons in Church, to allow engagement in politics in a represented form:
Within the political system, direct participatory democracy is possible to a limited extent only; the remainder is carried out by representation. This political representation has its counterpart in the media: we cannot all be present at all events and developments, but fortunately television can represent them for us. (Dahlgren 1995, p.46)
In the example above, Dahlgren makes the point that television has come to play an important role in relaying events of importance to citizens, which can be so, not only in the representation of social interaction, but also in the other sense of the word, representation as advocacy of citizens’ interests through the agency of the television journalist or other practitioner. To use an analogy, the roles fulfilled by a newsroom’s police rounds person or the court rounds person in a newsroom are typical of this representative function. Common sense dictates that the courtroom is not large enough for the public to witness proceedings en-masse, nor would every citizen be wanting or able to attend daily proceedings. The court journalist represents the broader citizenry and reports back to the public on matters of significance. Television journalism is different to older traditions of reporting, as
26 through newspapers, because of the cinematic representation of events that goes with the reporting of information. It acquires the character of a surrogate reliving, which with the application of a little imagination, can be a reliving in the presence of viewers, like witness-participants.
Sociologists have also argued that television’s dramatization or reconstruction of situations disrupts the pattern of information, putting it out of logical order or obscuring the relative importance of issues as they might be seen in plain,
“unreported”, social discourse. Television news journalists are thus seen to be promoting perceptions of ‘dysfunction’ in society (e.g. too much crime and war; unconvincing prevalence of acts of deliverance from danger), or at least to a high degree misunderstanding and misrepresenting what actually has been taking place.
Dahlgren is prominent in objecting to the compression, restriction or simplification of information in television reporting:
It (television news) constricts the spread of necessary knowledge, it provides an illusion of informedness while at the same time trivializing important issues by juxtaposing them with frivolous items. The social world appears to a large extent as a scene on which random and unexpected events take place, the overall picture seemingly incoherent and fragmented. (Dahlgren, 1995, p.46)
Ward summarises the alternate views that exist in relation to the impact of television in the Australian context. One side of the argument centres on television’s capacity
27 to restrict debate and its great technical limitation of being a one-way channel of communication:
Just as printing had transformed reading, television in particular transformed rational discourse into a commodity. For the mass television audience, public opinion became not so much a question of reasoned open debate as a matter of the consumption of ideas ... Television deprived viewers of any opportunity to say something or to disagree and it turned public debate into a form of commodity. In this context, journalism not only lost out to advertising, entertainment and public relations, but began to imitate these media forms. (Ward, 1994, p.13)
By contrast, it has also been argued that television and news in particular, has been at the forefront of transforming politics into a medium which more effectively permeates the urban enclaves of affluent Western societies. Whether we examine this purely on the basis of the news as text, or delve deeper into a sub-text, the body language, the delivery of politicians as players on a visual stage, television news has clearly had a profound influence on a number of levels.
The advent and development of the visual medium of television, however, eventually brought political leaders into the very homes of viewers, via nightly news bulletins. Viewers could watch and form impressions on the basis of what they themselves heard and saw of the world of politics. In short, television transformed the news, politics (and government along with it) into something which could be watched. (Ward,1994, p.16)
28 A Media Model for Liberal Democracies – Introducing the Public Sphere
The theoretical concept of the public sphere provides a starting point for developing a more thorough understanding of the role of news media and television news in
Australian regional society. The public sphere exists as a metaphoric space where social and political interactions take place on several levels. It is a domain where
(primarily) matters of a political nature are brought to the attention of citizens and where a form of dialogue exists, allowing citizens to become informed.
In the introduction to his English translation of public sphere theorist Jurgen
Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action , Thomas McCarthy writes:
The embodiment of reason in the political realm meant the establishment of a republican form of government with guarantees of civil liberties and an institutionally secured public sphere, so that political power could be rationalized through the medium of public discussion to reflect the general will and common interest. (McCarthy, 1984, p.xix)
Critiques of Habermas’s work tend to focus on the ‘political’ element of the public sphere, but it is clear as I will point out, that the public sphere, as theorized by
Habermas, can be seen to exist rather more broadly than in the purely political sense.
Likewise, the responsibilities of mass media are held to be more profound than simply to be conveyors of political information. The media plays an essential informational role, sustaining social and cultural elements which give democratic society its dynamism.
29 While the idea of the public sphere is seen as highly useful, theorists appear to be at odds among themselves on exactly what it is and precisely how it should function.
There is some across-the-board acknowledgement of this public space as having both a political and social dimension. Among differing views of what the public sphere’s role should be, is the treatment by McKee, beginning in these terms:
The public sphere is a useful metaphor because it lets us think about the role that ordinary people might play in the creation of public culture, public policy and the running of the state. Alternative metaphors for describing the political work of the media work best for totalitarian societies. (McKee, 2005, p.10)
This thesis adopts McKee’s view of public engagement and proposes that at the core of Habermas’s public sphere construction is a commonsense understanding of how democratic societies operate. Reality dictates that ‘politics’ - as the contest of interests - occupies only a small place in the lives of many citizens; most having limited time for debating their interests and following public life. At a more refined level, the public domain exists as a trading place for cultural information, contributing to the maintenance of a stable society through the establishment of value systems. These value systems are codified in the laws which democratic systems use to govern. It is here, returning a couple of steps down the line in the domains of public knowledge, where politics has its place. There may be temptations on the part of theorists to attempt to rule on which information makes its way into the public sphere:
30 The public sphere should ideally deal only with serious issues of real importance – only party politics, and not celebrity issues, sport or entertainment. It shouldn’t be sensational, easily accessible or commercialized: it should refuse to dumb down to consumers, and rather demand that they work hard to improve themselves. It should only engage in rational, logical argument, not emotional or spectacular appeals. (McKee, 2005, p.14)
Such perceptions show a limited, limiting understanding of what the public sphere can be and how it may function, with its interactions of cultural messages and discourse on social goals, as well as the strictly political disputes over material interest in life.
Dahlgren delivers another such critique of the theory:
Habermas conceptualizes the public sphere as that realm of social life where the exchange of information and views on questions of common concern can take place so that public opinion can be formed. The public sphere ‘takes place’ when citizens, exercising the rights of assembly and association, gather as public bodies to discuss issues of the day, specifically those of political concern. (Dahlgren, 1995, p.7)
If the public sphere exists, it would follow logically that it is a domain for any or all topics of public interest (significant or otherwise) to be discussed. There are no obvious boundaries between what is social, what is cultural and what is political.
The idea of this public sphere dealing only with “serious issues of real importance”
31 or “specifically political concern” can be seen as elitist, not comprehensive enough as to what ‘the public’ may be and how its communication functions occur.
Politics in the Public Sphere - The Theory of Communicative Action
Habermas provides a theoretical framework within which the function of communication and by association, news media (as public communicators) contribute to the effective maintenance of a regional society. Habermas looks firstly to the emergence of modernism and the triumph of ‘reason’ over religion or monarchy, in the establishment of the liberal democratic society. Tied in with this, is the establishment of the public sphere, forming the core of the society’s rational decision making process. This rationalization of power through public discussion is taken a step further when Habermas introduces his concept of communicative action:
The rationality proper to the communicative practice of everyday life points to the practice of argumentation as a court of appeal that makes it possible to continue communicative action with other means when disagreement can no longer be headed off by everyday routines and yet is not to be settled by the direct or strategic use of force. (Habermas, 1984, p.17-18)
It is clear that within the political realm of a liberal democratic society, this
“argumentation” as a first step in the process of communicative action would serve a vital purpose. Acting upon the assumption that the democratic process is not corrupted or manipulated by any one group within the public sphere, it follows that argumentation, leading to communicative action, will manifest itself most
32 effectively in the process of public ballot by which the society’s leaders are duly elected.
Beyond this, though, what role does communicative action play outside of the political realm? It should be acknowledged here that what is concerned directly with government in society or, in other words, what processes are embedded in legislation and common law, will be only a small fraction of the day to day decisions made within any society. In a broader context, communicative action plays a more important role in the maintenance of culture and the development of value structures giving rise to the need for a political realm and a system within which these values can be maintained. Habermas sees this process as beginning in the childhood preparation of individuals; it is as much a social and cultural construction as it is political:
Through participating in interaction with competent reference persons, growing children internalize the value orientations of their social groups and acquire generalized capabilities for action….Under the functional aspect of reaching understanding communicative action serves the transmission and renewal of cultural knowledge; under the aspect of coordinating action, it serves social integration and the establishment of group solidarity; under the aspect of socialization, it serves the formation of personal identities. (Habermas, 1984, p.208)
Where Habermas differs from later, viz post-modern theorists is in his concept of
‘life worlds’. These life worlds look to provide a more effective definition for the means by which individuals fit into the broader society, rather than, for instance,
33 grouping individuals as clones or members of an exploited class. McCarthy provides a key interpretation of the life worlds concept:
The idea of the lifeworld is introduced as a necessary complement to the concept of communicative action. It links that concept firmly to the concept of society; and by directing our attention to the “context-forming horizon” of social action, it takes us another step away from the subjectivistic biases of modern social theory. Moreover it makes it possible to construe rationalization primarily as a transformation of implicitly known, taken-for- granted structures of the lifeworld rather than of explicitly known, conscious orientations of action. (McCarthy, 1984, p.xxv)
At a meta-physical level, then, the process of communicative action is where life worlds collide, or at least come together, to rationalize issues of importance.
Habermas describes the life world as, “[t]he correlate of processes of reaching understanding. Subjects acting communicatively always come to an understanding in the horizon of a life world. Their life world is formed from more or less diffuse, always unproblematic, background convictions”(Habermas, 1984, p.70).
Communicative Action – The Mass Media
As outlined earlier, Habermas identifies the public sphere as the theoretical space within which communicative action takes place. As Schultz (1997, p.25) points out,
“The press in the words of Jurgen Habermas, was the public sphere’s ‘pre-eminent institution’ and despite profound changes to society, communications and political life, the modern news media, and those engaged in its production, continue to embrace this institutional role”. Hence, applying Habermas’s theory to regional
34 society in Australia, for communicative action to work effectively, in a cultural, political and social context, there need to be effectively operating free mass media.
The Public Sphere and Regional Television
Public sphere theory is a useful tool in resolving the debate over the effectiveness of
ACMA’s regulatory reforms, following its inquiry into the adequacy of regional television news and information services. This thesis examines regional television in Queensland, with the understanding that the mass media operate within a public sphere that exists as a metaphoric space, where social and political interactions take place on several levels.
Communication of a purely social nature is mediated within this space, and may be political in effect. The public sphere is also a domain where the mass media plays a significant role in bringing matters of a strictly political nature to public attention and forms a dialogue among politicians, bureaucracy, business and the general public.
Localism in the Global Era
Many academics question how the public sphere will survive and function at a local level, when the growing macro trend, driven by global media proprietors and largely supported by democratic governments world-wide, is towards so-called globalism.
It is another point of conflict for the industry, complicated by the uncertainty of rapid technological change.
35 The contest between principle and profit is not an easy one to resolve even in the mixed media environment of Australia. The media are continually torn between conflicting forces: between responding to local demands or international trends; between taking the cost-effective option or taking the culturally responsible option; between accepting the simple rhetoric of globalization or asserting the right for national or local differences to be maintained. (Turner,1997, p.15)
Clearly, any analysis of television markets in any part of the globe must now factor into the equation the impacts of the global television phenomenon and the dialectics of globalism versus localism. The specific focus of this research project is on the impact of regulatory policy on commercial free-to-air television in regional
Australia. However, in the current environment, it would be negligent not to consider where the emergence of globalised subscriber television fits into the metaphoric widescreen picture.
As it stands, the licensed cable television operator in regional Queensland makes no effort to provide locally significant news and information content, nor is it required to by way of regulation. Even a simple perusal of cable TV programming schedules shows that the cable industry, backed by its global ties with Murdoch’s Fox
Network, operates under a simple business plan; syndication on a grand scale, delivery of a homogenous ‘one-size-fits-all’ product, minimal factor costs through centralization of operations and maximum viewership through sheer market volume.
Delivery of the cable channels by satellite or terrestrial cable from afar, presents the
36 industry regulator with a significant challenge should it attempt to impose local content guidelines on this arm of the television industry.
“Cable” television’s legacy, it could be argued, is not just a further loss of local identity, but even loss of national consciousness, given the medium’s heavy reliance on inexpensive imported program content. Habermas presents warnings on how this might shape or perhaps diminish the public sphere.
Just as unsettling is the question regarding the future of democracy. The democratic procedures and arrangements that grant citizens the chance for collective self-determination and political control over the conditions of their own social existence can only diminish as the nation-state loses its functions and capabilities, unless some equivalent for them emerges at the supra-state level. (Habermas, 2003, p.4)
The world’s largest democracy, India, provides an ideal control for any analysis of this new homogenous mass-media delivery system. Obviously there are significant cultural differences, however geographically, India and Australia share key characteristics, particularly with the isolated nature of regional communities where media service delivery presents significant challenges of a technical, social and political nature.
Until 1991, Indians relied on the one state-operated Channel, Doordarshan, to provide citizens with news and information. Today, India’s broadcasting landscape
37 includes more than 300 digital channels. Thussu, considers the effect this new global phenomenon will have on India’s public sphere:
Such networks may give a sense of broadening the public sphere … but in fact they may be narrowing and shrinking the parameters of debate in ideological terms. A socially relevant television agenda does not fit well with the competitive broadcasting environment within which Murdoch’s television networks operate. (Thussu, 2005, p.65)
Fear that globalization of media assets will undermine local and regional communities has been a common theme in the work of media academics for several decades. At the very least, there is the realization that something of value to communities is under threat.
Julianne Schultz articulates this point:
The global media may swamp us with homogenized stars, heroes, villains, disasters and crises that provide a rapidly changing backdrop for the more prosaic, yet no less urgent, reality of our lives. At the level of the city, state or nation the best of the news media is able to explain us to ourselves, highlight our shortcomings and provide the insights that enable new solutions to emerge. (Schultz, 1998, p.7)
Contrasting with the impact of the global T.V. intruders, opening up India’s television industry to ‘local’ commercial operators has, according to Thussu, produced significant benefits.
“There is little doubt that market-led broadcasting has created a more open and wider public sphere in India. Is it not a positive development that a
38 majority of Indians are watching their television news, produced by Indian companies, on Indian themes in their own languages to higher professional and technical standards than was possible under the monopoly of a state broadcaster?” (Thussu, 2005, p.65)
There are similarities here to regional and remote Australia, where television, at least in its early years pre-aggregation, had an expansionary effect on the public sphere (I will canvas this in a later chapter). As Hartley points out, based on research in
Western Australia, there is evidence of local broadcasting, parochial though it is, having a profound, socially constructive role:
The imagery that binds the micro-communities of dispersed families to their environment and to the wider community is supplied free, gratis and for nothing, by marginal television. Cute, euphoric and partial it may be (like so many successful pedagogic tactics), but it’s just about all there is on permanent public display to differentiate here and us from all the other locations and characters in the global scenario. (Hartley, 1989, p.145)
The words ‘here’ and ‘us’ are notable. They are synonyms of sorts for the abstracts of ‘place’ and ‘being’ which sit at the core of the doctrine of localism that once dominated Australia’s broadcasting literature and regulatory policy direction. The
2002 ABA report into the adequacy of news and information programs on commercial television services in regional Australia, the document which gives this paper its genesis , appears to struggle with the very idea of localism.
39 The Regional Television News report notes the “ambiguity and complex nature of the concept [of localism] means it cannot be easily defined” (Australian
Broadcasting Authority, 2002, p.22). Contrary arguments to this perspective will be presented later in this thesis.
The ABA report borrowed its definition of localism from the 1987 Senate Select
Committee on Television Equalisation that discussed:
Locally produced programs which are designed to meet the needs of the particular local communities; locally originated programs (i.e. those to which local stations purchase rights); local ownership and control; and local advertising. The concept of localism is said to include support for local institutions and causes. In practice, local programs are predominantly regional news and interviews, and major regional events (typically racing carnivals and football finals). (Senate Select Committee Television Equalisation Report, cited in Australian Broadcasting Authority, 2002, p.22)
The ABA’s (and its predecessor’s) earlier research on localism, produced in the years when localism was also Federal Government policy, also provides the beginnings of a list of what might be considered local. A note point here; – that’s not to say localism is difficult to define – merely that the definitions may be long- winded and laborious:
The study found that generally speaking, within a particular region, people had similar ideas on what constitutes ‘local’:… shared geography, an individual’s travel patterns (work or shopping), places which engage in the
40 same sporting events and activities where competition brings people together, places where close friends and relatives live, places which might be visited for specialised advice/treatment (eg medical, legal) and for some, places where they have lived before. (Frank Small & Associates, cited in Australian Broadcasting Authority, 2002, p.28)
Applying the theory of Habermas, what citizens deem to be local will depend on the reach of their individual life worlds. The boundaries of an individual’s local area are not fixed and will be prone to adjustment. Nonetheless the definition of what is local is what fits within the physical and meta-physical boundaries of the individual’s immediate sphere of social intercourse.
By this definition it is possible to be a citizen of the world; for most people the reality of their life world and their local area is infinitely less romantic, but nonetheless eminently functional. The point is, localism is by no means difficult to define, more to the point, on an individual basis it is simply costly to quantify.
Localism, Diversity and Regulatory Policy
It is in the political arena in Australia where localism appears to have suffered the
‘death of one thousand (paper) cuts’. The very word disappeared from the national policy landscape, around the same time the Hawke Government’s diversity doctrine entered the frame, driven by then Federal Treasurer Paul Keating.
The specifics of the aggregation / equalization policy which delivered this ‘diversity’ to Australian regional television will be discussed in the next chapter. However there
41 is relevance in noting here that the shift away from localism (deliberate or otherwise) in Australian regional television, commenced with the twin political rhetoric of diversity of media ownership and diversity of content. As Cunningham and Turner point out, the survival of localism in a commercially driven world, is dependent upon Government policy.
Localism, as we have seen, was traditionally a fundamental plank of Australian television policy, but is everywhere in decline. The financial imperatives of networking work against localism. The only real limitation to nationwide networking is government policy and the variable perceptions of and responses to local needs and audience interests. Network ownership has consistently shown itself to be prepared to override local audience interests (Cunningham & Turner, 1997, p.105).
This thesis will contend in due course that the Hawke Government’s regional television agenda, though obviously well intentioned, was poorly thought out and hastily executed. At the theoretical level, though, it is the nobility of the venture which will be discussed in the first instance. The rhetoric of Keating’s speeches to the Federal Parliament suggest his agenda for reforming the media centred on protection of a Habermasian ‘public sphere’. The parliamentary discourse clearly points to the perception of an erosion of the public space within which matters of a political nature were being discussed, through the existence of a monopolistic media ownerships structure at a national and regional level.
We know what has gone on with regional television. Proprietors have been running to the National Party for years saying, ‘Protect our monopoly. Do
42 not let anyone else offer services’. In some of the provincial cities they own the television station, the radio station and the newspaper. That is what the members opposite call democracy. They always wanted the system loaded in their favour. (Parliament of Australia Hansard, 1988, p.3)
As Keating saw it, his political opponents were ‘in bed’ with the owners of regional television stations and this may have led to regional television being slanted to favour the political ideals of the National / Liberal parties. Examining broadcast schedules from the 1970s, the regular Sunday evening five-minute slot on NQTV
“Point of View” featuring conservative ideologue Bob Santa Maria could be interpreted as evidence of this, along with the five-minute “Queensland 2000”, which was effectively a public relations piece for the state government, led by then
Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen and which aired state-wide before the 6.00p.m. Sunday news.
Equally, it could be argued from a Habermasian perspective that such representations are evidence of a healthy public sphere, where television has the capacity to offer an open forum for political debate and discussion. This argument holds true, so long as alternative ideologies are not denied access to the same medium.
If aggregation was an attempt to erode a conservative regional political powerbase, then it may be more than a coincidence that the equalization of Australia’s regional television assets coincided with a shift in the political power balance in country areas, to a time when state Labor Governments flourished nationwide. If
43 aggregation was a carefully crafted exercise in political engineering, then it has had some success. Contrasting this, the long reign of a conservative Federal Government post-aggregation and the conservative Federal voting trends in North Queensland, would serve to throw such an argument out the window. More likely, these voting trends, put together, are indicative of a flourishing public sphere, where relatively informed voters have continued to maintain, by way of ballot, the best system of checks and balances available – alternative Governments at a state and federal level.
Keating’s idea that Australia’s media was bowing to the demands of its concentrated capitalist ownership is worthy of further examination. While there may be a body of evidence to establish a case for this happening at a metropolitan level, the personal experience of this writer as a journalist, camera operator and producer in the regional news environment is at the opposite end of the scale. If anything, the young, inexperienced journalists who form the core staff body of Australia’s regional television newsrooms are given a greater degree of autonomy than perhaps they deserve.
In his examination of the political economy of news, Schudson points out that the commonly held notion of news professionals being stood over by the ‘suits’ or
‘carpet strollers’, as they have come to be known in the television industry, is often far removed from reality.
This perspective (political economy) is often characterized and caricatured as “conspiracy theory” or as a rather simplified notion that there is a ruling
44 directorate of the capitalist class that dictates to editors and reporters what to run in the newspapers. (Note that sociologists of news have examined almost exclusively news in capitalist societies. This is obviously a limitation to any comprehensive understanding of news.) Since this ignores the observable fact that reporters often initiate stories of their own, that editors rarely meet with publishers, and that most working journalists have no idea who sits on the board of directors of the institutions they work for, in this form the political economy perspective is easily dismissed. (Schudson, 1997, p.10)
Schultz argues, “in ruminations about the global media industry, the complexity of contemporary political and public life, and the alarming concentrations of media ownership, it is easy to lose sight of the reality that the news media is at its most influential when it is local”(Schultz, 1998, p.7). As we examine the regulatory framework aimed at allowing this local media to exist and flourish, we should recognise that the regulatory system, with all of its limitations, exists for a valid reason. Some level of protection of the institutionalized public sphere is necessary for Australia’s democratic system to be maintained.
As Turner & Cunningham point out, this is not easy, but it is certainly worth pursuing:
It goes without saying that the way in which the media is structured into our culture has a profound effect on its character. While such an ethic often presents difficult economic choices there is strong community support for an ‘Australian’ media – that is, a set of industries and media products which speak of and from this country, responsive to and implicated in the interests of local communities and the national community. For this to happen, some
45 economic benefits may have to be forgone, some delivery options favoured over others, and some degree of commercial regulation and protection to continue. (Turner and Cunningham, 1997, p.15)
Formative Research on the Impact of the ABA Regulations
All of this leads us to a critical question. In the post aggregation environment of regional television in North Queensland, have the new local content regulations brought lasting improvements or is the public sphere being vandalized?
Cryle and Hunt (2004, p.1) undertook what they called a 'test run' of the points system in Rockhampton in November 2003, just prior to the introduction of the
ABA's points system. They find that: "On the basis of its news service alone, WIN
Television should meet this [points] target comfortably” (Cryle & Hunt, 2004, p.13).
However, in their conclusions, they also cite WIN Television's concern about an issue that is the cornerstone of this thesis -- that a 'lack of clarity persists about what constitutes localism' (Cryle & Hunt, 2004, p.15). They recognise that a limitation of their research is that it could only study WIN TV alone, "as the sole commercial provider in Central Queensland before the new ABA licence provision came into force in February 2004" (Cryle & Hunt, 2004, p.15).
This thesis takes the next logical step by studying the full complement of news and information programs offered by all commercial television stations following the introduction of the new system on February 1, 2004, albeit with research based in
Cairns rather than Rockhampton. Cryle and Hunt (2004, p.15) also noted that the
46 inclusion of matters of local significance but not presented in news format was “an untested component of the new points system”. This, in itself, provides a key target for further analysis. The research question of this thesis also focuses on the vexed issue of 'matters of local significance' which raises concerns about the quality rather than the quantity of the local content or even simple matters such as the type of topics covered.
In due course, I intend to challenge one finding of Cryle & Hunt (2004, p.16) that
“the issue of improved regional news coverage appears to have been substantially addressed.” This notion, adopted by ACMA in its media correspondence following the introduction of the regulations, appears, at the time of its publishing to be premature – a point that is acknowledged by the authors. This thesis will examine the practical application of ACMA’s local content regulations and the quality of the resulting content being delivered to regional viewers.
47 Chapter 4 - Regional Television in North Queensland - An Historical Perspective
This chapter details the history of regional commercial television in the North
Queensland cities of Cairns and Townsville, with a more in-depth exploration of the local content offered prior to aggregation. It is largely an oral history, based upon interviews with regional television employees as well as archival research. I will trace the industry’s progress through the process of aggregation and the events preceding the ABA’s inquiry into the adequacy of regional television news and information services.
Before evaluating the effectiveness of the regulatory changes which resulted from the ABA’s 2001 inquiry, an historical context is provided as a point of reference for those reforms. The ABA identified a “significant decline in local information (other than news) broadcast in the four aggregated markets since aggregation” (Australian
Broadcasting Authority, 2002, p.10). Notably, the report stopped short of providing a detailed description of the mix of programs available in regional television markets prior to the enactment of the Hawke Government’s equalization policy.
Even if such a detailed study of local programs had been undertaken in all regional television markets under review during the inquiry phase, compiling an accurate comparison of the program content prior to and post aggregation would have proven problematic. Indeed, the exercise of gathering historical data on the precise nature of news and information programs for this paper proved challenging, largely due to
48 the transient nature of staff, the disappearance of archival video and film and the lack of official record keeping over the past 45 years of regional television in
Queensland.
Scaling down the research boundaries to the twin markets of Cairns and Townsville proved helpful because the shared history of the two broadcast areas is largely inter- related. Several of the interviewees targeted during the research project worked in both markets (and others) during the pre-aggregation years, as employees of both
FNQ10 in Cairns and TNQ7 in Townsville, which merged to form NQTV and, later,
QTV.
This thesis will present an argument that similar economic forces were also at play in both Cairns and Townsville during the introduction of aggregation. These forces would ultimately play a role in determining the decline in delivery of locally produced material, the closure of newsrooms and the termination of staff.
This chapter will explore the variety of local news and information programs dominating the broadcasting landscape in North Queensland prior to aggregation. In order to ask, what lasting outcomes the ABA Regional Television News Inquiry really achieved, we need to first understand the scale of the losses inflicted by aggregation. The interviews undertaken during this study have extracted a set of reliable background accounts from industry insiders on the mechanics of enacting aggregation.
49 An exploration of the fiscal determinants of television broadcasting policy in regional Queensland was obviously necessary to de-mythologize the dichotomy which gives rise to this paper – commercialism versus public service.
At the core of the argument against producing local news and information programs is the notion such shows are too expensive to produce, relative to the ratings driven revenue available in the aggregated sub-markets. It is, according to one regional TV veteran, Cairns’ most highly awarded independent commercial producer, Paul
Smith, (personal interview, February 23, 2007) a case of “only if it benefits them
[the broadcasters], if they can make money off it”. It is therefore necessary to develop an understanding of what costs are involved in setting up and maintaining broadcast infrastructure and the resources needed to produce local television shows, particularly news services.
The Genesis of Local News and Information Programs in North Queensland
Commercial television in North Queensland traces its origin to the formation of the private company Telecasters North Queensland which was incorporated on
September 18, 1959 (NQTV Staff Handbook, N.D., 5). The phenomenon known as commercial television made its public debut in North Queensland on November 1,
1962, when TNQ 7 hit the airwaves in Townsville. Initial broadcasts from a transmitter site atop Mount Stewart were centred on the Townsville city, with the obvious exception of the city’s North Ward (blocked by Castle Hill), which would later receive relayed coverage from a separate translator service (NQTV Staff
Handbook, N.D.,5).
50 Free to air commercial television would soon make its presence felt in the Cairns market, with the establishment of FNQ Ten, which first hit the airwaves on
September 7, 1966. The private entity, established by business people involved in the local theatre trade, set up its broadcast operations centre in Aumuller Street and distributed a signal to the Cairns city area from a single tower adjacent to the station building (NQTV Staff Handbook, N.D., 5).
The new solus broadcaster (solus was the term adopted by the industry / regulator describing the individual license holders) introduced to the market a mix of local, inter-state and international program content, cherry-picked by a station program buyer, which complemented that available on the public broadcaster, ABNQ 9. The
Cairns Post “Weekly TV Guide” for the week commencing Monday April 3, 1967, provides a snapshot of this early era in broadcasting, with such television staples as
Bandstand on a Saturday night, The Ed Sullivan Show, Bonanza, Bewitched,
Gilligan’s Island, The Lucy Show, and children’s programs including Flipper and
The Addams Family (The Cairns Post, 1967). Midweek and Sunday night movies also formed a core component of the program mix but none of this would come at the expense of local content as FNQ Ten set about producing television of its own, reflecting the culture of the marketplace.
The station moved quickly to secure the services of the city’s prominent radio broadcaster Dick Chant:
51 When Channel Ten started up, I never had any thoughts I’d ever go to Channel Ten, but they didn’t have a lot of skilled people because it was very new. Bob and Dolly Dyer of media fame were in Cairns, and they wanted someone to interview them, and nobody at the station felt confident enough about it. So the phone call went to radio 4CA for me and, after a lot of arguing back and forth and debating, I ended up doing an interview with Bob and Dolly Dyer and it turned out to be a very successful interview. (Dick Chant, personal interview, February 16, 2007)
Chant was hired by the broadcaster in 1967 and became the host of four programs, the first of which was FNQ Ten’s fledgling fishing program, Hook, Line & Sinker.
The program was listed in early TV guides as “a ten minute session of news for all fishermen of the Far North” (Cairns Post, 1967) which aired live at 5.55pm on
Fridays. The program very quickly gained a loyal audience; this was not surprising in a city which had built a major tourism enterprise on the back of big game fishing for black marlin, and had, in the process, become one of the world’s most sought after fishing destinations for the rich and famous.
Hook, Line & Sinker worked on a simple formula that has proven successful since the advent of television. It targeted a mass market, addressing a subject that was of interest to most of the local population, most of the time:
I came to the conclusion that whether you’re nine years of age, or ninety, male or female, there is nothing that will match the adrenaline you get when you get a tug on the line, it’s like a lucky dip, you don’t know what’s on the end of it. When I was on with hook line and sinker the kids would yell “he’s on” … Hook, Line and Sinker’s on, and dad would drop the mower and
52 come in. Nearly everybody came in to watch that and it was the most popular program of the lot. (Dick Chant, personal interview, February 16, 2007)
In its formative years, FNQ Ten relied heavily on sport to build both audience share
(pitted against its rival, commercial radio) and corporate citizenship – giving something back to the community which funded the station by way of advertising revenue from local businesses.
Sporting Roundup, a half-hour offering which occupied the 6 p.m. time slot on
Saturday, provided Chant, who was also the city’s race caller at both the Cannon
Park gallops and Cairns Showground trots, an avenue for televising local horse racing:
I’d go and do the race broadcast in the afternoon and come in with all the results and I’d have 35 millimetre slides of the jockeys and whatever jockey was the most prominent rider we’d put the slide up for the sports. And we’d have rugby league results, or whatever was going on. That was a half hour, the sporting roundup. (Dick Chant, personal interview, February 16, 2007)
The concept for Sporting Roundup evolved in a short space of time, to the point where the station experimented with gathering content in the field. It proved problematic at first, due to the nature of newsreel photography, which was yet to make significant advances technologically. Film footage needed to be synchronized with audio tape of the race call, and rushes of racing could only be filmed in short bursts. By today’s standards, the program makers were doing it the hard way.
53 With the racing, we eventually started doing a 16mm coverage. To give you an idea of what we did with the Cairns Cup, what was involved in it, I think the most you could get with a sixteen millimetre Bolex (camera) was a 17-second run and then you’d have to wind it again. So what we did, I’d direct them how to film it, how to do the start and make sure they’d have a full wind as they turned into the straight, because you didn’t want to cut out going down to the line. (Dick Chant, personal interview, February 16, 2007)
Also proving popular was FNQ Ten’s Sunday evening sports program Spotlight on
Sport. The show brought the action from the sporting fields of Far North
Queensland into the local television studio. The earliest incarnation of the program took the format of live interviews and results, but it developed over time to include video highlights from major local sporting events. Spotlight On Sport was a key plank in FNQ Ten’s strategy of endearing itself to the local community during an era when major local sporting events – rugby league football in particular - were heavily patronized and formed part of the social fabric.
With the arrival of video, FNQ Ten went to great effort to provide brief highlights of the local Cairns team competing in the heralded Foley Shield Rugby League competition during the Sunday evening program. The footage would provide a teaser for the match replays, which occupied a sizeable 90-minute time slot, from
9.30 p.m. on Monday. Coverage of Foley Shield football involved extravagances today’s regional television staff would perhaps only dream of, with crews travelling to towns all over the north to bring match coverage to the masses.
54 They eventually had a contra deal with a light aircraft company and I flew to venues in a 172 cessna. The crew would go down in the van with all the cameras and after the match was over I would put the video tape in my pocket, fly back to cairns. Jackie my wife would meet me at the airport, rush me to Channel Ten and I’d be immediately on air with it and I’d have to ad lib until they had everything set up so that they could put a little bit of the afternoon football match on. We’d show a few minutes of that, and then say that match can be see in its entirety on Tuesday night, sponsored by so and so, it was a pretty busy time. (Dick Chant, personal interview, February 16, 2007)
Chant would go on to become the most recognisable face and voice in the Far North
Queensland community. In 1999 the retired broadcaster was awarded an Order of
Australia Medal for service to the community of North Queensland as a sports commentator.
FNQ Ten’s program mix was by no means limited to sport. One of the first programs to hit the airwaves was the cooking program C.R.E.B. Radiant Living , which proved over time to be one of the survivors of regional television. It was revived on several occasions, before becoming a victim of the post-aggregation razor gang. Sponsored by the Cairns Region Electricity Board (which would later become
F.N.Q.E.B.), Radiant Living was a pioneer of one of the simplest forms of studio program production. Early program guides billed it as “cooking ideas and practical hints” (Cairns Post, 1967) and the focus was very much on promoting the region and its local produce.
55 Local news, still an evolving concept in the second half of the 1960s, occupied a 15- minute 6.15p.m. slot on weekdays, but was largely limited by the technology available prior to the advent of video-based electronic news gathering. The mix of programming also included a Saturday morning breakfast program Ten For
Breakfast , and a Friday morning children’s program Ten Club – both relying on the popularized format of local hosting with cartoon and segment inserts.
Program production worked on a lean business model, but the distinct difference with the limited local programming that is broadcast today in regional Australia, was that program production was mostly of a live nature. In the days before video
(which was about to arrive on the scene), pre-producing large amounts of film-based content for local programs was extremely labour intensive and not cost effective.
The alternative was to go live, which could be done with a surprisingly small crew on site at the station. Typically, the crew might include a studio director / switcher, a studio camera operator and a presenter / producer. It was a far more flexible environment than today’s regional television landscape, where broadcasters are locked into network program schedules, and network operations (even for the Cairns based relay stations) are centralized in cities as far away as Melbourne.
One example from FNQ Ten’s Saturday breakfast show demonstrates what was possible then but is not attempted now - live television broadcast from the city of
Cairns to the people of Cairns:
56 Now and then I’d go in on the Saturday for the breakfast program and we’d have people in the studio. I can always remember the famous Johnnie O’Keefe came there and he was having trouble with his voice at the time. And I was really stunned when I saw what we did. We asked him would he sing and, he said he’d love to but his voice wasn’t right. Then all of a sudden he said have you got any of my recordings here? and they said, yeah! What have you got and he said, oh I’ll mime it. I was in the studio with him and he mimed this and I thought it seemed ridiculous to me and I tip-toed outside and watched it on the monitors and it was real, you’d swear he was singing, they were very clever. (Dick Chant, personal interview, February 16, 2007)
The first incarnation of FNQ Ten as a fully locally owned television enterprise lasted only a handful of years but the local community had developed a taste for something it liked and wanted more of – a local voice broadcast with pictures over the airwaves, reflecting the views and aspirations of the community.
It was big there was no question about that. It was really big, because you think of this: All they had was radio, the only thing they ever saw at the movies was the cinema, and when that came on that was something very, very special, to have actually movies at home on a television set. You got a profile you didn’t really deserve because of it. (Dick Chant, personal interview, February 16, 2007)
In December 1969, the full shareholding of Far Northern Television Limited was bought by Townsville based Telecasters North Queensland Limited. The move may not have been entirely popular given the traditional Cairns / Townsville rivalry, but it offered economies of scale for a capital intensive industry, that needed to extend its audience reach to retain profitability. In order to facilitate this, the Cairns VHF
57 transmitter was relocated to the summit of Mount Bellenden Kerr in 1973, effectively opening up much of the far north region to commercial television (NQTV
Handbook, N.D., p.2)
These were halcyon years for both FNQ 10 and TNQ 7 and buoyed by solid growth in revenue in markets they monopolized, the Cairns and Townsville-based stations underwent significant expansion. In 1977 the company acquired a prime piece of
Townsville real estate - the Queens Hotel on The Strand (NQTV Handbook) – which in time would become one of Australia’s most significant broadcast operations centres. It coincided with a golden era for commercial television in Australia, when such nationally circulated programs as Matlock Police, Homicide and Skippy proved how a quality home-grown product could hold its own against the imported, mostly
American and British offerings.
The NQTV Era
At a local level, Townsville also became the hub for the station’s expanding list of television productions and the company invested heavily in studio facilities which were on par with those on offer in the capital cities. The Townsville headquarters then included two television studios, with a combined floor-space area of more than
400 square metres. In 1978, the complex was valued at $3.5 million, the expansion designed to “allow for the production of a significantly increased level of local
North Queensland Television programming”(NQTV Handbook, N.D.). The two stations began operating under the joint call-sign NQTV in 1982.
58 John Baker, a commercial producer (currently the Principal of Mac Advertising), who would later play a key management role with implementing aggregated television in North Queensland, began his career as a trainee with NQTV in
Townsville during the 1970’s expansion. With the studio facility always busy, and everything from local news to talk shows to get your teeth into, it was an exciting time to be learning the television trade:
One of the highlights in Townsville there was a kids program. It was on every afternoon and it was called Kids’ Army . It was a marvellous product. One of the announcers his name was Scott and his dog Kenny the dog wonder. The dog actually was the Austral-Asian disc catching champion. The dog had an incredible amount of intelligence. You’d happily go out with the dog and almost hold a discussion with it. It was a very clever dog. (John Baker, personal interview, February 19, 2007)
Baker is considered one of North Queensland’s foremost authorities on regional television, given his history as a manager at Sunshine Television during the implementation of aggregation, and also as station manager of EMTV in Papua New
Guinea. His regional television career spans three decades, and he remembers vividly the years when NQTV was heavily involved in production of local news and information programs. He points to the role programs such as Kids’ Army played nourishing the public sphere of a regional society.
The value of it, I think, to the local community was enormous because Kids Army was watched by the local community and Kids’ Army did engage the local children and in fact right down to school level, where they were
59 participating in schools and school programs, they had an enormous response from local kids. Kids loved it, absolutely loved it. It was a great success story. Production values were extremely high. All the content was local and of local interest to kids. It was also educational and it engaged local children. All in all I thought that was a fabulous success story in terms of local programming, and a minimal amount of money to produce. (John Baker, February 19, 2007)
Production of Kids’ Army wasn’t limited to the Townsville studio. Andre Heise
(now Production Manager at WIN Television Cairns), who worked on the show as a camera operator based at NQTV’s Cairns studio during the 1980s, remembers Kids’
Army as being labour intensive work, largely outdoors based, connecting North
Queensland children to each other, via free-to-air television. He draws important parallels between the way local content was treated by NQTV pre-aggregation, to what happens in the existing environment, where material is packaged as local content and (in the case of Southern Cross Ten) delivered from as far away as
Canberra.
Kids’ Army was an adventure type program, where you’d be out in the rainforest climbing mountains, going rafting and all that, and keeping in mind we’d lug some 35, 40, 50 kilos of gear around. So in that sense, equipment wise, technology’s improved but as far as content and getting close to people and bringing the message home? Local Cairns news coming out of Canberra is just a huge joke. (Andre Heise, personal interview, February 22, 2007)
60 As successful as Kids’ Army was, it was the local NQTV news which in time became the station flagship. Notably, it was the eventual closure of this news service decades later by the Southern Cross Broadcasting razor gang which created the momentum for the ABA Regional Television News Inquiry, and in turn, the on- going issues which have led to this thesis. From the outset, the NQTV news prided itself on being live and local and it quickly developed a fiercely loyal viewership.
Hosted from NQTV’s Townsville studios, the service brought together the station’s production resources.
There was one important distinction with what happens today. The NQTV news service positioned itself as being North Queensland wide – a voice for the entire region, reflecting the views and issues affecting everyone from Cairns in the north to
Bowen in the south. This rationale is diametrically opposite to what drives the existing WIN and Seven news services in North Queensland, which market themselves as being purely one-town services.
Cinematographer Michael Mahin (currently a senior production cameraman-editor at
WIN Television), who started his career shooting news for NQTV on 16 mm film, considers this point:
It was a joint bulletin, it was the whole of North Queensland and now they’ve segregated Cairns and segregated Townsville. We used to cover up to Cardwell and Cairns would cover down to Tully, so we had all that area and west as well covered. We were covering everybody, everyone got a mention, if there was something newsworthy, but now it’s only the Cairns
61 area and the Townsville area (Michael Mahin, personal interview, February 22, 2007).
This style and level of production required the energy of the entire station, both in
Cairns and Townsville, and according to those who worked on the news program, it was a case of the right resources being allocated to get the job done properly.
Certainly, the enduring reputation which the NQTV news enjoys to this day, both among residents of North Queensland and industry professionals, reflects the effort which went into the enterprise. Bulletins were presented live to air, combining staff from departments station-wide to operate tape machines, cameras, audio, manage the studio floor, provide engineering backup, present and produce the news of the day.
Baker explores this point:
On the floor we had a cameraman, floor manager and the two news presenters and then behind the scenes you had a myriad of news crew, editors, and often they’d be cutting news programs as the news was going live to air, if there was breaking news they’d be actually in the studios cutting the news program as you’d be broadcasting live. Yeah one hundred per cent live and local absolutely and that was every night. (John Baker, personal interview, February 19, 2007)
The commitment to local news and information programming extended well beyond the nightly 6 p.m. bulletin, to include a weekly magazine-style current affairs program, Speakeasy (also known at one stage as Newsweek ). Speakeasy generally aired on a Friday evening and was hosted by the Station’s news director Rick
Anderton. According to Mahin, testament to the status the local television station
62 enjoyed within the community, the bar at the adjacent Criterion Hotel in Townsville was named the Speakeasy Bar.
Heise recalls the program as being, “pretty much a wrap-up of the news events of the week, plus other news activities where you didn’t have the room within your standard bulletin to address some issues” (Andre Heise, personal interview, February
22, 2007). The stories, as Mahin remembered them, were more likely to be extended current affairs pieces of up to five minutes duration.
At its peak, the Townsville production facility also catered for a daily chat show hosted by station personality April Hayes-Dwyer, and, during the football season, an
AFL program, which involved a local repackaging and hosting of the match of the day from Victoria. Other seasonal programs of a news genre included 2.30 live, hosted by North Queensland radio personality John Mackenzie, and a sports program Grandstand, which was produced from NQTV’s Cairns studio. The Cairns produced cooking program Radiant Living also continued on its path to becoming
Queensland’s longest surviving regional show, thanks largely to the corporate support from the Far North Queensland Electricity Board (formerly C.R.E.B.).
Episodes of the weekly cooking show would be pre-recorded four in succession at
NQTV’s Cairns studio.
We would have full blown studio crew, audio, editing, post production, lighting as well, technicians, there’s probably a crew of ten to twelve people in there, which would pretty much tie up your whole operation or
63 department. As Mick said, it was supported by the then FNQEB Far North Queensland Electricity Board. It was a program where women, people would tune to get their recipes and in return send in their own recipes. A very early type of interaction between host and viewers, nowadays it’s interactive with touch screens and the internet, but in those days it was purely fax us through your recipes and we’ll have a go. (Andre Heise, personal interview, February 22, 2007)
Radiant Living was one of the few regional programs to survive into the early years post-aggregation, when it was backed financially by another of the region’s large corporations, Malanda Milk (now Dairy Farmers). It eventually fell victim to the forces of economic rationalism which prevailed under the new owners, Southern
Cross Ten.
At its best, NQTV produced award winning television. The foyer of the Townsville station was crammed with Thorn Awards (a sought after regional media prize) for the work of local news crews covering major events including cyclones and floods.
NQTV also scored a rare distinction, a Logie award in 1990 for most outstanding achievement by a regional television station, producing a program that was cutting edge in terms of the challenging nature of the topics addressed.
We were involved in a Logie winning show called My Place, My Land, My People and it was an Aboriginal based show just concentrating on indigenous affairs and it won a Logie award. That’s the only one I ever remember them winning and it was an indigenous current affairs program, it was something nobody else had touched. NQTV was the leader in terms of bringing indigenous affairs to viewers, to win a Logie, that’s pretty big for a little
64 country regional T.V. station. (Andre Heise, personal interview, February 22, 2007)
Local Programming and Commercial Goals
As Heise points out, the pre-aggregation era of regional television applied a different business model and corporate ethos to that which prevails on the post-aggregation landscape:
We pretty much had a local program to cover any demographic of the audience and on top of that the television owners were corporate citizens, regularly having Olympathons to raise money for the the Australian Olympic team and telethons to raise money for SIDS or people with disabilities or whatever, so there was a lot of local money coming back to the community to support them. (Andre Heise, personal interview, February 22, 2007)
It should be pointed out, the argument which prevails in 21 st century regional television – that local production is financially prohibitive and does not rate strongly
– could just as easily apply to the pre-aggregation years. Several of the local programs were commissioned at a time when it was still considerably cheaper for program buyers to purchase content from elsewhere – in particular from the United
States.
John Baker, who now delivers value to advertisers by negotiating with the stations for strategic scheduling of commercials in high rating programs, suggests the overall cost of supplying shows of a local flavour was significantly offset by making maximum use of station resources. This represented an economy of scale, which
65 delivered value to the eventual bottom line. A program such as Kids’ Army may not, in isolation, have raised revenue for the station, but in the overall sense, the business model proved cost-effective:
At the end of the day you didn’t exclusively employ a cameraman for shooting Kids’ Army . That cameraman was also involved in shooting current affairs programs, he would also be involved in swinging a camera around for the daily news, he would also be involved in the daily lunch time variety program with April Dwyer, those resources were shared across the entire station and various departments and programs. (John Baker, personal interview, February 19, 2007)
As Baker and his colleagues would soon discover, those resources were about to disappear overnight, thanks largely to a Federal Government policy that would shake the industry to its foundations.
The Aggregation Bloodbath
Aggregation first existed notionally in the ideas factory of the Hawke Labor
Government in the second half of the 1980s. At face value, the Regional Television
Equalization Policy was aimed at giving regional television viewers access to the same quality of services available to viewers in the capital cities. This effectively meant access to three commercial stations, along with the existing services of the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
As already outlined in this thesis, one of the driving forces behind the concept, then
Treasurer Paul Keating, looked to aggregation as part of a broader reform package
66 for Australia’s mass media, which he feared (legitimately or otherwise) had become too concentrated. Keating approached the issue of aggregation with an almost religious zealotry, but it is questionable now whether the policy was aimed at achieving better outcomes for the viewing public, or the more selfish political intention of breaking down a perceived conservative regional political powerbase.
The Treasurer’s speeches to parliament as Federal Treasurer were (true to form) laced with rhetoric, pointing barbs at his political opponents:
The country stations, run by the Country Party members and proprietors, with their stranglehold and their regional monopolies, were left untouched, because the National Party, through Sir John McEwen, Mr Anthony and now Mr Sinclair have said, ‘You won’t touch our monopoly in the bush’. (Parliament of Australia Hansard, 1988)
That a monopoly existed on broadcasting in the bush was not a matter for debate; the question of whether that monopoly manifested itself as a political construction is open to interpretation. Either way, the status quo as the then Treasurer liked to refer to it, would soon be dispensed with – in favour of a new commercial model of three- way competition for the regional advertising dollar.
Aggregation commenced its roll-out along the eastern seaboard in 1989. The switch-on date for the new three channel system in North Queensland was set down for January 1, 1991. The new era in regional television would not arrive without what could only be described in hindsight as a ‘bloodbath’ – a messy game of corporate high jinx which the Government, the industry regulator (the then
67 Australian Broadcasting Authority) and several of the regional television monopolists apparently did not see coming.
Understanding this messy chapter in regional television history is fundamental to understanding the demise of regional television news and information programming in the 15 years since aggregation. This chapter will present an argument that the ongoing instability in the regional television industry in North Queensland (which exists to this day) can be traced to a single incident, which, had it been prevented
(through regulation or legislation), might have allowed the incumbent station to flourish in the face of intense competition.
NQTV spent the year prior to aggregation undergoing a corporate re-branding as
QTV, a badge synonymous with the role the station would soon assume as one of three broadcasters responsible for carrying the commercial signals from the capital cities to a new state-wide audience. QTV’s look was very much “Channel Nine” right down to copying the latter’s advertising slogan of “Still the One”. Reflecting the business confidence which went with carrying the Nine signal (effectively a license to print money in television during the 1980s), QTV embarked on an ambitious expansion, including the construction of a new television station in
Cairns. No expense was spared making the impressive new facility on the city’s main thoroughfare a showcase for regional broadcasting, including the construction of a studio that would put most of the metropolitan stations to shame:
68 They called it the Taj Mahal. The atrium and the foyer it was all made out of glass ceilings and stuff and lots of palm trees and fernery and greenery inside and it cost something like $60 thousand in power a year to run the atrium alone. But you know pre-aggregation the dollar was there, everybody was making a buck. The account executives, they made huge dollars, they were all rolling in it. It was nothing strange for your boss to take you out for an all-day lunch on a Friday because it’s been such a good month or such a good week. (Andre Heise, personal interview, February 22, 2007)
Joining QTV as players in aggregated television were Star TV (slated to carry the
Network Ten signal) and Sunshine Television – a merger group involving a partnership between SEQTV (Sunshine Coast / Wide Bay) and MVQ6 Mackay.
Sunshine faced an early hurdle, when its new owner, Christopher Skase’s Qintex group, struck financial trouble. According to former News Editor Ian Gleeson
(personal interview, September 10, 2007) a receiver was not formally appointed to
Sunshine as this would have placed the company in a ‘show cause’ position with the industry regulator regarding retention of its broadcast licenses. However, the company was under the control of administrators. In any case, much worse strife lay ahead yet in the uncharted waters of aggregated television.
John Baker, who arrived from Papua New Guinea’s EMTV to take up the position of founding Station Manager with Sunshine Television in Cairns, remembers the dawn of aggregation as an exciting, yet incredibly challenging period for the new operators entering the market. Baker recalls arriving in Cairns to find himself working out of a hotel room, with no office established, only part of the broadcast
69 transmission infrastructure set up, and aside of the station engineer, Rod Tindale, no staff.
We basically had to I guess, through direction from head office, assist in finding a location and establishing the office, going through all the normal processes of office fit-out, recruiting staff, overseeing technical installation and also assumed oddly enough our own marketing role, going out and engaging the local community in the lead-up to aggregation and trying to dispel a lot of myths about aggregation. (John Baker, personal interview February 19, 2007)
The myths of aggregation were many and varied. The newcomers, Star and
Sunshine, were faced not only with the prospect of being up against an incumbent carrying the Nine badge. QTV also boasted a more powerful signal on the VHF band, while the additional licensees were forced, by law, to transmit on the UHF band.
This was problematic at first, according to Baker, given many households did not own televisions with UHF tuners and those who did were now required to purchase
UHF antennas. Coupled with this was the topography of the Far North Queensland broadcast area – Australia’s most problematic market for delivery of television signals. Not surprisingly, advertisements for UHF television aerials featured prominently on the TV pages of the Cairns Post newspaper. A study of the local newspaper ( The Cairns Post , 1990a) shows local electricians were cashing in, with
70 the town’s trusted electrical firms including Babinda Electrics, Brian Bell Electrical,
FNQ Electronics and Brophy’s TV Service advertising heavily on the TV page:
There was massive amounts of confusion from a consumer level about the UHF band. At the time all television was broadcast on vhf, the local community hadn’t installed or hadn’t been ready for UHF. The market had to be educated on what uhf meant, I believe that was a Federal Government initiative and a reasonably poor one. It was a tough job to be able to describe to every household why they should be compelled to put in a UHF antenna. The bottom line is it cost every single mum and dad money to put in one of these UHF antennas, there was a lot of confusion about signal strength and signal quality and UHF being the weaker of the signal bands, poorer quality. A lot of that was a bit of competitive spirit from our VHF incumbent, FNQ Ten. (John Baker, personal interview, February 19, 2007)
In the months leading into aggregation, the two new players opened their cheque books (Sunshine less so due to receivership) with saturation advertising campaigns in local newspapers. Star Television was particularly aggressive, running newspaper strip ads featuring recognized Logie award winning stars of Australian television including Penny Cook, along with the slogan “All the Stars on Star” ( The Cairns
Post , 1990b). With its limited resources, Sunshine Television promoted its impending news service (based on the Sunshine Coast but expanding north), anchored by the reliable rug of Nev Roberts, the classy comb-over of veteran weather man Noel Stanaway, and the considerably younger sports presenter with eighties big-hair, Brendan Parnell ( The Cairns Post , 1990c).
71 To the casual observer, there was no question that QTV, with its Channel Nine signal, the VHF band and the benefit of incumbency was “Still The One”. The decision which turned the industry up-side down came on December 24, 1990.
Regional New South Wales broadcaster WIN Television announced a takeover of
Star Television and, not only that, it would carry the Nine Network signal into
Regional Australia.
QTV was no longer “the one” – not that it ever was. The small-print which became lost in the rhetoric was a harsh lesson in business for the company’s then General
Manager, David Astley. QTV had been negotiating a program supply arrangement with the Nine Network (a 21 per cent shareholder in QTV) since October 1987.
Several days after the WIN announcement, QTV Chairman Jack Gleeson discussed how the process had stalled over the issue of what percentage of station revenue would be paid to Nine for programming rights.
Last Friday we were notified that as we had failed to reach agreement on this percentage, the Nine Network would terminate program supply as from December 31. We were asked to ponder this over the weekend. Those terms were quite iniquitous and would have forced us to cut back on local content and shed staff. We notified the network on Monday that we would accept their terms and conditions, but I was informed later that evening that an affiliation agreement had been signed with TWT Holdings. ( Cairns Post , 1990d, p.3)
72 Two days out from the start of aggregation, QTV was left without a program supply agreement. Negotiating a program supply arrangement with the low-rating Network
Ten was the only card left to play.
Before examining the consequences, one immediate question this scenario raises is, how could such corporate shenanigans take place in a regulated industry? I would argue that an industry regulator should stand watch over, or at the very least, mediate in program supply negotiations, to ensure that the integrity of the free-to-air product is not compromised and that schedules are in place long before the switch-on date. I also argue that this should serve as a lesson for ACMA in its observation of future dealings on program supply arrangements.
Notionally, such an intervention would fulfil a similar function to the Foreign
Investment Review Board querying a foreign takeover of Qantas, or the ACCC monitoring the prices Telstra charges smaller telecommunications users for rent of its copper-wire services. The public has an interest in each of these assets, only more so in the case of commercial television, given the citizens are the rightful owners of the spectrum which is leased to the broadcasters.
I intend to expand further on this theme in the concluding stages of this thesis, but the point needs to be made, before continuing to explore the disastrous corporate dealings of Christmas 1990, that free to air broadcasting is not a “free market” and the idea that free market forces should apply is open to debate. Along with being regulated, free to air broadcasting is also the most protected of Australia’s industries,
73 and, it could be argued, with the level of protection licensees are afforded, there should be a responsibility, monitored by the regulator, to act in the public interest.
The Desperate Scramble for Network Affiliation
There is evidence to indicate QTV executives should have been well aware of the turmoil which led to the decimation of local content. As Rod Tindale (personal interview, February 20, 2007) points out, among the engineers, who traditionally have close links to senior management in the regional industry, “rumours were rife for some time that QTV would lose the Nine signal”. Further circumstantial evidence of this prior knowledge is the haste with which newspaper advertisements promoting aggregation were altered, even during the busy Christmas – Boxing Day holiday period of 1990. “Cairns, now when you’re looking for the best TV … you’ve got a WIN,” ( Cairns Post , 1990e), read one newspaper strip advertisement featuring Nine’s flagship summer program, World Series Cricket. The new playing field certainly made life difficult for all involved, except perhaps WIN Television.
Baker recalls the sequence of events:
Absolutely fascinating. This was some seven days before the other two competitive stations, the new aggregated stations were about to switch on their transmitters for the first time. So if you can imagine, Queensland Television QTV were banging the drum and selling the Nine Network signal and had been doing so for decades and using some of their call signs, “we’re the one” you know, number one station. So QTV went from a number one position to a number three position, the number three network. Star TV then re-branded as WIN, was going to start the race in the number three position, then went up to the number one position, leaving Sunshine Television in a
74 pretty awkward position, it was a pretty tough position. So day one aggregation, Queensland Television became Channel Ten, Star / Win became Channel Nine, the number one network and Channel Seven I guess you would say was slotted into the number three position. We weren’t ready for it. No-one was. No-one at WIN, no-one at QTV and certainly no-one at Sunshine Television was ready for those changes. (John Baker, personal interview, February 19, 2007)
The consequences of this sudden shift in power within the regional television business in Queensland would be far reaching. It could be argued the industry would never fully recover – given the domino effect of constant cutbacks evidenced during the first decade of aggregation. I would submit at this point, that it was a very clear oversight by the ABA to allow the granting of licenses for the aggregated markets, without the new licensees needing to demonstrate that contracts (or at the very least heads of agreement) for program supply were in place.
Andre Heise recalls it as the moment when local programming, in particular production of information programming, would largely vanish.
From memory it happened Christmas eve of 1990 when that decision was made, on the morning of the 24 th . By that afternoon a huge amount of news people, others as well, but the newsroom copped the biggest brunt as far as staff being told to go, purely based on that decision of losing affiliation. The Nine Network was strong, the programming was strong, Ten obviously wasn’t and they were very reactive to that decision to the point where they got rid of a lot of staff. (Andre Heise, personal interview, February 22, 2007)
75 The situation at Sunshine Television looked even more bleak. The company’s business plan was built around a notion of perceived localism and the battle for hearts and minds of advertisers (along with viewers) relied heavily on promoting its new flagship, a half-hour local news program. Faced with the arrival of WIN
Television and the new reality of being the third choice station for advertisers,
Sunshine Television also had to deal with a soft regional economy, as Baker explains:
Extremely tough, to say the least. Extremely tough. If you recall at the time, late 1990 we were basically in the grip of the recession we had to have. I can speak from this market, the Cairns market, we also were hot on the tail of the airline strike which devastated the Cairns marketplace. Business and the economy had taken a blow through the airline strike, then taken another blow during the recession. In the midst of a recession and faced with an organization that had to support itself through swelling advertising revenue to a business community that was doing it very, very tough in a very, very confusing time for them, yeah, hell it was tough. (John Baker, personal interview, February 19, 2007)
Behind the scenes, all three stations were involved in extensive capitalization projects. Carrying network signals along the Queensland coast involved the construction of significant broadcast infrastructure, with the cost running high into the millions. In the Cairns region alone, Sunshine Television and WIN Television were faced with supplying UHF signals to what, from a technical perspective, was
Australia’s most challenging broadcast environment.
76 The one-off costs of installing broadcast infrastructure might not have been prohibitive, but they left a significant dent in the budgets of the new free to air broadcasters. The engineering requirements for the Cairns region included the installation of a 500 kilowatt base-band transmitter on Mount Bellenden Kerr, at an estimated cost (not including installation) in the vicinity of half a million dollars.
Signals were then relayed to the shadow areas via a network of eleven translators, each costing approximately $40,000 each:
Something like Cairns, we also would have off the main transmitters we would have had a dozen translators which were doing Cardwell, Tully, Babinda, Mount Yarrabah, Saddle Mountain, Port Douglas, Mossman, Mareeba, Herberton, Atherton, Ravenshoe. So they all had to be installed as well. It was pretty full on the first couple of years. (Rod Tindale, personal interview, February 20, 2007)
This researcher recalls being enlisted (as a cadet journalist at WIN Television) to assist with installation of the WIN Television translator on Mount Yarrabah, South-
East of Cairns. Getting the site up and running was seen as a high priority, as there were numerous holes in the transmitter coverage from Mount Bellenden Kerr, especially along Cairns’ northern beaches.
Sunshine Television technician, Tindale, was responsible for establishing the Mount
Yarrabah site – a costly and time consuming process – after spying the exposed mountain-top by chance while on a flight out of Cairns:
77 If it’s a new site like Mount Yarrabah or Saddle Mountain, where you have to put in a road, a building a tower, you could spend easily, 100, 200, 300 thousand dollars. You spend like, months. In fact Mount Yarrabah, we’ve been on air there for over 10 years and we still don’t have tenure over the land. It’s taken that long to sort out the land issue problems which still haven’t been sorted out and its an on-going concern. (Rod Tindale, personal interview, February 20, 2007)
In a time of recession, aggregation was proving costly . Makeshift studios and commercial production facilities also needed to be constructed in Cairns and
Townsville and this, according to Tindale, involved significant outlays in staff, cameras, video tape machines, vision switchers, digital video effects units and character generators. Business confidence was down across the board, and the work for sales people on the ground generating revenue through advertising dollars was intense.
Incentives were offered for new advertisers to come on board, including a concept once frowned upon in regional television, offering free production of commercials to convince clients to buy air time. Previously, production of even a basic television advertisement would have cost a client in the vicinity of $1500 (Andre Heise, personal interview, February 22, 2007). Commercials were now being produced for as little as $200 or in some cases – where clients were spending significantly on air- time – production was free.
78 Sunshine Television Cairns was one of the first stations to get involved in the no-win game of cost cutting. It was a matter of short term business survival:
For the advertiser at the time in those tough economic times, they had to get used to the idea of no longer having to go to their local T.V. station , where they were looked after by their local reps and trust them to get the results and had long term relationships, to a position where they had to deal with a whole bunch of newcomers with rate cards and rate structures which were untested. (John Baker, personal interview, February 19, 2007)
At the same time as this fight for advertising dollars, Sunshine Television was also working to establish its half-hour news service in the small North Queensland market. The concept was to produce the content locally in Cairns and Townsville,
(with each centre providing material for a local first segment), fill the second segment with non region-specific stories, and produce a combined sports segment and local weather Packaged stories were forwarded to the Sunshine Coast via a dedicated bearer (which Sunshine had invested significantly in for broadcast support), where the bulletin was assembled and pre-recorded in the company’s
Maroochydore studio, before being relayed back to the local centres at 6 p.m. (Rod
Tindale, personal interview, February 20, 2007).
Sunshine had a head-start on WIN Television as the first of the newcomers to introduce a local news service. The newsrooms in Cairns and Townsville were each staffed with three journalists and three camera operators, who faced the unenviable task of competing against the incumbent QTV News, which generations of North
79 Queenslanders had grown up with. Sunshine’s news service already had a foothold further south as the incumbent in Mackay and on the Sunshine Coast / Wide Bay, but Cairns and Townsville were on difficult battle grounds, soon to be made even more challenging with the arrival of WIN News.
It took a full year post-aggregation for WIN to form its battle plan for establishing a news service in North Queensland. The result, based upon my recollections as a cadet journalist member with WIN Television when the Cairns bureau opened, was a lean and well thought out operation which hit the airwaves in Cairns and Townsville on February 24, 1992. WIN’s operations in Cairns and Townsville were each staffed with three journalists and two camera operators. The structure of the bulletin mirrored and went head-to-head with the competitor, Sunshine. It featured a fully local (where possible) first segment, a combined second segment and combined
Cairns – Townsville sports segment, along with a comprehensive local weather segment.
In terms of infrastructure, the newsroom set-up was bare bones, featuring bottom of the line Sony 537 Betacam cameras, reliable PVW VTR machines, and an industry standard Basys computer system, which operated as a “PET” system locally, before being connected by modem to head office – to upload scripts at day’s end. By today’s standards, the computer infrastructure was expensive, problematic and prone to failure.
80 Costs were kept to such a minimum that newsroom staff were involved in the physical act of building the news edit suite (with hammer nails & timber), installing audio tiles in the makeshift voiceover booth and assembling office furniture.
WIN’s bulletins were assembled at the company’s state headquarters in
Rockhampton and pre-recorded before being turned around and played to air at 6pm in Cairns and Townsville. The key difference to Sunshine’s infrastructure set-up was the decision to book itinerant Telecom bearers (at considerable daily expense) to feed cut news packages to head office. In the early years, WIN’s permanent bearer booking lasted from 3.30p.m. to 4.15 p.m. when the local newsroom staff clocked off for the day.
In theory this gave Sunshine Television, with its permanent bearer, the advantage of being able to broadcast late breaking stories exclusively. It made little, if any, difference in terms of ratings. WIN entered the market with the distinct advantage over Sunshine because it carried the Channel Nine signal, particularly since the WIN local news preceded the industry leading National Nine News at 6.30p.m.
Both of the newcomers were faced with the considerable hurdle of competing against the incumbent QTV News, which continued to dominate the ratings, and would do for years to come. Repackaged as an hour-long product, in line with its new association with Network Ten, the “QTV Eye Witness News” had two local crews circulating in the Cairns market, packaging stories which would air in the only
“truly local” bulletin, produced and played live to air from Townsville.
81 Three years later, and still with no sizeable impact on QTV’s news ratings, Sunshine
Television News came under review at a board level. News Director Paul Michaels was forced to make a passionate plea to keep the news service afloat, citing its role in establishing ties with the local community. But the bottom line, as Baker reaffirms, was dollars.
The only thing that sustains any program is ratings in a commercial environment. You don’t rate, you can’t sustain advertising revenue. I think it was costing the network somewhere in the vicinity of a million dollars a year to host all of the regional news bulletins. Bottom line, they weren’t rating in any market bar Mackay which was the incumbent. They were struggling everywhere else. They did it pretty tough, our news barely rated a mention in the initial Nielsen surveys. It basically rated extremely poorly to the point where someone had to make a decision and they dropped it entirely, which was fairly sound at the time because it wasn’t sustainable. The market couldn’t sustained three local news services. (John Baker, personal interview, February 19, 2007)
The Newsroom Closures
The first of the newsroom closures which, eventually, led to the ABA regional news inquiry took place on March 23, 1995. Two weeks after being congratulated by
General Manager David Astley (former General Manager of QTV) for the quality of the service’s on-air presentation, the newsroom staff of Sunshine Television in
Cairns and Townsville – including myself - were made redundant.
82 A letter from the then mayor of Cairns, Tom Pyne, to the Editor of Sunshine
Television News in North Queensland, Ross Dagan, reflected the community sentiment. A mayoral reception, paid for by the ratepayers of Cairns was held to farewell the Sunshine Television news team:
The professionalism of the local Sunshine News coverage over many years has been reflected in well balanced stories created by very proficient journalists, camera and editing staff. In fact the combined efforts and dedication of the local Sunshine News team has contributed to the constant high credibility that Sunshine Local News has achieved across the winder community. I can assure you that the on-air presence of Sunshine Television Local News will be sadly missed by the Cairns community. (Pyne, 1995)
Two trends were now becoming apparent in aggregated markets, not just in North
Queensland, but nationwide. Local information shows including children’s shows, current affairs programs, breakfast shows and sports programs, were disappearing from the landscape altogether. Local news programs, which had initially increased in number in the aggregated environment, were under threat of extinction, without the help of regulatory intervention.
While this thesis is primarily focussed on North Queensland, it should be noted the phenomenon of regional newsroom closures was becoming a nation-wide trend. It was not limited to the newcomers who had tried and failed in the aggregated markets
– the incumbent services were also in the sights of the economic rationalists, who
83 saw no need to adhere to a loosely held “convention” of providing a level of local service as some form of socially responsible broadcasting:
That was always the premise, the bottom line is that when aggregation was mooted, there was a firm understanding that all the aggregated stations had to provide local content. Along the way, some of the stations have bought themselves some trouble by not broadcasting their allotted amount of time to local content. In fact as business got tough, the economy got tougher, doing business as an aggregated market got tougher, the balance sheets weren’t looking so good, they started to drop all this. I think the networks have always known that they’ve had to do it. The bottom line is they’ve just ignored the requirement for commercial reasons because they believed it wasn’t commercially viable. (John Baker, personal interview, February 19, 2007)
The industry’s flashpoint finally arrived on Wednesday, November 21, 2001, when
Southern Cross Broadcasting, the new owners of the once staunchly local NQTV, shut the doors on the station’s local news services in Cairns and Townsville (Turner,
2001a). Also placed on the news scrap-heap was SCB’s Townsville-based Seven
Central satellite news service for Western Queensland and the Northern Territory.
The closures came hot on the heels of a string of regional newsroom closures by
Prime Television, including one Queensland-based operation on the Gold Coast.
These closures were specifically identified in the executive summary of the ABA’s report (2002, p.9) as the catalyst for the inquiry into regional television news and information services.
84 Southern Cross, the owner of Sydney radio cash-cow 2UE and a string of other highly profitable broadcasting assets, blamed its newsroom closures on the cost of converting its transmitter sites to digital broadcasting. This, despite what local member for Leichhardt Warren Entsch claimed was a $12 million Federal
Government grant the station received to assist with digital set-up in North
Queensland (Turner, 2001b, p.3). SCB’s reasons for the closure were released in a statement to the stock market and published in the Cairns Post :
It is no longer economically feasible to provide the same level of local programming as in the past. The station needed to decide between providing local news services to all of the major centres between Cairns and the New South Wales border, or ceasing its local news services in two of its seven major markets.(Turner, 2001a, p.3)
The Industry Flashpoint
The closure of the Cairns newsroom, in particular, generated a wave of negative publicity for Southern Cross Broadcasting. Ten’s Cairns Bureau Chief Jamie Rule was one of the major critics of the Southern Cross newsroom closure and led the calls for the Australian Broadcasting Authority to launch an investigation:
The hardest thing has been explaining to people who have grown up with Ten News that we are not going to be on the air after Friday. It is a blow for us and from a personal point of view I am going to miss all the politicians and sports figures and ordinary people who aren’t so ordinary who I deal with every day. It just feels like we’re letting those people down.( Turner, 2001a, p.3)
85 Rule’s sentiments were backed by the city’s opinion makers and power brokers.
Cairns Mayor Kevin Byrne admitted to being “shocked and appalled” (Turner,
2001a, p.3) at the closure, while one of the most influential figures in North
Queensland’s regional television industry, former QTV executive John Grant, raised the issue of social responsibility:
News used to be the flagship and it was understood that if you took something out of the community in terms of advertising dollars, you put something back in with the news. It is such a rich and diverse news area in North Queensland. Where else do you get the Aboriginal culture, crocodiles, cyclones, and the celebrities that we see up here. ( Cairns Post , 2001)
Federal parliamentarians from both sides of the political divide were, for once, united in expressing disgust at Southern Cross Broadcasting’s behaviour.
Queensland Labor Senator Jan McLucas, who has maintained on-going vigilance on the issue of local content, pointed to a lack of social responsibility, which she feels, to this day, is yet to be fully remedied.
I have no figures, but all of the three channels make a lot of money out of the advertising revenue and again out of the community and along with that right to collect revenue, there must be prerogative to give something back to the community and that is to put us, our stories, our voices, our images on television. It’s not about the Queen Mary visiting Port Douglas, but what Johnny did at the cricket last Saturday, that’s a story and that should be told. (Senator Jan McLucas, personal interview, February 20, 2007)
86 Senator McLucas also highlights the media’s role in a democracy. The closures had followed soon after a federal election and she purports that television news crews on the ground, were pivotal, in her view, in promoting vigorous political debate.
My concern then was, if we only had one local T.V. crew doing local news there would be no competition in a media sense. That 2001 election was extremely competitive between the two main journalists, one was Jamie Rule [Ten] and the other Damien Murphy [WIN]. It was highly competitive and it worked in the community’s favour. I remembered Damian saying to me, in this election we want colour stories, we want movement, we don’t want politicians sitting behind a desk. Can I say we did it and we won the media round. To see Jamie and all of that team just removed out of our market, I saw it as a huge blow, from my perspective. If I was relying on just one newsroom to get the story out there, they didn’t have to work hard. (Senator Jan McLucas, personal interview, February 20, 2007)
McLucas’s argument fits neatly with Habermas’s notion of the media playing a central role within the public sphere – especially with reference to the political dimension.
Perhaps of greater concern to the A.B.A., however, was the reality aggregation had, to this point, fallen short of Keating’s dream of more voices with greater diversity.
The net effect was an increased amount of homogenous content (less diversity), less voices, and in the cases of both Southern Cross Broadcasting and Sunshine
Television, no significant local presence.
87 Barely 24 hours after the newsroom closure (Thursday, November 22, 2001), the then ABA announced an inquiry into local news and information services in the aggregated regional markets. The outcomes of that inquiry, as overseen by the new regulatory body ACMA, provide the starting point for this research.
When placed within the boundaries of an historical narrative, the demise of local content in North Queensland can be seen as far wider reaching than the ABA inquiry’s findings, outlined earlier in this thesis, ever uncovered. Against this backdrop, and armed with the knowledge of where local news and information programs were positioned within the regional public sphere, it is possible to now evaluate the effect of regulatory reforms.
Understanding the depth of local content available prior to aggregation, what impact has the new self regulated points system for broadcast of matters of local significance had upon the regional commercial television industry? The textual analysis in the following chapter will seek to answer this question.
88 Chapter 5
Local News and Information Programs in Cairns
This chapter presents an analysis of the local news and information content presently airing on regional commercial television in Cairns. It will use criteria, as outlined in the earlier methodology chapter, to determine how effectively the broadcasters meet their obligation to provide coverage of matters of local significance.
Programs presented by the regional commercial broadcasters and identified (under the industry’s self regulatory guidelines) as “matters of local significance” were recorded for the purpose of analysis between February 14 and February 23, 2007.
Dealing firstly with commercial television programs of a specific “news” genre, three nightly programs were recorded for the purpose of analysis – a brief description of each is as follows:
WIN News - Weeknights at Six P.M.
WIN’s weekday news bulletins employ a 30-minute format. News stories are shot and packaged locally, before being played out via high speed non-linear file transfer to Rockhampton, where the bulletin is finally assembled and pre-recorded. The bulletin is fronted by local Rockhampton newsreader, Paul Taylor. WIN News is comprised of four segments, the first segment being almost entirely local, the second segment containing local stories, plus stories from other sub-markets known as
89 “travellers”. The third segment is a local sport segment also containing stories from
Townsville (mainly North Queensland Cowboys) The Cairns Newsroom is staffed
by eight people ( four journalists, four camera operator/editors). The bulletin ends
with a comprehensive weather segment containing information for Far North
Queensland specifically, along with North Queensland in general.
Seven Local News – Weeknights at Six
Seven also employs a 30-minute format for its local Monday to Friday news bulletin for the Cairns and Far North Queensland region. News stories are shot and packaged locally, before being played out in real-time by dedicated bearer to the
Sunshine Coast where the bulletin is finally assembled and pre-recorded. The bulletin is fronted by a pair of Maroochydore based newsreaders (Rob Brough and
Jo-Anne Desmond). Seven’s news is comprised of four segments, the first segment being entirely local, the second segment a Cairns/Townsville mix, the third segment is a Cairns/Townsville sport segment. Seven news also finishes with a comprehensive local weather report. The Seven Cairns newsroom is staffed by four journalists and three camera operators.
Southern Cross Ten News Updates – Weeknights (No specific time)
Southern Cross employs the format of a 30-second daily bulletin on weekdays.
During the period of field research, these updates aired arbitrarily at a non-specific time during a scheduled commercial break in evening programming. As these
90 updates are not listed in program schedules, and the field research for this thesis concentrated on core viewing hours, it is possible that these updates may have been repeated, but not observed. It is not clear why it uses the term update, as it is not updating any previous news bulletin. In most instances, it is also unclear from where the material for the bulletins is sourced, as information is only occasionally attributed to known sources.
Southern Cross Ten employs two staff at its Townsville headquarters, who compile the headline stories for the 30-second news updates, not just for the network’s stations in Townsville and Cairns, but also for the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast,
Toowoomba, Rockhampton, Wide Bay and Mackay. One staff member involved with the production of these updates, and who chose to remain anonymous, described the production technique employed as largely “rip and read” (Anonymous
Southern Cross Staff Member, personal interview, 16/1/2008).
This researcher, while in attendance at the Cairns Police Station media unit,
(8/1/2008), witnessed police receiving a phone call from a Southern Cross staffer to verify details of a police media release. The scripts are sent to Canberra, where a presenter and a production team record the bulletins, which are then transmitted to the regional stations. Southern Cross updates are read entirely to air without use of any video news material from the local market. During the field research period, only one update per day was observed on-air during core viewing hours.
91 Textual Analysis – The Search for Meaning
The textual analysis is centred upon ‘major news event’ that occurred during the data collection period and will compare and contrast the relative treatments of these events by the three competing commercial broadcasters. To examine in-depth all news stories recorded would simply be prohibitive for the purpose of this thesis, because of the number of stories involved. This concentrated analysis of how each of the news services packages major news events will test my constructive hypothesis developed during the observational phase of this paper. That hypothesis is that ACMA’s point system, by which commercial broadcasters self regulate their production of locally significant material, is fundamentally flawed.
Four prominent news events were chosen as samples for analysis. They include a murder in suburban Cairns, an accident involving a cyclist in the northern Cairns suburb of Smithfield, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie’s comments re revival of the
Bradfield water scheme and coverage of the Cairns Taipans basketball team in the
National Basketball League finals.
Sample 1. Murder on a Cairns Street
The following transcript is from the Southern Cross Ten news update on the evening of Wednesday February 21, 2007:
This is a Southern Cross Ten news update Good evening .. investigations continue into the death of a Cairns man
92 overnight with police suggesting he may have been stabbed while breaking up a fight.
A 16-year-old cyclist has died in hospital from his injuries following a weekend accident in Smithfield.
And the Cowboys are preparing for their first test of the season, with Carl Webb looking to impress in the trial against New Zealand.
Rain tomorrow in Cardwell. (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007a)
The opening item in the Southern Cross Ten news update was arguably the biggest news story of the week, a murder in suburban Cairns. The viewer is given minimal information with which to establish meaning. Southern Cross fails to verify key facts including that an unlawful killing has taken place, and an elderly man was definitely stabbed to death in suburban Grove Street while breaking up a street party.
It also fails to include information that was readily available from police, such as claims that the person or persons who attacked the man had consumed significant amounts of alcohol. In what begins to amount to a litany of journalistic shortcomings, the update also fails to mention how police have spoken to persons of interest, or that the killing took place in the vicinity of a retirement home and was witnessed by elderly people.
Using Granato’s criteria, as outlined in Chapter 2 of this thesis, there is evidence the conflict in this story has not been adequately identified, the consequence as a result,
93 for members of the Cairns community cannot be determined. The core news value of proximity is also diminished by the lack of attention to detail on where the incident occurred. In terms of whether this information can be trusted, the lack of identifiable sources may leave the viewer questioning the authorit y of the information, particularly given there has been no discernable attempt to verify this information using common journalistic tools such as eye witness accounts.
By comparison, on the same evening, Seven Local News devoted close to two minutes of air time to the story:
News Presenter: An elderly man has been stabbed to death outside his home while trying to break up a late night disturbance.
Friends have told how they tried to save the sixty-five year old .. but he lost too much blood.
Reporter, Jessica Howard:
The couple had only lived in the small unit for 18 months. In that time they’d battled with rowdy visitors to the retirement village.
Last night a confrontation ended in murder.
Neighbour 1: Heather come banging on me door and she said to me, “George, Martin’s been stabbed.”
94 The 68-year-old left his unit around 11 o’clock last night to move on a loud group that was nearby. Police allege they turned on him.
Police Inspector John Harris It will also be alleged that the persons had drunk some considerable Amount of alcohol.
Today 25 police officers started to piece together what happened. They haven’t charged anyone for the murder, but are talking with several witnesses.
Standup: Neighbours say they heard the man shout, “hurry, hurry”, as he raced back into his unit for help
Neighbour 1 He was laying down there in a puddle of blood and it was all over him.
George Haddock did what he could but his friend had lost too much blood. Even the man’s defacto, a nurse, was powerless to save him.
Neighbour 1 She’s in the hospital now, I think, still.
Neighbours in the retirement village say it’s hard to believe their friend is dead
Neighbour 2 He’ll be missed, I talked to him every morning and had a cuppa.
Residents say they’ve been begging authorities to protect them for years. A 60- year-old man was bashed for $5 late last year.
95
Flashback: Beaten Neighbour - I won’t go out at night time, no way in the world.
Neighbour 2 You shouldn’t have to lock yourself up like an animal because people come around and abuse the place where you live.
A post mortem examination on the man will be conducted tomorrow.
Jessica Howard, Seven News. (Howard, 2007)
The Seven Local News handling of the story provides the viewer with up-to-date information necessary to establish the meaning of the story. It confirms the victim of the attack was stabbed to death, provides graphic accounts from eye witnesses of how the incident occurred, authenticates this information with attribution from police and uses audio visuals which help verify in the mind of the viewer that the incident, as outlined, actually took place. The location of the murder, in Grove
Street, was already established in the headlines at the commencement of the bulletin.
The report identifies the conflict in the story and the issue of violent attacks in the area. The consequence of this is retirement village residents living in fear. The proximity of the story is also an important news value, given the incident is confirmed as happening in Grove Street, close to the centre of Cairns. Ultimately the
Seven Local News viewer is left in little doubt that this event is of local significance.
By comparison, it is difficult to establish meaning in Southern Cross Broadcasting’s treatment of this shocking local news event.
96
A valid point needs to be made here, before continuing further analysis. Clearly, a report of close to two minutes duration presented during a half-hour news bulletin will deliver to the viewer more meaningful information than a news update, cramming (typically) three news items plus a weather brief into 30 seconds. If we were to evaluate news updates from the commercial stations and the ABC in metropolitan Brisbane, it would also be possible to find examples where the meaning of the story is difficult to establish, based upon the information available.
However, in the case of the Brisbane metropolitan stations, evening news updates are used as a method of reinforcement, a supplement to the half or one hour prime time news programs, meticulously assembled in a costly, labour intensive manner, with viewer loyalty, or trust, seen as the ultimate prize. As Linskey points out
(1988, 215): “No one reads the paper thoroughly every day or watches the television news every night. Readers and viewers need to be told over and over again what happened before.”
Presenting news updates as a method of reinforcement has merit. Presenting news updates as the primary source for local news and information content, while appealing to financial controllers, has serious limitations, given the reduced capacity of the viewer to establish meaning from the content. I will further demonstrate this with examples. As we mentioned earlier, Southern Cross context use of the term
“update” is also misleading, given the conventional use of the term in the television
97 industry. An update, typically, is repeating or advancing information delivered in an earlier news bulletin.
Sample 2 – Road Fatality, Smithfield
Returning to the same Southern Cross News Update of February 21, the second item informs viewers how “a 16-year-old cyclist has died in hospital from his injuries following a weekend accident at Smithfield” (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007a).
The first question the viewer is left asking here is, whereabouts at Smithfield did the incident take place? Since the story does not even specify whether the accident was a road accident, the second question is, what were the circumstances of the accident?
The third question is, what were the injuries sustained by the person that later led to his death?
The reader voice-over on Seven Local News gave the story the following treatment:
A teenager who was hit by a car at Smithfield on Sunday has died in hospital. (Cue vision) The sixteen year old was riding home from work at McDonalds and was trying to cross the Captain Cook Highway.
He died last night from head injuries. (Seven Queensland, 2007)
98 This brief report by Seven Local News added important facts which assist in giving the story real meaning. In contrast to Southern Cross’s ‘update’ it indicates how even a brief script can be rich in meaning if it is written concisely, but well. The reader / voiceover included video footage related to the incident and provided the viewer with more precise particulars of where the incident occurred and the injuries sustained by the deceased. Most importantly, it informed the viewer how the deceased was attempting to ride a bike across the highway when he was struck by a car.
Returning to Granato’s core news values, the proximity of the event is most important. The location of the accident, a busy road and known traffic black-spot close to a major shopping centre, gives the story greater meaning. Likewise, there are consequences for other families living on Cairns northern beaches, who will consider the safety for their children attending the local Smithfield High School, or who ride bikes along the same stretch of highway.
Sample 3. The Water Crisis - Reviving the Bradfield Scheme
This is a Southern Cross News Update
Good evening … fire crews have been busy this morning with two minor road accidents within minutes of each other in Cairns.
Barnaby Joyce is urging Peter Beattie to push ahead with feasibility studies on his plan to send the far north’s water to the Murray-Darling basin.
99 And the Taipans are preparing for their first match of the semi-finals series against the Melbourne Tigers.
Rain tonight .. with the chance of flooding in Tully. (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007b)
The week from the February 19 to 25 saw State Parliamentary sittings taking place in Brisbane, where matters of significance to regional Queensland were being fiercely debated. The political story of the moment involved a two-way flow of political rhetoric, centred on a proposal to revive the controversial Bradfield
Scheme. To summarize, the Bradfield scheme was a proposal dating back to the mid
20 th century, to take water from North Queensland’s Eastern flowing river systems, and transport it to the catchments of the Thompson and Murray-Darling river systems.
The story, or at least snippets from a media statement by National Party Senator
Barnaby Joyce, featured in the Southern Cross Ten News Update on the evening of
February 20, along with what was listed as breaking news for the Cairns region, two minor road accidents which failed to rate a mention on other local bulletins.
Concentrating specifically on the Murray-Darling water issue, the Southern Cross
News update breaks one of the golden rules of journalistic discourse: Never assume the viewer knows the position of the person you are talking about, even if it is the
State Premier. In this instance, Peter Beattie’s title of Queensland Premier is ignored, along with the title of Barnaby Joyce, who is a National Party Senator.
100 These are important facts – relevant to any determination of the significance of the story.
The next question might sound ridiculously simple, but exactly what is Peter
Beattie’s plan to send the Far North’s water to the Murray Darling basin? To reach any determination on the significance of the news item, the viewer needs to be provided with layers of background information. Applying Granato’s news values, the viewer is offered little insight into the conflict element of the story. Although
Peter Beattie may be well known, and Barnaby Joyce lesser so, the prominence of the stakeholders in the story is understated. The viewers are also left a long way short of determining if the story is of consequence to themselves or their community.
In the absence of any real explanation of the contested ideologies in the story, it is difficult to trust the information.
WIN Television’s treatment of the same story on the same evening helps us fill in the blanks:
News Presenter, Paul Taylor: Water has again dominated parliament for its second sitting of the year…
With the premier again pushing for the Bradford scheme which would see water pumped from North Queensland to the Murray-Darling system
Reporter, Kieren Toohey :
101 After the first week of parliamentary antics, the playing field was set down by the Speaker who himself came under attack for alleged bias.
Parliamentary Speaker, Mike Reynolds: I ask members to play the ball, not the player in the debates in this house.
The fire was replaced by water with plenty of self appraisal from the government
Premier, Peter Beattie: We have committed to a range of new water initiatives Education Minister, Rod Welford We aim to reduce water consumption at state schools.
The opposition however kept up their fight.
National Party Leader, Jeff Seeney: And that’s the question for the people of Queensland, what is it that they’re trying to hide.
But the rising tide of discussion is the federal government’s Murray-Darling water plan. Premiers will meet with the Prime Minister on Friday in the hope of gaining control over the Murray-Darling, in exchange for a massive upgrade of irrigation infrastructure and measures to address the over- allocation of water.
It has the Premier reviving the so-called Bradfield scheme, the 1930’s proposal suggests piping water from the Burdekin, Herbert and Tully rivers across to the Warrego and Thompson rivers and into the Murray-Darling.
102 The Premier wants it funded through the Howard government’s $10 billion Murray-Darling rescue package.
Craig Wallace, Natural Resources Minister: I’ll be standing with Bob Katter and Barnaby Joyce, when we go to the Federal Government, when we go to the Federal Government saying look at this scheme, have a good look at it, have a good look at it, we’re not wimps like the opposition.
While the Premier says it would deliver an extra one million megalitres of water a year, the federal government considers it too expensive.
Keiren Toohey, Win News. (Toohey, 2007)
The WIN News treatment of the story allows the viewer to gain a more complete understanding of a complex and relevant political issue. What WIN tells us that
Southern Cross does not, is not simply the fact Peter Beattie is State Premier.
WIN’s more comprehensive treatment of the story confirms the idea under scrutiny is the Bradfield Scheme, and the journalist goes to some length to describe what the scheme was, which rivers it targeted and how the scheme may be funded in the 21 st century context.
WIN also alerts the viewer to a crucial fact in the on-going development of the story,
(neglected by Southern Cross) that State Premiers are due to meet with the Prime
Minister on Friday to discuss the issue of future control over the Murray-Darling river system, which presently under the constitutional division of powers, is the responsibility of each individual state. It should be noted, WIN’s story is not
103 without flaws. The journalist, Toohey, does place more emphasis than is perhaps necessary on empty political rhetoric and chest-thumping of politicians.
Representations of this nature are also common-place in metropolitan television coverage of Queensland politics. There is also not enough emphasis placed upon explaining the existing cases for and against the Bradfield scheme.
Taking into consideration Granato’s core news values WIN’s story provides just enough information for the reader to understand the conflict between the State and
Federal Governments over control of water, the prominence of those involved, the proximity in terms of how Regional Queensland river systems could be effected and the timeliness with an up-coming meeting in Canberra on Friday. Given the story also includes real attribution and images from State Parliament, viewers are more likely to trust that the story is correct, even if they do not trust the remarks of the politicians.
Comparisons in coverage of political matters by the commercial broadcasters are of great value when considering not just the impact of regulatory policy on local content, but the implications for the broader public sphere. The above example identifies what could be described as a “minimalist” approach to coverage of political matters on the part of Southern Cross Broadcasting in reference to its presentation of nightly updates. I have identified this as a serious concern and will expand upon this further in the conclusion to this dissertation.
104 Sample 4 – Coverage of Local Sport
Representations of local sport on the three regional commercial news services varied greatly. During the week of data collection, the Win and Seven local news services each produced a local sport segment consisting (typically) of three packaged news items each evening; the content largely relating to North Queensland sporting teams competing in national sporting competitions (i.e. Cairns and Townsville National
Basketball League (NBL) franchises and the National Rugby League (NRL) North
Queensland Cowboys).
The period of data collection also coincided with Cairns’ most significant sports story for 2007 – an historic appearance by the Cairns Taipans basketball team in the finals of the NBL. The occasion produced an aberration for the regional news services, with both WIN Television and Seven Local News extending their news budgets to send reporters on the road to Melbourne for on-the-spot coverage.
In contrast, the Canberra-based Southern Cross News afforded the occasion one-line reader voiceovers in its 30-second evening bulletins, in the absence of any accompanying images:
And the Taipans are gearing up for their Wednesday night clash with the Melbourne Tigers in the best of three semi final series. (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007c)
105 And the Taipans are preparing for their first match of the semi-finals series against the Melbourne Tigers. (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007b)
With apologies to the movie Ground-Hog Day , it is easy to see from the above example how regional television viewers could become mistaken for believing they were living the same day over and over. On Monday, February 19, the Cairns
Taipans were “gearing up”, on Tuesday February 20, the Taipans were “preparing” with no detail about what has changed in one day.
When we consider core news values, the update item from February 20 fails the test, because it simply is not new. The item from February 19 tells the reader little about the pending conflict with the Melbourne Tigers -which in itself is not timely information - and there is little hope of establishing if the information is of consequence to anyone. In the absence of accompanying visuals, a viewer not already educated in the nuances of NBL basketball would be unable to determine what sport is being discussed. In terms of trusting the information, the viewer can only guess where the information has originated from, or what it means.
Placing Southern Cross’s rather feeble attempt at news making within the context of the ABA’s guidelines, the text of each report delivers little in the way of news or information, and given that the second of the two reports very clearly repeats the first, it fails any test of significance. More pertinently, the aforementioned texts demonstrate what this author views as a limited, but nonetheless serious breach of the ACMA regulations pertaining to local news and information content. If such
106 content were to be included in Southern Cross Broadcasting’s self-audited points calculation for local content, it could be interpreted as non-compliance with the
ACMA requirements.
As serious as the legal consequences of such an action may be, including placing
Southern Cross in a show-cause situation with its regional broadcasting licenses, the evidence here points to Southern Cross Broadcasting treating the viewing public with, what this author views as contempt. This extract is taken from the news update on the evening following the two Cairns Taipans stories, where again, the construction of the one-line story bears remarkable similarity.
And the Cowboys are preparing for their first test of the season with Carl Webb looking to impress in the trial against New Zealand (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007a)
Instead of the “Cairns Taipans preparing”, on this occasion “the Cowboys are preparing”. This is hardly news in isolation. The newsreader continues by telling the viewer Carl Webb is “looking to impress in the trial against New Zealand”. This fact may have been correct, but without the benefit of a comment from Carl Webb, or his coach, or some form of attribution, how can the viewer trust the information, establish meaning in the information and find it to be of significance? To further illustrate this point, in the absence of any accompanying visuals, a viewer not already versed in the finer points of the National Rugby League could easily mistake
107 Carl Webb for a bull-rider or saddle-bronc competitor, about to show his wares in a
Trans-Tasman rodeo showdown.
Such representations of news appear to fall outside the commonly accepted guidelines of the “discipline of verification” (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2001) by which journalists in democratic societies should operate. More worrying still, are the similarities in the text of the three examples provided, that both in isolation and when viewed together, do little to advance the perception that Southern Cross
Broadcasting is acting in the spirit, or legal jurisdiction of the ACMA’s local content regulations.
Returning again to the point that the week of data collection was also one of the most significant weeks in the history of regional sport in Cairns, it is important to contrast the treatment of the Cairns Taipans story by Southern Cross, with the offerings of both WIN and Seven. The following excerpts are from WIN News on
February 20, which featured variations on the Cairns Taipans theme in the news and sport segments:
Taipans Fever (Read Voice-over with SOT) Paul Taylor - Newsreader For the first time this season, the Taipans expect to play in front of a full house when they take on the Melbourne Tigers on Friday night. (Take Vision) Only single tickets are left for the second in the best-of-three finals series.
108 Brad Tassell – Taipans Marketing Manager The stadium holds 5347 and they’ll be rabid screaming fans on Friday night.
For the first time, more than 5000 people have turned out for a game all season.
Brad Tassel: We’re averaging just over 4000 per game so you’d expect with a crowd of over 5000 people the noise would be twice as much and it certainly will lift the guys. (WIN Television, 2007) The 40-second reader voice-over in the opening segment of WIN News, provides a strong local angle for the up-coming semi final play-off between the Cairns Taipans and Melbourne Tigers, including an interview with the Taipans’ marketing manager.
Importantly, the report contains information which is most definitely of local significance including an update for local residents on the availability of much sought after tickets to game two in the semi final play-off at the Cairns Convention
Centre.
In terms of core news values, the story is of consequence to many Cairns residents who either already have tickets for the game, or are considering doing so. The story is also timely – as time is running out to buy tickets.
WIN’s treatment goes one step further in the sport segment, with an in-depth report from Melbourne, where the team is training for the first game of the play-off series against the Melbourne Tigers:
109 Taipans Sport Package Presenter, Keirin Toohey: The Cairns Taipans will take a nothing-to-lose attitude into tomorrow night’s opening semi-final game against the Tigers in Melbourne.
Despite never having beaten the defending premiers on their home court, the snakes are quietly confident they can continue their giant killing run as underdogs. Reporter, Luke Pownall: Despite missing out on another warm welcome home from their fans, the Taipans are sure their decision to head straight to Melbourne following last weekend’s win in the west was definitely the right one.
Alan Black,Taipans Coach: A couple of niggling injuries after the Perth game seem to have settled down, so we’ll be ready to go on Wednesday.
Cairns saved itself more than seven hours of travel by heading directly to Melbourne, where they’ve been plotting the downfall of a team that they’re yet to beat away from home.
Alan Black: Well the records are meant to be broken so if we’re going to win, Wednesday night would be a good time to do it. I think it’s going to be difficult to rebound with them due to their overall size. If we can do that, we’re in with a shot.
Cairns managed to do that against one of the League’s best rebounding teams on Saturday night. Black described it as the club’s best ever win. The coach always believed the result was achievable, despite his team’s inconsistency during the regular season.
110
Alan Black: It doesn’t matter what your record was prior to that, I mean we haven’t been particularly great all season. We’ve been there or thereabouts but we’re starting to get our act together.
The bookmakers believe the Taipans winning run will come to an end tomorrow night. With the tigers 5:1 favourites to go one up in the best-of- three series.
That status suits the snakes right down to the ground.
Alan Black: We’ve got nothing to lose, we’re going to give it our all.
Luke Pownall, WIN News. (Pownall, 2007)
WIN’s comprehensive report from Melbourne perhaps lacked journalistic sophistication in terms of not seeking additional points of view beyond the
Taipans coach. However, it delivered significant information for viewers interested in the progress of the city’s only national sporting franchise. Most importantly, viewers were informed there were no serious injuries to team members, that the team had saved a significant amount of time by flying directly to Melbourne from Perth and even that the Taipans were outsiders in pre-game betting. The report also contained valuable insight from the team coach, a trust-worthy source.
The identifiable presence of the journalist in Melbourne, accompanied by video images of the team training, added credibility to the report and allowed the viewer to
111 establish a level of trust in the information being presented. In terms of news values, there was proximity in the sense the story focussed on the local team headed inter- state and timeliness , given the game was just one day away.
Seven Local News took the story one step further the following day, with its local
Cairns-based reporter, Andrew Arthur, also on the ground in Melbourne:
Taipans News Package Presenter, Jo-Anne Desmond: A large group of Snakes’ fans have descended on Melbourne for tonight’s semi final against the Tigers.
The supporters have big plans to push the Taipans over the line.
Reporter, Andrew Arthur:
In the concrete jungle the Tigers call home, Snakes’ supporters are slithering out from all corners, here to lend a hand to their heroes.
Juanita O’Brien, Taipans C.E.O.: I think it’s good for the team, I think it made a difference in Perth, the players could definitely hear us and it gives them an incentive I guess and to see some familiar faces.
The group prepares almost as thoroughly as the team does.
Jaunita O’Brien:
112 We do have a ritual before every away game, we go and have a late lunch together and review the tactics for the evening and then we’ll all go to the game together in our orange.
And work on a few chants … some are familiar, some are familiar.
Team Supporter: The standard lets go taipans let’s go. There go the snakes. Get a life ref. Deefence of course. Get a stop. All those sorts of things.
Despite being much smaller in number than the local fans, the Cairns fans say they’ll be much bigger in voice.
Juanita O’Brien: Pretty hard when you’re just 30 against 4000 odd, but our main aim is just to be loud when the rest of the crowd’s quiet, we’ll be loud.
A sell-out crowd of three and a half thousand people will pack the cage for the game.
In Melbourne Andrew Arthur, Seven News. (Arthur, 2007a)
Seven’s lightweight and unashamedly parochial news package from Melbourne, featuring an interview with the Taipans’ Chief Executive Officer and members of the team fan club provided viewers with a representation of themselves abroad, in the heart of Victoria’s sporting capital. It delivered an important perspective on the club’s biggest ever match from the perspective of the team’s followers – a perspective which is both relevant to and significant to the Cairns community.
113 In terms of demonstrating news values, the story had consequence in the sense the subject matter affected many thousands of Cairns Taipans supporters, proximity in the sense the people involved in the story were locals, timeliness given it was game day and a small degree of novelty, in terms of the off-beat nature of the subject matter.
Seven’s blanket coverage of the Taipans’ semi-final appearance also dominated the sport segment, with both a complete package, and one-on-one interview with
Darnell Mee, one of the team’s most experienced players:
Seven Local News – Taipans Story (Sport Segment) Presenter, Justin Veivers The Taipans tilt at a spot in the NBL premiership deciding series starts tonight, when they’ll look to overcome a 13 game hoodoo in Melbourne.
The Snakes are fully fit and ready to take the Tigers in their own cage. (Script – Andrew Arthur) It’s been a massive week for the Taipans. They flew to the other side of the country, hung tough against Perth and now find themselves in Tigers’ heartland. The next three games deciding who’ll play in the grand final, that’s another variable, the pressure of the playoffs.
Alan Black, Taipans Coach: I don’t think there’s pressure on either team really I think Melbourne are feeling pretty good. They’re at home and happy with where their season finished. We’re coming off a couple of good wins so I think you’ve just gotta play basketball.
114 The Tigers didn’t shoot around this morning. They haven’t for their last few games at home and they’ve won all of them.
Alan Black: What the Tigers do doesn’t concern me greatly
Melbourne has been working hard off the court but they didn’t scout Cairns to start with.
Tigers assistant coach: We didn’t do the scout till after the last game, we had the Dragons and Perth and Cairns all prepared.
Cairns has scouted Melbourne all year. They know where the Tigers plan to attack.
Alan Black: The offence that they run that they’ve run for the last 35 to 40 years has always been getting back cuts and simple baskets, so we need to be great at our concentration in defence, not letting them do that.
Taipans Player: Stopping Anstey he makes them run, he’s very much the key to their team, he makes them go, he shoots the ball well.
The match gets underway at 7.40 Brisbane time.
Andrew Arthur Seven News. (Arthur, 2007b)
In contrast to the earlier “colour” story, Andrew Arthur’s sports report on the
Taipans’ preparations for their semi final clash with Melbourne, provides a variety
115 of viewpoints and advances the viewer’s knowledge of the up-coming encounter.
Arthur seeks out opinions, not just from the Taipans coach, but also players, and the opposing assistant coach. Ultimately the viewer is able to trust both Arthur, as the primary source of information, and his interview subjects, and as such meaning can be extracted from the story.
News values are readily apparent in Arthur’s piece. An identifiable conflict between two teams, prominence in terms of the interview subjects, proximity, given it is the local team, consequence, as the game is of interest to thousands of Cairns Snakes supporters who could not travel to Melbourne and timely, in the sense the game start is just hours away.
In the broader picture, the effort of Seven Local News to provide a comprehensive coverage of the Taipans semi-final match-up with the Melbourne Tigers is significant, given the financial constraints regional news services are generally faced with. In terms of matching ACMA’s criteria for providing coverage of matters of local significance, Seven Queensland is acting both in the spirit of, and in compliance with, the criteria as set-down. The same conclusion can obviously be drawn for WIN News, which has recognized the significance of the event to the local community and acted accordingly.
In contrast, the response of Southern Cross Broadcasting (SCB) to this major sporting event is alarming. At a primary level, the comparative textual analysis of
SCB’s updates, alongside other local news representations, demonstrates firstly that
116 SCB’s updates are not always new, are often difficult to comprehend, are largely devoid of news value, are, in some cases, of questionable authenticity and in terms of the viewer perception they foster, meaningless. At another level, the story suggests an ignorance or indifference towards broadcasting matters of local significance and does not, in my view, enhance the company’s standing as a corporate citizen.
Based upon the data analysis, subjecting local news content to a ‘test of trust’ and scanning it for commonly accepted news values, my observation is that SCB may only be contributing minimal resources to the production of its 30-second news updates, and could be broadcasting these updates purely as a means to an end, to satisfy the ACMA local content points system. What this says about Southern Cross as a corporate citizen is merely one issue. What it says about the ACMA points system for local content is another, perhaps more significant issue, which I will elaborate on in the conclusion to this paper.
Additionally, the Southern Cross 30-second news updates contain weather information for the regions in rapidly changing graphic-only form that does not correlate with the verbal component. No attempt is made by the presenter to explain the complex climatic phenomena which can influence the region’s weather forecast on a day-to-day basis and the viewer is given only minimal time to comprehend the graphic display. By comparison, WIN and Seven news dedicate an entire segment of their thirty-minute weekday bulletins to providing detailed weather information –
117 of a standard equal to or better than capital city stations, given the information is presented by qualified meteorologists.
State Focus – Southern Cross Broadcasting
Apart from its 30-second news updates, the major contribution by Southern Cross
Broadcasting to satisfy the A.C.M.A. local content points system is the weekly half- hour current affairs program State Focus. The pre-recorded program is broadcast during one of the lowest rating time slots of the week, 8.30a.m. Sunday, and is produced from SCB’s Canberra studios, fronted by a Canberra-based presenter. The
Southern Cross owned http://www.mytalk.com.au website provides the following synopsis of the show:
Not your usual clichéd news show, State Focus is a mix of chat and issues. Every week, it gets to the heart of matters which affect people’s day-to-day lives. We talk to the people making a difference, the famous faces passing through, the local heroes who deserve more attention than they get and we tackle the issues that need talking about, from Cairns to Warrnambool. (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007d)
From a technical perspective, State Focus is innovative in the way it utilizes the company’s technically advanced coastal Queensland digital microwave repeater system. This set-up provides the potential for a Canberra-based presenter to conduct interviews with regionally based interviewees at the company’s regional studio facilities along Queensland’s coast, in locations including Cairns and Townsville.
Traditionally, one of the significant cost limitations to accessing regional talent
118 (particularly for national news and current affairs programs) has been the cost of sending live video and audio feeds by bearer. Tapping into a high bit-rate mpeg stream on SCB’s digital microwave system provides the program producers with a cost-effective capability to access regional talent.
Reflecting on my observations during an 18-month period sharing an office facility with Southern Cross Ten in Cairns, the program appeared to be driven largely by the company’s engineering department (as evidenced in the credits of the show), which appeared to largely control the budget – and effectively the editorial content – of the program. Regionally, the budget of State Focus appeared to extend no further than utilizing the digital microwave system, and on occasions, when the local commercial production camera-operator’s workload was stretched, hiring a freelance camera operator to set up studio interviews.
It should be declared, before conducting further analysis of the data obtained during the research phase, that my observation of the production of State Focus was a contributing factor in establishing the research question. The nature of the interviews conducted for the program, which in the majority of instances could be described in journalism parlance as “free kick” interviews, were of particular concern.
There are two important points to consider when analysing the content of State
Focus. The first is the public sphere role of the media, whereby the media presents argument as a first step in the process of communicative action. The question must
119 be asked, does State Focus provide a diversity of opinions on matters of a political nature? Secondly, while elements of the program content could be considered regionally significant, are these stories, as presented, really items of local significance?
The lead story on Southern Cross Ten’s State Focus program on February 19, 2007 centred on a significant issue to many Regional Queenslanders, the state of the flood-prone Bruce Highway(Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007e). It featured an interview in the company’s Canberra studio, conducted by program presenter Peta
Burton, and featuring Mr John Metcalfe, a representative of the Australian
Automobile Association. A full transcript of the interview can be found in Appendix
1.
Peta Burton’s interview with John Metcalfe provides a wealth of interesting material for analysis. In terms of “local significance” the burning issue for residents in
Cairns and Townsville at the time of publication, was the state of the Bruce
Highway in the vicinity of the Tully River, where flooding was causing lengthy delays to vehicle and freight traffic. Nowhere during the course of this interview is the specific issue of the Tully River discussed. Why?
In the first instance, Burton’s introduction to the story blames flooding in the region for exacerbation of the Bruce Highway’s deterioration. This is very clearly missing the point. The real story, as locals would see it, is the lack of funding to flood-proof the Bruce Highway in Australia’s region of highest rainfall. This could be excusable
120 as a one-off error by the presenter or producer of the program. It could also be indicative of a Canberra-based presenter / producer not fully understanding an issue with numerous substantial local nuances.
Cairns-based Senator McLucas, who now declines to be interviewed by the State
Focus program for this reason, advocates employing local staff as a condition of the local content regulations:
It is extremely ineffective. Having a news team based in our community
means that that news team understands what everyone is talking about.
Having a journalist who lives in Canberra interviewing a person on a local
issue in Cairns does not necessarily work. It would be very hard for that
journalist to understand the story. (Senator Jan McLucas, personal interview,
February 20, 2007)
The Bruce Highway story may also highlight a more serious fault with the points system for determining matters of local significance. State Focus is a Queensland- wide program, (with capacity for local segment inserts, budget dependent) and as such, it is in the broadcaster’s interest to maximise its points tally by ensuring the stories tally points in as many markets as possible. By choosing not to focus on the
Tully River issue, which has arguably the best news value and is surely timely to discuss, it is possible for the story to travel state-wide as a generic piece that is broadcast across the entirety of Queensland, tallying local content points in Cairns,
Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Wide Bay and the Sunshine Coast. Again,
121 this is a concern highlighted by Senator McLucas (personal interview, 2007) who argues that “questions are framed to comply with the requirements of the (ACMA points) conditions, rather than do what a journalist should do and ask a question that investigates the issue.”
At a political level, Mr Metcalfe, as a representative of a national automotive body, also has only a minor role in the political process as a potential lobbyist for Federal
Government road funding. State Focus at least makes an attempt to introduce someone with “political clout” to the debate, but the telephone interview with
Queensland Premier Peter Beattie (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007 f) once again fails to hone in on the “locally significant” issue. See Appendix II, for the full transcript of this interview.
Once again, although the contribution of the Premier is useful within the public sphere, the interviewer makes no specific reference to the on-going issues with the
Bruce Highway at Tully, which, as Mr Beattie would be aware, is at the centre of debate over Bruce Highway funding. The segment also displayed none of the abundantly available video footage of vehicles taking their chances crossing the consistently flooded Bruce Highway section at Euramo, near Tully – or, for that matter, any other location along the Bruce Highway. What the viewer is left observing is a graphic of a telephone and a photograph of Peter Beattie, for several minutes, with cutaways of the interviewer, in studio, asking questions.
122 My observation is that this practice highlights another issue which needs to be brought to the attention of the industry regulator. Television is a primarily visual medium and the basis upon which broadcasters are granted licenses is to provide program content with moving pictures and sound. Obtaining images of the Bruce
Highway to accompany the story would have required minimal expense on SCB’s part. If circumstances continue where broadcasters choose the least-cost path of consistently not including moving pictures in television programs presented to meet the local content guidelines, there, arguably, there should be a point where the regulator steps in to address this, to introduce a minimum standard.
As a comparison, let us consider a contrasting treatment of the Bruce Highway flooding story by WIN Television News during the same week:
Presenter, Paul Taylor:
The Federal opposition says flood-proofing the Bruce Highway is a priority
and should be high on the agenda at the next Federal Election.
The shadow treasurer admits that, even if elected, funding for the upgrade
won’t be immediate.
Reporter, Anna Betenerik:
As early as tomorrow, heavy rains could once again cut off the far north from
the rest of the country.
Wayne Swan, Shadow Federal Treasurer:
123 It damages the economy. It inconveniences people who, put simply, in the 21 st Century, must have a road that is not disrupted by flooding.
While the Shadow Treasurer says that he will flood-proof the Bruce
Highway, today he also took the road less travelled, admitting funding would not be immediate.
Wayne Swan:
Over time; you can’t necessarily make the commitment to all of the money now.
Far Northern infrastructure is expected to be high on the agenda at this year’s federal election, and yet again, there’s debate over who’s responsible from the delay in construction.
Jim Turnour, Labor Candidate for Leichhardt:
We’ve gotta get away from the blame game. This infrastructure should have been planned, five, 10, 15 years ago, and we should be building it now.
Charlie Mackillop, Liberal Candidate for Leichhardt:
The blame game ended in July of 2006 when an amount of $367 million was deposited into the State Government’s bank account.
124 But both sides of politics agree it’ll be impossible to again prevent the
roadway from becoming a waterway in the future
Wayne Swan:
Everybody understands that you have one-off climatic events for which
there is no engineering solution, but surely we can’t continue to have the
situation that we’ve had in recent times, where very frequently this road
has been blocked.
The shadow treasurer will leave Cairns this evening.
Anna Betenerik, WIN News. (Betenerik, 2007)
In contrast with Southern Cross’s treatment of the Bruce Highway issue, WIN News has hit the mark with a story targeting the specific problem – the impact on business from the lack of flood-proofing of the Bruce Highway between Townsville and
Cairns. The vision accompanying the script clearly identifies the region around the
Tully River, displaying images of trucks and cars becoming stuck while attempting to negotiate the flood-prone crossing of the Tully River in the cane fields around
Euramo. This is in stark contrast to the representation of the same story on State
Focus, which provides no moving pictures as a means of reinforcement, and leaves viewers, for much of the duration of the interview, watching a still image of Premier
Beattie and a graphic of a (fake) audio meter.
125 This noticeable shortcoming of the State Focus program should not be seen to be the fault of the journalists and production staff employed by Southern Cross
Broadcasting to produce and present the show. Based upon personal observations,
SCB’s regional offices, which operate on arguably the leanest business model in the
Australian television industry, lack the staffing infrastructure to provide in-the-field support for State Focus. At a regional level, budget is not provided to either increase staff numbers or hire external contractors for the role of gathering program content.
The responsibility for setting up studio interviews with the Canberra-based host of the State Focus program, is generally placed upon the shoulders of the commercial production camera operator / editor, who is already managing a full-time workload.
WIN News on the other hand, through its commitment of local station resources to gather news, honours the public sphere role of journalism, providing a theatre for debate of this hot political issue, by choosing the Bruce Highway upgrade as its target issue for a visit to the region by Labor’s Shadow Treasurer Wayne Swan. In doing so, the journalist seeks opinions from the major political stakeholders, including the Liberal and Labor candidates for the soon-to-be vacated federal seat of
Leichhardt.
In the sense that it invites comments from the key political players, WIN’s Bruce
Highway story demonstrates the core news value of conflict. Viewers can also relate to the proximity of the problem, which has definite consequences for North
Queenslanders. One limitation with WIN’s reportage is that the Bruce Highway issue becomes immersed in political rhetoric, which is not challenged in the depth
126 that, perhaps, it should be. This is where SCB’s use of a source external from the main political arena (Metcalfe) has merit, giving the viewer some escape from the clichéd political blame game.
Water Recycling
When the pre-recorded State Focus interview with Premier Beattie continues, it moves on from the issue of Bruce Highway funding, to another regional issue, water
(Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007f). In the case of North Queensland, the issue, ironically, is more to do with having too much water than too little. As such, it is difficult to comprehend how the rather lengthy and visually unappealing telephone interview with Premier Beattie can be of any “local significance” to North
Queensland viewers. (See appendix II for the full interview transcript.)
Once again, it is difficult to determine how the interview with Premier Beattie could be considered to be of any “local significance” to rain drenched North
Queenslanders. The focus of the interview is on two specific issues, management of the Murray-Darling system and recycling of effluent. Both issues (as presented) are of more specific relevance to the South-West and South-East corners of the State.
Nonetheless, the presenter Burton is insistent on using the terms “Regional
Queenslanders”, “Queensland farmers” and “our farmers”, in her rhetoric. Again, this could be seen as an attempt by Southern Cross to satisfy the ACMA local content points allocation system. I am of the view that it would be misleading for
SCB to include Peter Beattie’s State Focus water interview in any ACMA points / minutes calculation for the Cairns market. The story, as presented, is not a matter of
127 local significance.
It could be argued that State Focus’s shortcomings are a result of the hand of spades the show’s producers have been dealt by Southern Cross Broadcasting’s management. The difficulties of producing a local current affairs program for
Regional Queenslanders, in absentia, should not be understated. Furthermore, what presents as an overly lean budget framework for the program, and the limitation of each packaged item to one interview, does little to enhance any notion of journalistic balance or credibility.
Moreover, producing a local program in absentia, whereby presenters and producers possess minimal knowledge of local issues, can easily lead to overlooking important story angles – especially angles that have the potential to give what first presents as a “regional” story a strong “local” flavour.
The lack of a local production presence was certainly most noticeable in the item which featured in the second segment of the State Focus program, a lengthy one-on- one interview between presenter Burton and an Innisfail based radio disc jockey,
Paul James, commenting on the sacking of the Johnstone Shire Council and the on- going clean-up from Cyclone Larry (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007g). The interview was conducted with Burton in the Canberra studio and the Innisfail radio star in SCB’s Townsville’s studio (utilizing SCB’s digital microwave system).
128 Two problems emerge from this interview. Firstly, there is nothing, in the journalistic sense, to suggest that this person (a breakfast radio presenter) is in a position of authority in Innisfail. His name carries no weight as a potential decision maker in the community, and this should have been recognized from the outset by the program producers. Second, the interviewee is a staff member of 4KZ, a Southern Cross Broadcasting regional affiliate which, although independently owned, syndicates Southern Cross radio programming, including the flagship John
Laws’ program.
The segment (approximately five minutes) also suffers for the want of fresh up-to- date vision of the Innisfail region. It contained file images of the clean-up immediately following Cyclone Larry, but provided the reader with no visual cues that the situation had improved. A strong case could be put that, for minimal expense, State Focus could easily have sent a crew to Innisfail from SCB’s Cairns office to obtain fresh images and interviews. If staff availability or workload was an issue, a free-lance operator could have been hired. This may have helped transform a “marginally relevant” story into a “locally significant” story.
From a public sphere perspective, it was concerning that the opinion of a radio disc jockey on the issue of the sacking of the local Johnstone Shire Council was taken as an authoritative account of events. The maintenance of the public sphere depends upon a high standard of information being made available to the citizens. It requires that opinions on matters of a political nature are, where possible, balanced. Most importantly, those whose roles are brought into question must be given a right of
129 reply. It is one thing for a radio disc jockey to tell the public the sackings “are long overdue and had to happen”. If those whose names have been tarnished in the political arena are not provided with a right of reply, the health of the public sphere is at risk.
As presented, the Innisfail interview probably satisfies the ACMA local content guidelines. Again, this brings into question the worth of ACMA’s self regulation system, allowing broadcasters to determine what content is of local significance.
For a Few Dollars More ….
For all of its shortcomings, the final segment of the State Focus episode of February
19, 2007 (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007h) demonstrated the potential that exists for the program if a small injection of funding and proper journalistic method were applied. The segment featured the presenter, Burton, interviewing the new commanding officer of the HMAS Cairns Naval Base, Commander Jenny Daetz in studio in Canberra (presumably while the Commanding officer was visiting Head-
Office).
There was obvious news value in the story, in terms of its novelty , its proximity and the consequences for women; this being the first time a woman had been placed in command of one of Australia’s busiest naval bases. Likewise, the story was, most definitely, of local significance for the Cairns community – which enjoys a close association with the Naval Base.
130 Critical Observations and Qualification of Journalistic Merit
Regional television news has often been the whipping-boy of its capital city cousin, with its practitioners condemned by the popular clichés of “regional hacks”, “back yard boys” or “country bumpkins”. In the Queensland instance, this paradigm has endlessly been exposed as a double standard, when capital city counterparts “poach” major stories on floods or disasters and Brisbane-based journalists fraudulently record tightly framed pieces to camera by the Brisbane River in an attempt at faux- realism.
Likewise, there is a tendency, even at an academic level, to talk disparagingly of the efforts of regional journalists, utilising the popular clichés that they “lack experience” or are working “unsupervised”. This dominant ideology is reflected in the observations of Wilson in her critique of regional commercial news in Northern
New South Wales:
My observation of Prime and NBN’s news in Northern NSW do not justify
applying any notion of quality. The services are minimal and their few
journalists are generally inexperienced, though they may be gaining valuable
training. The stories are gathered from a wide area with little supervision
and tend to report events that would have been triggered by a press release or
perhaps police report, so little initiative or investigative skill is evident.
(Wilson, 2002, p.130)
131 The experience of this researcher, working alongside NBN’s Northern New South
Wales news team in a competitive environment during Wilson’s period of observation is very much to the contrary. The ‘notion of quality’, should ethical conduct and the discipline of verification be seen as core criteria, was evident in practice in the field. My analysis also applies a weighting to the specific demands of regional commercial television news which is inevitably forced into unfair comparisons with well resourced capital city news services and the yet more adequately resourced ABC. Notions of best practice for regional television news should not be confused with standards for capital city services.
This thesis presents a detailed argument that, by its design, the ACMA points system fails to deliver news content of acceptable quality – as evidenced by the Southern
Cross news updates. It also presents a firm body of evidence that this issue of information content, as highlighted in the original ABA report, has gone largely unaddressed. However, there is one necessary point of qualification.
One of the positive outcomes to stem from my textual analysis of the Cairns-based news services has been the overall quality of the news content on offer by two of the three commercial providers. The evidence, based upon rigorous analysis rather than cursory observation, shows very clearly that two of the three news services – WIN and Seven Queensland – are overwhelmingly adhering to the discipline of verification, seeking out multiple sources where items of news value are in contest and delivering a product that the viewer can trust. Additionally, considering the
132 workload of the young journalists, who will often cover two to three news packages per day, the effort to maintain basic standards is commendable.
Furthermore, and contrary to the popular mythology, there is solid evidence of
‘contact journalism’ in practice, where the journalists from Seven and WIN aren’t simply relying on press release material – but milking local contacts for story ideas and balancing opinions. This concurs with the author’s experience in regional television. In contrast, in the capital city environment of Brisbane, the news agenda is predominately decided by the Chief of Staff in liaison with news producers, and journalists aren’t actively encouraged to find stories independently. In smaller regional communities, where television stations aren’t protected by razor-wire on mountain-tops, the next big story may be just as likely to wander in the front door, as appear on a facsimile.
Experience remains an issue, but given adequate supervision - as appears to be the case when examining the content on WIN and Seven Local News – the inherent dangers of sending young journalists to regional outposts to learn their trade can easily be overcome.
As much as intellectuals may frown at the parochialism of the local sports, arts and community event coverage of regional commercial news, it is no different from a
Brisbane based commercial station conducting helicopter school visits, or the ABC
Queensland presenting a television news package on the Woodford Folk Festival.
All news is parochial within the scope of its life world and always will be.
133 Chapter 6
Nourishing the Public Sphere
The Future of Local News & Information Services
Ultimately societies are judged on their ability to evolve, to innovate, and to create a more sophisticated civilisation for the next generation to inherit. At the core of this evolution is knowledge, an intangible commodity harvested from education, both of a formal institutionalized nature, and a social communicative nature.
When the theory of Habermas was discussed in Chapter Three of this dissertation, we considered the process of communicative action which takes place within the public sphere of a liberal democracy, and which ultimately leads to the formation of new polices and rules by which a society is governed. Habermas positioned the media as the dominant institution within the public sphere, promoting debate on matters of public importance and giving citizens the necessary tools, the knowledge, for making informed choices on the leaders they elect.
But the public sphere is vulnerable, open to attack both externally and from within.
Its survival and on-going nourishment is dependent upon the success of the institutions which comprise it, and none of those are more important than the media.
Traditionally, in a liberal democracy such as Australia, the media is trusted to do its job, relatively free of influence from government or commercial overlords.
Regulation of the media is largely frowned upon, particularly the commercial media which functions under the misapprehension of being in a ‘free market’.
134 The philosophical approaches and academic opinions espoused in Chapter Three of this thesis provide solid support for the maintenance and nourishment of this notional public sphere, yet the question remains as to how this can best be achieved?
The Lessons of History
In the introduction to this thesis, I posed a straight-forward question. What lasting outcomes did the ABA’s inquiry into local news and information services deliver for viewers in North Queensland? To answer this question I examined, in the first instance, the history of news and information programs in North Queensland in the era prior to aggregation, then followed this with an analysis of content presently on- air and deemed to be compliant with the new ACMA regulatory regime for broadcast of matters of local significance.
Utilising a combination of archival research and interviews, a reliable record of the broadcasting landscape prior to aggregation was reconstructed. The findings of this historical research can be summarised as follows:
• A rich tapestry of local programs dating back to the commencement of
commercial television broadcasting in North Queensland in 1962.
• Commitment to and engagement with the local community through
presentation of local news, current affairs, sport, fishing, magazine,
children’s and indigenous programs.
135 • Solus broadcasters operating as financially viable enterprises in their
individual markets.
• A capital intensive industry, utilising resources in an ‘all-of-station’ manner
to achieve economies of scale and deliver a mix of local shows to
complement content cherry-picked from the major broadcasters.
Building upon the Habermasian approach adopted in Chapter Three, the historical narrative paints the picture of an industry, prior to aggregation, which was attuned to its role as a public sphere institution. To re-state the words of industry veteran
John Grant, the broadcasters understood that if they took something out by way of revenue, they were required to give something back in terms of local coverage.
Aggregation
It is clear this unwritten give-and-take convention, also echoed in the interview with former Sunshine Television Manager John Baker, was lost with the introduction of aggregation. The historical narrative traced the industry’s path through aggregation, with the findings summarised as follows:
• A poorly managed entry into the era of aggregation, amid confusion over
broadcast supply agreements with national networks.
• A recessionary business environment creating a flat advertising market.
• A long period of financial instability for the industry, characterised by staff
cutbacks in program production / newsrooms.
136 • The overnight disappearance of local information programs from regional
commercial television.
• Mixed results with the introduction of commercial news services.
• A long-term struggle for survival of local news programs, despite a more
lucrative business environment and strong advertising market.
The historical narrative presented what in business terms would be described as a
“bumpy ride” for the industry post-aggregation. As already outlined, there are obvious lessons to be taken away from the experience, both for the industry regulator and the commercial broadcasters, from a process which was overwhelmingly poorly managed.
The evidence confirms is that the disappearance of local information programming, once prevalent on regional commercial television, coincided with the onset of the television equalisation policy. In the first instance this disappearaance can be blamed on financial hardship which at least two of the local commercial broadcasters experienced in the early 1990s.
Separate to this, however, are the issues that more directly led to the ABA inquiry into regional television news and information services, which resulted from local newsroom closures a decade later. These closures occurred at a time when the advertising market post-aggregation was at a strong-point and are representative of
137 what I would describe, contrary to the rhetoric, as a shift in corporate ethos rather than issues of financial hardship.
In the absence of any binding ties to the local community, not all of the inter-state headquartered corporations that had bought into regional commercial television felt the same notional community responsibility as their locally owned predecessors.
Again, we are presented here with an obvious point of contest. To what extent should commercial broadcasters be required to satisfy community expectations?
And equally, is it the right approach for commercial broadcasters to be forced to provide local content by the industry regulator?
To answer both of these questions we first need to consider the findings outlined in
Chapter Five of this thesis, which presented a textual analysis of material presented by regional commercial broadcasters to meet ACMA’s local content requirements.
Textual Analysis – Summary of Findings
• One Broadcaster, Southern Cross, ‘at face value only’ meeting the
requirements of ACMA’s self administered content points system.
• Ambiguity in terms of how matters of local significance are determined.
• The emergence of generic content to score higher rankings in the content
points system – at the same time detracting from the effectiveness and
proximity of stories.
138 • Presentation of largely meaningless ‘news updates’ by Southern Cross
Broadcasting, produced using a least-cost approach to satisfy the on-paper
requirements of the content points system.
• Emphasis being taken away from the visual elements of television in an
effort to minimise cost.
In an overall sense, the analysis of specific media texts, and comparisons between content offered by the three commercial networks, proved to be an extremely beneficial exercise in determining the effectiveness of ACMA’s local content points system.
Dealing firstly with the positive observations, both WIN Television and Seven
Queensland deserve credit for their commitment to local news programming, and the overwhelmingly professional and ethical manner in which the local news programs are assembled. It should be noted, however, that this commitment did not result from ACMA’s regulatory reforms. WIN Television has been providing local news since the early years of aggregation and Seven Queensland re-instated its local news service in North Queensland before ACMA’s regulatory reforms were handed down.
Southern Cross Broadcasting
The most concerning findings of the textual analysis pertained to Southern Cross
Broadcasting’s 30-second news updates, which even under the broadest of definitions, proved difficult to classify as “locally significant”. Scrutiny of the text
139 of these updates showed that in the majority of instances, there was a profound difficulty in establishing meaning. Furthermore, when screened for core news values, these updates often lacked the essential elements of news.
Southern Cross’s 30-second news updates also highlighted another issue which the industry regulator would best be served taking note of. The updates, which are assembled in Townsville (for all of Queensland) and produced in Canberra, take the format of a straight 30-second reader-voiceover, without any accompanying imagery of local news events.
While this method conforms neatly with Southern Cross’s ‘least cost model’ for assembling news updates, it sets a worrying precedent on what behaviour should be deemed acceptable for free-to-air television licensees. The point here is that television is a visual medium and I would argue the minimum standards for free-to- air television news should, where realistically possible, include some form of visual attribution captured at local news events.
The Southern Cross Ten news updates demonstrate what I would view as one of the fatal flaws in ACMA’s local content points system, which places the emphasis on
“locally significant” rather than “locally produced” news and information content and sets no minimum standard on the length or structure of local news and information programs. The presentation of journalistically deficient 30-second news updates, appearing in random ad-breaks during evening programming, negates the intent of ACMA’s local content reforms.
140 Alternatively, Southern Cross’s State Focus program is worthy of some merit in its attempt to provide a coverage of regional, if not local, current affairs. When the structure and text of State Focus is analysed, what emerges is a program which sets down a potentially workable method for meaningful local content delivery. On the positive side State Focus demonstrates the capability of modern broadcast technology, providing a link between more remote local markets and centralised studio facilities via compressed digital mpeg linkages. It shows that there is great potential for a Canberra-based show-host to be inter-acting with interviewees in regional centres, without the once prohibitive costs of terrestrial bearers.
In its existing format, however, State Focus is a victim of both Southern Cross
Broadcasting’s ‘least cost model’ and the ambiguity of ACMA‘s local content points system. What is glaringly obvious from viewing the program is that for the want of
‘a few dollars more’, State Focus could be transformed into a market leader in local content delivery.
As outlined in Chapter Five, the program’s tendency to conduct “free-kick” interviews is indicative of either a lack of senior editorial expertise or an overly restrictive budget environment. The point here is that if the local media is to honour its regulatory obligations, items of contest in the public sphere, especially those of a political nature, must be subject to some degree of journalistic rigour. That is, alternative viewpoints on issues need to be explored at length.
141 A more serious issue exists with State Focus’s “broad brush” approach to coverage of local issues, best evidenced by its story on Bruce Highway flooding. Scrutiny of this story led to the very firm conclusion that the producers of State Focus were using the package as a means to score maximum points across as many markets as possible on the ACMA content points scale. There is simply no other viable explanation for why key areas of focus, such as the desperate state of the Bruce
Highway between Townsville and Cairns (at the time, the key issue of political debate), were largely overlooked.
The result is a story which lacks what in journalistic terms is described as a “news peg”, or a central focus for debate. This highlights both the inadequacy of the local content points system to deliver content which is truly local and the perils of
Southern Cross’s ‘least cost model’ for local content delivery. At the very least, this practice points to the need for a revision of the regulatory policy for local content delivery.
State Focus also suffered from the same lack of visual references which rendered
Southern Cross’s news updates ineffective. The tendency to produce stories featuring lengthy telephone interviews accompanied by still graphics of the interviewee, resulted in what could simply be described in colloquial terms as “bad television”. In newsrooms this researcher has worked in, the practice is generally frowned upon by editorial supervisors who would generally reply to such ideas with the blunt observation, “we’re not making radio, this is television!” Again, this practice presents solid grounds for revision of the regulatory policy on local content.
142 Minimum standards need to be put in place, to determine what is suitable for the medium of free-to-air broadcast television.
Addressing the Lack of Local Information Content
The textual analysis undertaken in Chapter Five of this thesis concentrated specifically on local news content. This was due to the on-going absence of local information content, which largely disappeared from regional television in North
Queensland at the dawn of aggregation. The historical narrative in Chapter Four identified a rich tapestry of local information programs prior to aggregation and the financial reasons behind the disappearance of this content are well canvassed.
What is less clear, is how the issue of local information content has slipped through the regulatory dragnet? In the introduction to this paper, I outlined the findings of the original ABA inquiry into local news and information services. These findings clearly identified that the disappearance of local information content was an obvious factor in the growing level of viewer dissatisfaction.
Although the issue of news content has to some extent been addressed, it remains that there has been little, if any remedy to the disappearance of local information programs on regional commercial television. This core issue appears to have been largely overlooked by the industry regulator, which by way of its in-house publicity, continues to credit the success of the content points system in forcing commercial broadcasters to conform.
143 Burying the Myths - Mounting a Case for Regulatory Reform
One of the advocates for regulatory reform, Senator Jan McLucas (personal interview, February 20, 2007) makes a valid point when she observes, “I would imagine it would be fairly easy to review those regulations, to put in place a requirement that looks at the role of journalism, rather than the compliance”.
Before considering what shape such reforms might take, it is important to dispel the most destructive myth standing in the way of reform, the myth that regional commercial television is operating in a free market system, and commercial operators should be allowed to behave in whatever way bests suits their bottom line.
In the days following the SCB newsroom closures in 2001, The Cairns Post’s anonymous editorial writer made the claim:
In the case of the regional news probe, no amount of regulation is going to
result in the delivery of local news services if these are not economic to
offer. Providing television is an expensive business and commercial
organisations are in it to make money, not provide a community service.
(Cairns Post , 2001b)
To correct the Cairns Post, commercial organisations ARE in it to provide a community service, whether or not they want to. When a commercial television license is awarded, it is done on the understanding (and contractual commitment) that the commercial operator is leasing part of the broadcast spectrum, an asset owned by the taxpayers of Australia. The lease is granted on the basis of the
144 commercial operator honouring the conditions placed upon it by the lessor (ACMA).
Just as a person leasing a suburban home is required to mow the lawn, so too, a commercial television operator is required to provide a public service, as a condition of the lease.
Yes, providing television IS an expensive business. However, the flipside of being a regulated industry, is that the regional commercial television business is also protected from full-scale competition. As I demonstrated in Chapter 4, during the period when aggregation was introduced, the industry experienced significant hardship. This hardship led directly to cutbacks in program production and the axeing of news services. But has the landscape changed? One person qualified to make the comparison, Mac Advertising’s John Baker (now a wholesale buyer of commercial air-time) believes the financial position for the regional commercial networks, is the best it has been since aggregation:
I think they’re all making money and they’re all making a lot of money. Their infrastructure cost hasn’t changed a great deal since aggregation. They’ve started a lean business model and they’ve been able to maintain that through the years, the economies have grown, income’s grown. I think they’re going great guns. (John Baker, personal interview, February 19, 2007)
Senator McLucas also rejects the economic argument against producing local content, given the perceived financial position of the regional broadcasters and the strength of the regional economy, from which they are profiting.
145 They are making a lot out of our community and it’s more than enough to warrant a news team to be located, or a production team, not necessarily news, we could have sport – to be local. But there is no evidence to support the argument of Southern Cross to say it’s too expensive. (Senator Jan McLucas, personal interview, February 20, 2007)
Conversely, Wilson (2002: 129) argues “the economics of regional television is fragile, with its subordinate status in the ownership regime and thus in power over programming and its elaborate mechanisms for truly local advertising. Aggregation has not delivered the economic benefits foreseen.” I should note here, the term
“fragile” is open to varied interpretations. By their nature, and often restricted industry-base, individual regional economies can certainly be classed as fragile, but there is a strong argument to be advanced that in the years since Wilson’s critique of the regional commercial television industry, the economic landscape as pointed out by Baker, has changed significantly for the better.
Evidence of this is Southern Cross Broadcasting’s financial result for the year ended
June 2007. From the company’s overall sales revenue of $514.8 million, SCB’s television interests contributed $237.4 million, for an overall net profit of $60.5 million (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007i). This equates to more than 46% of overall sales revenue from mostly regional television assets - SCB owns capital city licenses in Hobart and Darwin that are considered ‘notionally’ regional - and the single largest contributor to overall revenue. For a company boasting diverse media assets including capital city radio stations 2UE Sydney, 3AW Melbourne, 6PR Perth and 4BC Brisbane, along with the Southern Star production house, the significance
146 of its regional television earnings cannot be understated. The recent sale of Southern
Cross Broadcasting to Macquarie Bank also suggests market confidence in the earnings potential of the individual assets.
One point that cannot be disputed is that local television has never been cheaper to produce. In the industry’s heyday prior to aggregation, an on-line production edit suite suitable for program production cost in the vicinity of half a million dollars, not including on-going maintenance. Today, a far more sophisticated editing system can be packaged within a powerful desktop personal computer, for a price-tag in the vicinity of $10 thousand. The new systems also require minimal maintenance compared with the mechanically intensive tape-based formats of yesteryear.
Similarly, cameras suitable for use in regional commercial television can now be purchased for as little as $5,000, compared with a minimum price tag of $50,000 in the pre-aggregation era.
Locally Significant or Significantly Local?
As Senator McLucas earlier implied, perhaps the time has come for the industry regulator to examine the role of journalism rather than focussing on models of compliance, which in reference to the ACMA content points system, could best be described as arbitrary and open to interpretation.
Currently, the regulations require only that material be “matters of local significance” and it is left to the broadcasters themselves to determine what may or may not be locally significant content. This has resulted in material of questionable
147 merit, often meaningless and of minimal significance, being broadcast as part of a token effort to satisfy the local content quota. Worse still, this thesis has demonstrated how ineffective news material can be when it is sourced and produced outside of the market from where the story originated.
By its nature, journalism is an organic process. It is at its best when the reporter is at close proximity to the subject matter, sensing the fall-out from the event as it is unfolding and maintaining, through the discipline of verification, a reliable public account of the news event. If they are truly interested in maintaining a functioning public sphere, policy makers need to take into account the notional role of journalists in local communities and draft their regulations accordingly.
Putting this idea into practice, then, the emphasis of ACMA’s local content guidelines needs to be upon local acquisition and production of news content, in a manner that conforms with the primary objectives of free-to-air broadcast television.
148 The Four Point Regional TV Recovery Plan
From my research on the history and impacts of both aggregation and the ABA inquiry, I have distilled a four-point plan to address the deficiency of local news and information content on regional commercial television.
1. Restructure the Local Content Points System.
Dispense with the arbitrary term “matters of local significance” in the
regulatory literature, to be replaced with a more definitive requirement that
broadcasters produce news content “originating” from each local market.
Original material will be classed as cinematographic motion picture material
containing interviews or attribution sourced from the local broadcast market,
which meets an agreed definition of local news.
2. Introduce a New One Hour Rule for Local Information Content
Establish a new regulation requiring regional commercial broadcasters to
provide 1 hour of locally produced information content (separate to news)
per week. As a license condition, the content must be sourced from the local
broadcast markets and contain original cinematographic imagery.
Alternatively, information programs will be allowed to take the format of an
“in studio” program, produced on location in the regional markets.
Determination of whether programs satisfy the requirements of the new
“local information” classification will be subject to an approval process by
ACMA.
149
3. Review and Restructure Network Program Supply Arrangements
Remove one of the significant impediments to production of local content via
a review of existing network content supply arrangements between national
networks and regional commercial affiliates. The review will determine,
through consultation between ACMA and individual licensees, appropriate
time windows for local news and information programs. These time
windows will be locked into regional broadcast schedules at least three
months in advance, to alleviate pressure from national networks and
advertisers to conform with national broadcast schedules.
4. Review of Regional Commercial Licenses
Commission a formal review of existing regional commercial licenses.
The scope of this review will include investigating the feasibility of existing
licensees accessing available digital “backchannel” space on the existing
spectrum, for the exclusive purpose of broadcasting local content.
Additionally, examine the feasibility of introducing either (a) a fourth,
exclusively local commercial licensee in regional markets or (b) establishing
a network of regional community television channels in regional Queensland,
specifically focussed on delivering local content.
150 Regulation, Protection and Competition
As stated earlier, restoring regional commercial television to full health, while providing a suitable amount and standard of local content, is a process which requires finding a balance between community expectation, corporate responsibility and regulatory control. A workable solution is one which delivers to the community quality local television, while providing broadcasters with incentives to make local television, and, at the same time, profit from their business activities.
From the broadcasters’ perspective, there remains one significant impediment to producing local television, which is presently beyond the scope of existing regulations. The business reality of aggregation is that regional networks are tied to network program supply arrangements. Schedules are arranged many months in advance and adherence to these schedules is strongly encouraged by both the networks and the national advertising agencies that provide broadcasters with the largest share of their revenue stream. The cold, hard, business reality is that there simply is not room for local television within the scope of the existing financial model. It is one of the ironies of aggregation that on the same day viewers were granted the right to the same level of services as the capital cities, they also forfeited the right to view substantial amounts of local content.
As Wilson notes (2002, p.120) “the network affiliation relationship means that the network provides their program signal and in return is paid a proportion of the regional station’s advertising revenue. However, with even less power than smaller city stations, the regional stations have not control over network programming
151 decisions.” Wilson makes another important point concerning the impediments to local programming on regional commercial television, citing “the network fee includes revenue gained from local programs and this functions as a disincentive to the production of such programs, particularly those that are not high rating” (Wilson,
2002, p.120).
The time has arrived for policy makers to examine an alternative model for supply of local program content on regional commercial television, whether this be through investigating a community television concept similar to Briz 31, or a more direct commercial competitor to the existing free-to-air networks, with a ‘purely local’ brief.
What this thesis demonstrates is that local television can be a great asset to any regional society, reflecting the aspirations of the citizens and engendering in individuals a communal knowledge which leads to better decision making. Quality local television in regional Australia is an objective worth pursuing.
152 Appendix I.
Bruce Highway Flooding – State Focus
Presenter, Peta Burton: But first one of the problems exacerbated by the flooding in the region is the condition of the Bruce Highway.
Today we take a look at the issue with Mr John Metcalfe from the Australian Automobile Association.
Good morning John, thanks for joining us.
Metcalfe: Good morning Peta.
Burton: Now lets look at these adjectives that have been used to describe the Bruce Highway – flood ridden, crumbling, a joke, a disgrace, a goat track. I imagine these aren’t the words that you would like to describe a national highway, a major arterial?
Metcalfe: The Bruce Highway is part of the Oz-link Network, which links all of the capital cities around Australia. And we have assessed it from the point of view of risk, and we find it to be one of the worst roads in Australia, in the Ozlink Network.
Burton: The road has been described by the RACQ as falling short of the standard and it’s not even up to scratch in mild weather.
Metcalfe: I agree entirely. We’ve assessed it on the basis of risk and we have identified the risk as being medium-high and high all of the way from Brisbane to Cairns. We’ve also assessed the road in terms of its design
153 features, we’ve given a star rating to the Bruce Highway, indeed all of the highways around Australia.
(Take graphic “Snapshot of Qld Roads: 2006 toll: 337, 1 fatality every day, 15 seriously injured ever day – source AAA)
The Bruce Highway is only rated as three star which we regard as unacceptable. Half the Oz-link Network is four star. The Bruce Highway is almost only totally three star. That’s unacceptable.
Burton: Well tell us a little bit more about the star rating and what it actually looks at?
Metcalfe: We look at the design features of road design that make a road system safe. Unfortunately most road users think of road conditions as being the surface and potholes. (Take graphic of Map)
There’s a lot of other issues such as the width of the lane, the width of the shoulder, the barriers on the side of the road, whether there are overtaking opportunities. Where there are duplicated roads, in other words where the traffic flow is separated, to prevent head on crashes, so there are lots of features, horizontal and vertical alignment, indeed whether there are a lot of bends on the road, all of those are factors that we put into the star rating.
Burton: And risk rating is another lot of data that you look at too. How does the Bruce Highway measure up there? (Take map again)
Metcalfe: Very poorly, medium high to high risk from a driver point of view. We look at that in terms of casualty crashes per kilometre. Medium high to
154 high is unacceptable. Indeed there are one fatality every eight days on the Bruce highway. About 45 people are killed on the Bruce Highway every year.
Burton: So what are these statistics telling us other than the obvious? What do we do with this data now? What are your thoughts?
Metcalfe: Well clearly we need to make the road a lot safer and there are lots of things that can be done. As I said earlier, in terms of widening the lane, widening the shoulder, sealing the shoulder, we need to look very seriously along the length as to where the problems are. Our data can show where we should be investing, whether we should be putting wire rope barrier or guard rails on the side of the road to stop the run-off road crashes. About half of the crashes on the Bruce Highway come from run off road or hitting tree or pole. We know how to fix those problems.
Burton: And you just mentioned the word to me earlier, invest and that was something you spoke to me about earlier, about governments seeing building and maintaining roads as an investment.
Metcalfe: Absolutely. We see road investment as critical for the Bruce Highway. Governments will get a return from it, in reduced injury, reduced result in hospitalization. Reduce the significant cost of road trauma, so you’ll get a return for it and that’s why we see putting money into the Bruce Highway as an investment, not a bottom line budget cost.
Burton: Ok, to finish off, how much is it going to cost to fix the Bruce Highway?
Metcalfe: Well we welcomed the money the Government put into Oz-link in the last Federal budget, but the funding is now 50-50 between the
155 Commonwealth and the states. We’re dealing with 45 people dying on the Bruce Highway every year. We need to spend a lot, lot more than we are at the present time.
Burton: John Metcalfe, thank you so much for joining us.
Metcalfe: You’re welcome. (Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007e)
156 Appendix II.
State Focus – Peter Beattie Interview
Burton: And now, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie joins us on the phone
for a quick chat today. Premier thanks for joining us again.
(Still photo of Beattie appears with graphic of voice recorder)
Beattie: Thanks for having me, Peta.
Burton: Before we get into the issue of water, what can the people of
Queensland do to get this much needed makeover for the Bruce Highway
underway. People understand there’s money there, but it’s planning that’s
needed of course, when can we see something start?
Beattie: Well that’s up to the Federal Government. The problem being from
2001 to 2006, the Federal Government spent something like 1.4 billion on
the Hume Highway between Sydney and Melbourne and that’s only 870
kilometres but just 637 million on the Bruce Highway which is 1700
kilometres long, so that’s double the road but half the funding. What we
really need is for the Federal Government to work with us to ensure the
drivers of North Queensland have the roads they deserve. And you have to
remember, Canberra takes 2.7 billion on fuel taxes from Queensland
motorists every year. It only returns eighteen cents in the dollar to roads.
They’ll spend 400 million this year. By comparison, my government will
157 spend two billion. So the answer is clear, the Federal Government should get off its backside and spend some money on it.
Burton: What are you going to do to help promote that so that something’s done soon?
Beattie: Well what we are doing is putting on every bit of public pressure we can. I have to say this is about people power, if people are unhappy they should get onto their Federal member of parliament, regardless of who they are and get onto the Prime Minister, and we should be saying to them,
Queensland is presently spending almost twice as much on roads as Victoria and New South Wales per person, we need commonwealth funds to get some of those vital projects like the Bruce Highway now.
Burton: Well let’s just move onto water now, the first meet of the water summit’s underway, or has been underway. You’re more hopeful about the second meet on February 23, but what’s in it for Regional Queenslanders?
Beattie: Basically people want water, not just actually for living, water’s essential to life.
(Take file vision of non-descript irrigation pictures)
But we do want a significant contribution to Queensland for our farmers, for our irrigators, at the moment want we don’t want is two types of increased
158 bureaucracy to manage the Murray-Darling. We have about 25 per cent of the area of the Murray-Darling and about 5 per cent of the water flow. Our worry is that unless we get a system that works then we’ll have problems, now my job is to try and get the best for Queensland but also to work closely with the commonwealth and the national interest so you’re quite right Peta, we’ll be meeting again on the 23 rd of February. We’ll be trying to reach agreement. We want two things. One, we want state involvement on who actually sits on the controlling body, they’re determined to go ahead with it, and second we want a fair go for Queensland farmers.
Burton: Ok let’s have a look at recycled water now. The referendum is off.
The water situation is such that you say we have no choice but to go ahead with a recycled water project. Do you feel that you may need to do a bit of a hard-sell on this one?
Beattie: Well, we are going to run and are running an education campaign to highlight that recycled water is cleaner than the existing water we’re getting.
And I’d like to say to anyone listening that if you’ve been to London and drunk the water, you’ve drunk recycled water. If you’ve ever been to
Singapore, you’ve drunk recycled water. If you’ve ever been to Washington
D.C., Orange County, Berlin, the list goes on, you’ve drunk recycled water.
We will obviously continue to convince people, but it’s a fact of life in the world.
159 Burton: What do you say when there are concerns about honesty with timetables and technology? And people are obviously concerned about the yuck factor but what about the concerns for human error or human failings with the running of such a facility?
Beattie: I just say to anyone whose concerned about that, our answer is we will have the best technology in the world.
(take vision of person drinking from bubbler in Canberra)
It will have to meet health and international health standards and the health department will keep a careful eye on that, but these things already work in the world. It’s not as if we’re the first. In many senses we’re dragging our feet. Washington, we haven’t seen anyone effected by water in Washington.
The politics might be off but the water’s not. The same goes with all those other centres I mentioned, London, Washington, Berlin, Orange County, I mean the list is extensive. We will have the best water in the world and the water then will be better than it is now.
Burton: Can I just grab you with a quick yes or no with these questions?
Will the recycled water project be finished in time before we run out of water in 2009 according to the Queensland water commission?
Beattie: Yes it will.
160 Burton: Will it solve the lack of water, especially for farming communities?
Beattie: Well yes, although drinking has to be given first priority. I think farmers should be aware that drinking, or human consumption is the first priority and farming in terms of the Lockyer Valley which I assume you’re referring to is priority two.
Burton: Will you get the Government financial backing that you need?
Beattie: You mean from the Commonwealth?
Burton: Yes.
Beattie: Well I hope so, we’ve asked for 408 million for Stage Two. We will pay for it if they don’t, but we believe they will make a contribution.
Burton: Before you go, we believe you’ve been doing a bit of modelling for an Archibald project.
Beattie: Well yes I have. With a head like mine you could sink an armada without too much trouble. Two talented artists a father and son, a very talented young son, bearing in mind the rules require someone that’s well known to be painted, I just worked away, did my paperwork and they were unobtrusive. I just did my bit to help some budding Queensland artist.
161
Burton: Well they’ve come up trumps and I wish you all the best this year.
Thank you again for your time and we look forward to hearing from you again this year.
(Southern Cross Broadcasting, 2007f)
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