Creativity & Cultural Production in the Hunter

An applied ethnographic study of Creativity & Cultural new entrepreneurial systems in the Production in the Hunter creative industries. Newcastle The University of Newcastle I April 2019, ARC Grant LP 130100348 Now AuslnilianGon ,rnment ��;�Busmess nt Ai&i1rall1.11Rtu1n:bCou11dl 14. TELEVISION 14.1 Introduction The Australian television industry, its history, structure, business models, operational methods and important personnel are detailed below, followed by a closer look at these components in the Hunter region. Like film and digital or electronic games, television is part of the broader screen production industry and shares many attributes with them. This section teases out the global flows of television and how they are replicated locally by describing the global industry, particularly the UK, US and European sectors, and then adds descriptions of the Australian and Hunter Region’s television industry. The Australian free-to- air television industry is under great economic and political pressure as new technologies offer new distribution methods that are disrupting traditional business models. What is being seen in the Australian sector is the potential financial collapse of some businesses in the free-to-air markets with the government funded network’s budgets being annually lowered. Unlike the film industry, the television industry appears less reactive to the value of Australia’s currency, though the global development of digital technologies affects how television is watched and what is watched. Structurally the television industry is comprised of five major and related sectors, i.e. commercial (free-to-air) networks, community not-for-profit TV stations, public television that is government funded, subscription services and the newly established video on demand sector, e.g. Netflix, Stan and iTunes. Television business occurs in global market places which are quite traditional and formal with television production employing strict commissioning processes and television distribution moving to more innovative pay per view, digital models. The television industry’s personnel are similar to the film industry with highly experienced film crews working interchangeably across film and television projects. Television production personnel include screenwriters, producers, directors, cinematographers, art directors, editors, colour graders, VFX supervisors, actors, musicians, sound designers, recordists and audio mixers. There are also television executives and commissioning editors who are very powerful gatekeepers who decide what is being commissioned, where it is being made and by whom. The distribution sector has been digitally disrupted. It has transitioned from a global networked era through to a multi-channel system where video-on-demand, time-shifting and appointment television are changing audience preferences for content. The industry is seeing drama, a free- to-air staple, move to multi-channel delivery while traditional broadcasting, which uses appointment television, focuses increasingly on serialised reality TV, news and live sport broadcasting. US television scholars are predicting that audience viewing experiences may eventually allow complete free choice. A post-networked era, driven by audience demand, will challenge regulations and content creation in countries like Australia which have comparatively small populations and limited ability to realise profits. 14.2 A Brief History of Television The history of television was initially dominated by technological developments in the field followed quickly by the development of content to be broadcast. What followed these developments was the creation of businesses which owned both the means of broadcasting and the content creation processes. As this brief history shows, the technology to distribute and the copyright ownership of the content for broadcast, have systemically been enabled and constrained by each other for decades. Television was a global invention beginning in the early 20th Century, with a focus on mechanical and electromechanical technology. The race to invent, patent and experiment with 416 broadcasting began in 1907 in the Soviet Union while in the US, Lee de Forest invented the vacuum tube system that formed the electronic basis of television as it broadcast images via radio signals. In the Soviet Union Boris Rosing began inventing the cathode ray tube (CRT) that produced a video signal. In the UK in 1926, inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the first electromechanical TV system. Baird created the first live broadcast of the face of a ventriloquist doll. It was crude technology, but the blurry face was recognisable (Davis 2017, online). EMI were also creating their own broadcasting system. From 1929 the BBC radio transmitter provided a limited service. By 1936 the BBC was broadcasting using both Baird’s and EMI’s systems, with Baird’s system delivering a sub-standard quality. By 1937 the higher quality EMI system was selected as the sole broadcasting system. The UK broadcasting format eventually became the Phase Alternating Line systems (PAL) that was adopted in England, Western Europe and Australia. Television broadcasting in the UK was disrupted by World War II, with the BBC resuming after the war and commercial TV beginning in 1955. This hiatus allowed the US to take the lead and by 1951 US stations were transmitting in colour. The work done by the American inventor de Forest in 1907 continued and by 1928 the US had 18 experimental TV licenses. Regular broadcasting developed in New York City in 1931. Viewing time was limited to 1-2 hours a day, whereas radio was broadcasting all day and would often play in the background. By 1941 the US had developed a television signal that was created by the National Television Systems Committee, which became the acronym for the recording format known as NTSC. As visual quality had improved, and broadcasting technology began to stabilise, those in the industry started to express economic concerns with ‘an early belief that commercial television was not viable’ (Collie 2007, p. 11) because it concentrated on the sale of advertising time. Television in the US did not begin as a networked medium but by the 1960s the networked medium with industrial practices and modes of organisation was becoming more visible (Lotz 2014, p. 22). It was acknowledged that ‘television production costs were thought to be prohibitive and would lead to a loss of sponsors. Concerns were expressed about the disruption of family life and eyestrain from prolonged viewing’ (Collie 2007, p. 11). From that point of view, the purpose of television was to draw audiences to watch sponsored messages (Collie 2007, p. 43). During the 1950s 60% of America’s middle to low income families owned a TV set. Networked television had to meet an early economic challenge from Hollywood and there were concerns that the television content needed to be censored through public policies. Collie describes the major concern with television content. He suggests that ‘low-brow programing was a concern with its potential for poor taste, sacrilege and immorality; but the networks headed this off in 1951 with a Television Code’ (Collie 2007, p. 12). In the late 1950s the single sponsorship format started to change ‘After the elimination of the single sponsorship format, networks earned revenue from various advertisers who paid for thirty-second commercials embedded at regular intervals within programs’ (Lotz 2014, p. 23). This is the basis of the free-to-air financial models that exist globally but are under more and more pressure from subscription models for television content to be accessible through multiple channels. In terms of technology Australia has always remained a long way behind the rest of the world. Australia began broadcasting in black and white in 1956, almost 20 years after the US and the UK. The first broadcast by TCN was from Sydney. Colour TV arrived in Australia in 1973, and at that time the US had established its cable TV network. The profitability of the US networks was becoming clear throughout the ’70s and ’80s. The consequences of this were ‘marginalisation of public television, an absence of foreign programming in the US and high proportions of the American gross national product spent on advertising’ (Collie 2007, p. 20). The profit that could be produced through global audiences continued to grow with only eight million global viewers in the 1970s, but by 1988 that had grown to 500 million viewers. 417 The sharing of content occurred initially between countries that had the same technical system and common languages. By the mid-20th century most developed countries had adopted one of three technical systems. NTSC was used in America, Canada and Japan. In the UK, Western Europe and Australia they were using PAL (see Section 14.6), while in Eastern Europe and Africa, Sequential Colour with Memory (SECAM) was the preferred standard. As technology advanced networks began transferring content so they could sell it globally. Foreign language programs began being subtitled or dubbed for the country they were heading to. News production was localised as well as global and this continued in television with news syndication services operating in television as they did for print and radio. Other television genres included current affairs, drama, documentary, children’s, light entertainment, quiz and sports. Eventually, reality TV emerged as a result of the immediacy of television and its ability to reflect the ordinary person’s taste.

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