Sport and the Transformation of Australian Television
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This may be the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source: Goldsmith, Ben (2015) Sport and the transformation of Australian television. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, 2015(155), pp. 70-79. This file was downloaded from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/83223/ c Consult author(s) regarding copyright matters This work is covered by copyright. Unless the document is being made available under a Creative Commons Licence, you must assume that re-use is limited to personal use and that permission from the copyright owner must be obtained for all other uses. If the docu- ment is available under a Creative Commons License (or other specified license) then refer to the Licence for details of permitted re-use. It is a condition of access that users recog- nise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. If you believe that this work infringes copyright please provide details by email to [email protected] Notice: Please note that this document may not be the Version of Record (i.e. published version) of the work. Author manuscript versions (as Sub- mitted for peer review or as Accepted for publication after peer review) can be identified by an absence of publisher branding and/or typeset appear- ance. If there is any doubt, please refer to the published source. Sport and the Transformation of Australian Television Prepublication draft of article for publication in Media International Australia no. 155, May 2015 Ben Goldsmith, Queensland University of Technology Introduction This article uses sports coverage as a lens to analyse changes in broadcast television (free-to-air [FTA] and subscription) in Australia from the 1950s to the present. Sport has always been a vital genre for broadcast television. It is now, arguably, more important than ever. It is indisputable – though rarely comprehensively documented – that sport and sports coverage have shaped and transformed Australian television over many years. The significance of sports has incrementally increased with successive technological and industrial developments – such as the introduction of colour in 1975, electronic news gathering from 1976, subscription television in 1995, digital terrestrial broadcasting in 2001 and digital subscription broadcasting in 2004 – to the point where broadcast television’s continuing popularity and ongoing cultural significance relies to a great extent on sports coverage and related programming. In 2015, the launch of a bevy of new subscription video on demand (SVOD) services in Australia might appear to have reinforced drama as the key genre in the battle for attention and engagement, but for both historical and contemporary reasons sport remains the crucial form of audiovisual content. Sociologists, communications scholars and sports historians have long recognised the importance of the symbolic and symbiotic relationship between sport and television. This work, much of which takes its lead from Raymond Williams’ Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1973), tends to emphasise television’s impact on sports and society, particularly in terms of increasing commercialisation, the commodification of sports, changes to rules and conventions, and television’s remodelling of sport as entertainment (eg. Barnett 1990, Brookes 2001, McKay 1991, Rowe 2004, Whannel 1992 and 2009). In television studies, by contrast, sport has not attracted anything like this volume or depth of attention. This article attempts in part to redress this absence. Rather than focusing on the ‘mediatization’ (Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999) or ‘mediation’ (Livingstone 2009) of sport – meaning the ways in which sport is dependent on and shaped by the media – this article focuses on the ‘sportization’ of television, echoing Norbert Elias’s history of the ‘sportization of pastimes’ (Elias and Dunning 1986, pp. 21-22) to explore the ways in which broadcast television has come to be defined by sport. Sports and the History of Australian Television Ever since the introduction of the medium in Australia just before the 1956 Olympic Games, sports programming – both event coverage and sports-related content – has played a major role in defining television’s forms, concerns and technologies, as well as in developing audiences for services and channels. Some of the earliest Australian print advertisements for television sets used sport to illustrate quality and modernity. British manufacturer STC (Standard Telephone and Cables) advertised its sets in Australia in a manner that predicted the coming of 3D television over fifty years later. In one advertisement, a boxer’s head and upper torso jut out of the set as he throws a punch at an unseen opponent. In another, a pair of hands extends beyond the screen to catch a cricket ball suspended in mid-air in front of the set. In both advertisements, the close-up shot that has become such an integral part of sports coverage is a synecdoche not only for the sports broadcast but for all of television. The advertisements’ tag lines emphasise the capacity of these sets to “catch the FULL picture … VIVID DETAIL and BRIGHTER, CLEARER PICTURES that really live!” (See Sun-Herald Television Supplement 2 Dec 1956 pp. 40, 61). Other manufacturers took a similar approach. American company Admiral advertised its 21-inch screen ‘Miami’ model with a screen displaying a surfer riding a wave directly towards the camera and out of the set, while the Gramophone Company (‘His Master’s Voice’) emphasised the brightness, modernity and ‘photographic realism’ of its receivers, with a still image of a high-jumper straddling the bar. The first Australian-hosted Olympic Games opened three days after the launch of ABV, ABC’s Melbourne station, on 22 November 1956. As the ABC’s Annual Report for 1956-57 later noted, “A staff who were relatively inexperienced were thus called upon to cover a major event as almost their first project on the air” (ABC Annual Report 1956-57, p.18). Along with the first Melbourne station, HSV7,1 ABV covered events from the Main, Boxing, and Swimming stadia, and the Cycling Velodrome. The ABC’s Sydney-based mobile television unit, which had produced the first ‘live’ telecast (of the NSW Tennis Championships) on 10 November, was despatched to assist. Recordings of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies and many major events screened in the evenings in Melbourne, and were flown to Sydney for next-day programming. The importance of outside broadcasts of sports in early television is evident in the first week’s programming for the ABC’s Brisbane station, ABQ2, in early November 1959: “‘With the most modern outside broadcast van in Australia, we hope to bring Brisbane viewers a comprehensive coverage of all aspects of sport in this State,’ says Clive Harburg, ABC sporting supervisor. ‘We will telecast the doubles finals of the Queensland Tennis Championships direct from Milton on November 6, and possibly other matches if arrangements can be made. Also on the slate are football, golf, athletics and yachting telecasts.’ Cameras at Brisbane Cricket Ground will bring viewers the final two hours of play between teams captained by Ray Lindwall and Richie Benaud at the centenary cricket match next Tuesday afternoon [the day after the station launch]. Also scheduled for next Tuesday is a telecast of the Melbourne Cup, which will be run earlier in the day. Film of Australia’s turf classic will be rushed by plane from Melbourne and programmed as soon as possible after its arrival.” (TV Times (Brisbane), vol 1 no 1 Oct 29-Nov 4, 1959, p.13) Boxing and wrestling were the “first sports to be staged especially for television”, with matches held in television studios in front of a live audience (Herd 2012, p.235). Most successful was the title fight between Lionel Rose and Alan Rudkin in 1968 that was organised by Reg Ansett, owner of ATV0 Melbourne and TEN Sydney. Ansett’s goal was to “persuade viewers in Melbourne to convert their sets to UHF in order to receive ATV” (Herd 2012, p.235). The ploy worked. The fight was the fourth highest rating program of the decade, and the highest rating sports program in Australia until the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The earliest live colour telecast in Australia was on 15 June 1967 – almost eight years before the official launch of colour television – when ATV0 ‘broadcast’ coverage of a horse race meeting at Pakenham to television executives, representatives of the Australian Broadcasting Control Board, and selected members of press, on sets which at that time were not generally available in Australia. In May 1973, the ABC produced its first colour outside broadcast, with a four-camera unit recording a rugby league match at the Sydney Cricket Ground in colour on videotape for transmission in monochrome later the same day (ABC Annual Report 1972-73, p.5). In preparation for the national launch of colour television, the Australian Broadcasting Control Board permitted only four hours of outside broadcasts in colour every week from October 19, 1974, but the FTA commercial television lobby group, the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations, argued successfully for the easing of these restrictions “especially where they applied to sporting events” (FACTS Annual Report 1974/75, p.10). As a result, the vast majority of test and outside broadcasts in the lead up to C-Day (the introduction of colour television) were of sports events. On C-Day itself, Saturday 1 March 1975, many stations chose sporting events to inaugurate their regular colour broadcasts. TCN9 Sydney screened a live telecast of the Wills-Qantas International Pro-ette Golf Tournament from 12-5pm. STW9 Perth switched over at midnight from black and white to colour for the second half of its Star Soccer program, and most stations carried live sports telecasts during C-Day including direct satellite coverage from Auckland of the Davis Cup Eastern Zone final between Australia and New Zealand.