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Ben Goldsmith, 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 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 , 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 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 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 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, , and Swimming stadia, and the Cycling Velodrome. The ABC’s -based mobile television unit, which had produced the first ‘live’ telecast (of the NSW 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 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 , 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 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 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 match at the 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- International Pro-ette Golf Tournament from 12-5pm. STW9 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 of the Davis Cup Eastern Zone final between Australia and New Zealand. Following the introduction of colour television in 1975, the commercial FTA broadcasters, led by , owner of TCN Sydney and GTV Melbourne, aggressively pursued the rights to local and international sporting events. In October 1975, TCN and GTV televised the Golf tournament for the first time, on a course redesigned by Jack Nicklaus at Kerry Packer’s behest. Prize money was substantially increased, and an unprecedented forty cameras and radio microphones were deployed around the course (Haigh 2007, p.32). In the following year, Packer set in motion the sequence of events that led to the complete transformation of cricket coverage and also initiated broadcasting of a sport made for colour television: snooker (Haigh 2007, p.36, see also Herd 2012, pp. 237-39).

In April 1979, shortly before its takeover by , Network TEN commissioned American firm Frank Magid and Associates to advise on creating a new look for its news bulletins. Recommendations included “greater ‘involvement’ of reporters in stories, for instance, the sports reporters were to be seen taking part in activities such as motor racing, diving and so on. To this end, it was recommended that actual sporting personalities, perhaps recently retired, be employed as sports reporters where possible” (Colville 1991: 66). It soon became common practice for former sporting personalities to present the sports section of the commercial FTA networks’ main evening news broadcasts. In 2015 this practice continues, with former Australian Rules footballers ( Perth), Shaun McManus (Nine News ), ( Melbourne), Nick Butler (TEN Adelaide), (Seven News Adelaide), former Rugby League players (Nine News Brisbane), (Seven News Brisbane), former cricketer Ian Healy (Nine News Brisbane) and former player Matt Burke (Ten Eyewitness News Sydney) employed in this role at the time of writing.2 Live and nationally packaged sports events became more common from the late 1970s – the VFL (Australian Rules) was first telecast live in 1977, for example3 – and were significantly boosted by two events in the 1980s. First, the launch of the domestic satellite system AUSSAT in 1985 – a venture that Kerry Packer had been pushing for since 1977 (Hazlehurst 1990) – enabled national television and radio coverage (O’Regan 1993, p.26). Second, ‘aggregation’ or ‘equalisation’ – the amalgamation in the late 1980s of regional commercial television license areas to create markets big enough to sustain three commercial services, as in capital cities – and the subsequent affiliation of regional commercial FTA services with one of the three metropolitan networks, hastened “simultaneous programming” or effective national networks (O’Regan 1993, p.27). Both of the major football codes had begun the process of establishing national competitions in 1982 with the relocation of VFL club South Melbourne to Sydney, and the introduction of the Steelers and Raiders into the League Premiership competition. In 1987, a team from and another from Queensland joined the VFL, which was renamed the Australian Football League in 1990. Two Queensland teams and a team from Newcastle were added to the NSWRL in 1988, with that competition becoming the in 1994. Television coverage of the nascent national competitions provided financial security for the new leagues, as well as making live matches more regularly available to viewers across the country.

With the coming of subscription television in 1995, sport became unquestionably the most important economic force in television. The first channel available on the first STV service, the short-lived Galaxy TV, was the Premier Sports Network. In 1996, Rupert Murdoch told the Annual General Meeting that “sport overpowers film and everything else in the screen- entertainment genre”. News planned “to use sports as a battering ram and a lead offering in all our operations” (‘The Paymasters’). The War of the mid-1990s is the most high-profile example of the ongoing battle between FTA and STV in Australia; one of the consequences of the stoush was the formation in 1996 of the Premier Media Group as a joint venture between the main combatants in the , Kerry Packer’s Consolidated Media Holdings and Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited. PMG operated the channels until 2012 when Murdoch’s News Corporation bought out CMH’s half share and renamed the group Fox Sports Australia. The first new commercial FTA channel in five decades – One – was launched in March 2009 as a digital-only sports channel following ‘blind testing’ with advertisers on the kind of channel they wanted (Schulze 2009, p. 31). The singular focus on sport lasted only two years, however. After and bought a combined 18 per cent share in Network Ten in November 2010, they soon made clear that the channel needed to broaden its program offerings in order to increase revenue and audience share (then less than 2 per cent). Shortly after taking on the role of acting chief executive in February 2011, Murdoch remade One as a general light entertainment channel targeted towards younger men. The failure of One as a sport-only channel was principally due to regulatory impediments, low ratings and high costs. In a sop to STV in the 2006 round of media reforms, the FTAs were prevented by regulation from screening a live sporting event on a multichannel if they were screening another program on their main channel. This meant, for example, that AFL matches – then the jewel in Network Ten’s sports schedule – could only be screened live nationally on the main channel TEN, rather than split between TEN in the southern states where it rated highly and One in Queensland and New South Wales, where audiences would be lower. Network Ten pursued a strategy of buying exclusive rights to sports events that were not on the anti-siphoning list for screening on One, but high initial costs arising from the necessary purchase of sports rights, poor viewing figures (compared with the other, light- entertainment based, FTAs’ multichannels), and low advertising revenues as a result of low reach combined to kill off the sports-only strategy. Despite this failure, the promotion of digital FTA, subscription and particularly 3D has continued to revolve around sports. In May 2010, screened the first Australian 3D broadcast, a football match between Australia and New Zealand. A few days later, Channel 9’s coverage of State of Origin rugby league became ’s first digital terrestrial 3D broadcast. The Australian Communications and Media Authority issued trial licences for this broadcast, and for subsequent 3D coverage of the soccer World Cup in South Africa by SBS (ACMA 2010). These were however isolated instances; the additional cost and engineering challenge of 3D production, coupled with the need for broadcast spectrum to be made specially available, deterred FTA broadcasters from applying for further trials (Goldsmith 2013).

Sport and Australian Public Service Broadcasting The commercial broadcasters’ strategies from the 1970s on had significant consequences for the ABC, and later for SBS. The ABC was able to maintain its high levels of local sports coverage through to the mid-1980s despite its increasing inability to compete for premium sports rights. This was achieved through increasing coverage of ‘minor’ sports including water polo and lawn bowls. The ABC also covered the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games (“the biggest event in Australian broadcasting history”, ABC Annual Report 1982-83, p. 3) and, over several nights, the 1983-84 America’s Cup yachting race series. But by the mid-1980s the downward trend was evident even before the competition for sports rights escalated at the end of the decade (Herd 2012, p.199). By contrast, between 1976-77 and 1992, the average yearly amount of time on metropolitan commercial stations devoted to Australian sport increased from 264 hours to 2327 hours (Herd 2012, p.212). In 2012-13, the 69 Australian commercial television stations collectively spent over $430 million on Australian sports rights and coverage. This represents 30.97% of the total expenditure by commercial stations on Australian content, and 10.78% of total station expenses (ACMA 2014, p.85). The downward trend in ABC sports coverage continued, broken only in 2005- 06 and 2006-07 due to a substantial increase in coverage of women’s sport (, and football) on ABC2 and screening of the 2006 Winter Paralympic Games. The spike in 2012-13 was due to coverage of the 2012 London Paralympic Games. Following the announcement in late 2014 of a cut to its budget of $254 million over five years, the ABC seemed set to cease local sports coverage completely.

30 Hours of sport as % of 25 overall hours

20 Hours of Australian sport as % of total Australian hours % 15

10

5

0 1956-57 1959-60 1962-63 1965-66 1968-69 1972-73 1975-76 1978-79 1981-82 1984-85 1987-88 1990-91 1993-94 1996-97 2002-03 2005-06 2008-09 2011-12 1999-2000

Figure 1: ABC sports broadcasting 1956-20144 Sources: ABC Annual Reports. In October 1980, two days after the network’s first regular broadcasts in Sydney and Melbourne, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) covered the Grand Final, with commentary by , who remained the mainstay of the network’s football coverage until 2014. Sport – and in particular football – has not only been important in enabling SBS to “merge Charter obligations and popularity”, the characteristic and “resolutely international and worldly content” of the network’s sports offerings has also brought new perspectives and views of the world to local audiences. SBS’s coverage of the 1990 World Cup was the network’s first sponsored event, and the first step towards its current hybrid funding regime. Sport defined SBS, just as SBS transformed the coverage of sports in Australia:

SBS pioneered the production of current-affairs style sports programs, focusing on minority sports largely ignored by mainstream broadcasters, such as bocce, curling, darts, ice skating, badminton, bobsledding, , and sumo wrestling. Weekly and later daily sports news programs were shown during prime time, including International Sports Magazine (1981-85), Sport Report (1985-89), Sport Machine (1990-91) and World Sports (1992-96), the latter becoming World Sports in 1996. These programs were innovative not only because of their resolutely international and worldly content (quite a departure from the overwhelmingly nationalistic bias in the culture of sport), but also because they did not eschew controversial matters such as racism or drugs in sport. (Ang et al 2008, p.121)

Along with news and current affairs, sport is the only type of programming that SBS produces itself, with all other content either licenced or commissioned from independent producers. The network screened 700 hours of coverage of the 2014 Football World Cup in Brazil, as well as providing commentary of each of the 64 matches in the tournament in 15 languages on radio. The football portal, theworldgame.com.au, also remains SBS’s most popular online offering. 60 Sports hours as % of total broadcast hours 50 Australian sports hours as % of total Australian content 40

30

20

10

0

Figure 2: SBS sports broadcasting 5

Competition and Collaboration Sport remains a key battleground between FTA and subscription television broadcasters here as in many other countries. The issue of ‘siphoning’ of sports is still the main area of contention between the FTA and pay television sectors. The anti-siphoning regime, first mooted by the Hawke government, “prevents certain televised events, which have been listed by government from being appropriated or ‘siphoned off’ by pay television operators so that only those that subscribe to a pay television service are able to view the events”. As noted in a 2010 Parliamentary Research Paper on anti-siphoning, “Siphoning is seen … as detrimental to free-to-air viewers,” (Jolly 2010: 1). The most recent review of the scheme and the list of events it protects held in 2009-10 generated over 300 submissions arguing both in favour and against aspects of the scheme. A series of reforms were proposed by the then Labor government as the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Anti-Siphoning) Bill 2012, including introducing “coverage obligations” (or ‘anti-hoarding provisions’) requiring commercial broadcasters to ensure that all Australian viewers could watch coverage of listed events as they were broadcast. The bill also proposed restructuring the list, and implementing rules to govern rights acquisition by “new media services”. It was referred to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, which made a series of recommendations in its report tabled in May 2012 (SECLC 2012), but the bill was not passed before the end of the 43rd Parliament.

Sport is also the site of collaboration between rivals, evident in Figure 3. HSV7 and ABV’s joint coverage of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games was the first of many such efforts. Similar arrangements were in place from the 1964 Tokyo Olympics to the 1976 Montreal Olympics. In March 1977, HSV7 and ABC simultaneously screened the Centenary match, with two- thirds of the audience reportedly watching the public service broadcaster (Barry 2007, p.180). Seven successfully bid for exclusive rights to the 1980 Moscow Olympics, televised live via satellite, before the ABC teamed up with the Ten Network for the 1984 Los Angeles Games. SBS partnered with the to cover the 2004 and 2008 Olympics in Athens and Beijing respectively, before the and Foxtel joined forces to screen the 2010 Winter and 2012 summer Games.

Conclusion

Sports programs are consistently among the highest rating programs on commercial FTA television, subscription television, and occasionally also on SBS. Figure 4 illustrates the dominance of sports programs on commercial FTA television, in ratings terms, over the last six years.

1 1 1 2 4 3 6 6 4 8 3 5 2 3 Light Entertainment 6 2 Reality 19 3 4 Drama Sport 13 12 9 8 8 7

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Figure 3: Top 20 highest rating programs on commercial FTA television, by genre. Source: Thinktv.com.au Free TV’s Top Programs 2010-2014. While the numbers of sports programs in the top twenty year fluctuate year-on-year, sport remains the most popular genre overall in terms of the number of programs in the top twenty and the position they occupy each year. In February 2014, media commentator DavidDale compiled two lists, one of the most watched programs of the twentieth century (an approximate ranking, using estimates from ACNielsen, since as Dale notes, “It is impossible to give precise audience figures” for the twentieth century); and one of the highest rating programs on Australian television since 2001 based on OzTAM’s audience estimates for the mainland capital cities (Dale 2014).

60

50

40

30 51 20 Most watched programs 1956- 2000, by genre (n=50) 10 21 15 Most watched programs 2001- 14 14 11 10 0 3 3 1 3 14, by genre (n=96) 0

Figure 4: Most watched programs, by genre, 1956-2014. Compiled from Dale 2014. Whereas up to the year 2000 sports made up only twenty per cent of the most watched programs, from 2001 on sports make up over fifty per cent. Eight of the sports programs that ranked among the most popular of the twentieth century, were broadcast after the coming of colour. The totals for other genres in figures 4 and 5 are also revealing of changing audience tastes and programming practices, with drama suffering a significant drop, and reality television emerging as a significant genre in its own right, but this should not distract from the importance of sport. So what will happen in the near future, given the increasing competition for attention in the form of new online services? The growing competition for drama rights in the form of the new SVOD services, the increasing availability of large back catalogs of drama programming, and the expanding (legal) options for binge viewing,6 will force commercial FTA broadcasters in particular to focus on areas of continuing competitive advantage: ‘event television’ (principally first-run Australian drama, which they are still required to produce under the Australian Content Standard, and large-scale reality television series), and sport. The FTAs remain largely protected from competition for sports rights from subscription television under the anti-siphoning regulations. And despite the formidable political influence of Rupert Murdoch (whose company News Corporation owns 100 per cent of Fox Sports, and 50 per cent of Foxtel), the current government does not appear to be prepared to introduce what would likely be highly unpopular changes to those regulations. In March 2015, in response to rumours of changes to media ownership regulations, Rupert Murdoch tweeted “Aust! Turnbull's plans to scrap certain rules suit buddies at Nine. Can't oppose dumping all regs but not this. Nice to see how MT plays”.7 The following day in an exclusive interview with ’s rival , Turnbull argued that the legislated availability of sports on FTA television is “a very Australian arrangement”. The rules, he observed, “strike a balance between egalitarianism and our sense of a fair go on the one hand and strict economic rationalism on the other” (White and Lynch 2015). If the Minister carries through this apparent commitment to the maintenance of the anti-siphoning list, it seems clear that the relationship between sport and broadcast television seems set to only grow stronger.

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1 HSV7 had launched on 4 November 1956; its first evening’s schedule included the panel show I’ve Got A Secret featuring former footballer Jack Dyer. Dyer would become a commentator and stalwart of HSV7’s long-running World of Sport, which screened from 1959 until 1987. 2 This practice of employing (former) professionals or subject specialists as reporters is not mirrored in other aspects of commercial television news such as weather presenting. Of the fifteen regular weeknight weather presenters on the three main commercial FTA networks’ local news editions for Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney in March 2015, only four have qualifications in meteorology. 3 The VFL reportedly offered live telecasting rights to all four Melbourne television stations as early as 1967 for a combined figure of $100,000. All stations refused the offer (‘$100,000 TV Price’ 1967).

The stations had each paid $300 for each of the eighteen rounds of the 1967 season. (‘VFL Will Not Alter Costs’ 1966). 4 Sources: ABC Annual Reports. NB ABC Annual Report 1999-2000 does not provide figures, only a graph from which it is impossible to ascertain correct totals. ABC figures for 2005-06 on include ABC2. 5 Sources: SBS Annual Reports. SBS Annual Report 1998-99 does not provide breakdown by hours of production. SBS figures for 2008-09 on include SBS Two. In 2008-09 SBS changed its definition of ‘local sport’: “Local sport includes all sport produced by SBS covering Australian events and international events where a significant proportion of the event is produced by SBS (commentary team, analysis, journalists) and the program is tailored for an Australian audience. In previous years we have reported only Australian based events and SBS Sport programs such as under local” (2008-09 Annual Report p. 21). 6 ‘Binge viewing’ refers to the practice of watching episodes of (typically) television drama back-to- back, initially on DVD, and increasingly via streamed or downloaded video-on-demand services. 7 https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/577153043633860608