Creativity, Culture and Commerce

Anna Potter

Description

Since the late 1970s, Australia has nurtured a creative and resilient children’s television production sector with a global reputation for excellence. Providing a systematic analysis of the creative, economic, regulatory and technological factors that shape the production of contemporary Australian children’s television for digital regimes, Creativity, Culture and Commerce charts the complex new settlements in children’s television that developed from 2001 to 2014 and describes the challenges inherent in producing culturally specific screen content for global markets. It also calls for new public debate around the provision of high-quality screen content for children, arguing that the creation of public value must sit at the centre of these discussions.

Introduction

Chapter 1: Understanding Children’s Television During the Digital Transition

Chapter 2: Shaping the Foundations: Establishing an Australian Children’s Television Production Industry

Chapter 3: A Very Special Audience: Children and Television

Chapter 4: The National Context: Australian Broadcasters, Children’s Television and Public Value

Chapter 5: It’s a Small World After All: The Internationalization of Australian Children’s Television

Chapter 6: Policing the Settlement: Policy and Public Value in Children’s Television

Chapter 7: Producing Children’s Television for Digital Regimes: Case Studies from the Production Sector

Chapter 8: New Settlements in Children’s Television: Key Trends and Future Outlook

Sujets

• General officer
• Television
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781783204434
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2015 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2015 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2015 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Shin-E Chuah Copy-editor: MPS Technologies Production manager: Heather Gibson Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-441-0 ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-442-7 ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-443-4
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Understanding Children’s Television During the Digital Transition
Chapter 2: Shaping the Foundations: Establishing an Australian Children’s Television Production Industry
Chapter 3: A Very Special Audience: Children and Television
Chapter 4: The National Context: Australian Broadcasters, Children’s Television and Public Value
Chapter 5: It’s a Small World After All: The Internationalization of Australian Children’s Television
Chapter 6: Policing the Settlement: Policy and Public Value in Children’s Television
Chapter 7: Producing Children’s Television for Digital Regimes: Case Studies from the Production Sector
Chapter 8: New Settlements in Children’s Television: Key Trends and Future Outlook
References
Index
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the contributions and support of many individuals and several institutions. I owe a particular debt to Tom O’Regan, for his guidance, intellectual generosity and the valuable insights shared during the many conversations we had as this book took shape. Thanks are due also to Jason Jacobs for providing the initial impetus to write this book and practical advice on how to undertake the project. I am also indebted to Graeme Turner for his feedback and ideas and for giving me access to a peaceful research space in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. Colleagues and friends including Laurent Borgmann (who read and commented on each chapter), Rachel Davis, Ben Goldsmith, Jill McGuire and Sue Ward each offered assistance and encouragement at various stages of this project, and all contributed to its eventual completion.
I am very grateful to the members of the children’s television production and broadcasting communities who despite being incredibly busy people generously shared their industry knowledge and creative practices with me. While some participants have chosen to remain anonymous, my thanks must go to Donna Andrews, Hugh Baldwin, Cherrie Bottger, Michael Bourchier, Jenny Brigg, Tim Brooke Hunt, Ewan Burnett, Kylie Du Fresne, Kim Dalton, Patrick Egerton, Monica O’Brien, Bernadette O’Mahony, Stuart Paul, Noel Price, Jonathan Shiff, David Webster and Joanna Werner. Their willingness to share their expertise and passion for Australian children’s television with me is very much appreciated.
The staff of the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, particularly its chief executive officer Jenny Buckland and her assistant Glenda Wilson, were unfailingly helpful in providing me with access to their archives and sharing their encyclopaedic knowledge of the sector, as well making me feel very welcome at the organisation’s renowned morning teas. I would also like to acknowledge the contribution made by Joanne Scott and Rod McCulloch of the University of the Sunshine Coast in allowing me the time and space to complete this book. Thanks are due also to Heather Gibson at Intellect, for its meticulous production.
For the use of photographs that appear here I would like to acknowledge:
Fremantle Media
Goalpost Pictures
Werner Film Productions
Jonathan Shiff Productions
Matchbox Pictures
Sticky Pictures
The Australian Children’s Television Foundation
ZooSky Media
And finally to Wally, Josh, Tom and Georgia, thank you, as always, for your support, good humour and tolerance.
Introduction
This book is the story of the dissolution of long-standing settlements in Australian children’s television that occurred from 2001 to 2014 during Australian broadcasting’s transition from an analogue to a digital regime. It is an account of how changes in the creative, economic, technological and regulatory circumstances in which children’s television is produced and distributed gradually undermined the ability of much contemporary Australian children’s television to speak directly to Australian children. It explains why Australian children’s television, particularly live action drama, has a global reputation for excellence, while the circumstances of contemporary production have rendered children’s live action drama one of television’s most vulnerable genres.
A set of public value principles that underwrite and authorize the Australian policy settings designed to ensure supplies of children’s television is also identified here. These principles recognize that much of the worth of the Australian children’s television made with state support lies in its ability to situate Australian children within their own culture (in contrast to any monetary returns generated through its programme sales and merchandising activities). The complexities of creating identifiably Australian children’s television, with both state subsidy and significant international investment, for fiercely competitive local and global markets in digital regimes are described here as well.
As the following chapters make clear, the production of Australian children’s television is at a critical juncture. In the 1960s and 1970s, public concern about the lack of well-produced, locally made television available to Australian children led to the establishment of important policy instruments including, in 1979, the Children’s Television Standards (CTS). The CTS are intended to ensure that age-specific drama, animation, reality, quiz and game shows, and entertainment and documentaries are offered to children by Australia’s commercial networks. The benefits for the child audience of having access to a variety of television programmes, including locally made live action drama, justify the levels of state subvention required for their production. When Australian children’s best interests are met through the provision of television that situates them within their own social and cultural context, this valuable form of cultural production meets its policy objectives.
Unfortunately, there is a growing disconnect between the achievement of long-standing policy objectives for Australian children’s television and the production of much of the children’s television that is made in contemporary Australia. Many of the causes of this disconnect lie in the fragmentation created by digital television regimes that caused a shifting of the sands under commercial television. From 2001 onwards, as Australia embarked on its digital transition, free-to-air channels proliferated, pan-global pay-TV networks matured and multi-platform delivery became the norm. Audiences, including the child audience, fragmented across multiple platforms. So did advertising revenue and programme budgets.
Fragmentation challenged long-standing business models for television and exerted downwards pressures on the licence fees networks were prepared to pay for programme rights. Reduced licence fees further increased the need for the international investment that Australian producers have always required to finance their children’s programmes. New policy instruments that came into effect during the digital transition created additional incentives for the independent screen production sector to internationalize, despite a significant screen policy emphasis on the achievement of the goals of national cultural representation. The combination of fragmentation and increased internationalization led to new production norms in Australian children’s television that reduced quality standards and cultural specificity in many programmes. The new production norms often undermined the ability of these programmes to speak directly to Australian children.
This book is not, however, a narrative of decay and demise. Many of the changes that accompanied the digital transition were of enormous benefit to children’s television, with the potential to substantially increase its production and cultural visibility. Abundant spectrum and multi-channelling created niche television markets and enabled Australia’s commercial networks to provide dedicated destinations for their children’s television offerings for the first time, on their newly established multi-channels. The public service broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was able to launch Australia’s first free-to-air dedicated children’s channel, which quickly became the most popular children’s channel in Australia. Fragmentation meant, too, that the child audience became highly sought after, by pan-global subscription networks and public service broadcasters alike.
During the digital transition Internet-based television services such as Netflix confirmed the international popularity of high-quality Australian children’s drama. These new mechanisms of distribution have the potential to remove broadcaster involvement from distribution arrangements that can see a children’s drama premiere in 51 countries on the same day. Australia remains a safe, sunny, stable environment in which to film, where a canvas can be created that the rest of the world wants to see. Australian screen producers are still passionate, resilient and highly accomplished storytellers, while Australian children’s television retains a global reputation for excellence first established in the 1980s. A ra