Ending the Affair: The Decline of Television Current Affairs in Australia

184 Pages·2005·1.25 MB·English

by  Graeme Turner

G R A E M E T U R N E R
T
U
Ending the Affair is a critical
account of the state of current R
e nd i n g
affairs television in Australia today. N
It questions its future, draws lessons
E
from the past and shows why R
television current affairs matters.
e
Journalists don’t pay a lot of attention to our t he
own history. I don’t hear a lot of debate within
n
the industry about the survival of television
journalism, so am grateful for an important d
contribution. Graeme Turner describes the
cyclical regeneration of television current affairs i
as more by accident than design. As a journalist n
I typically look forward to the next accident. a f f a i r
CHRIS MASTERS g
ABC TV Four Corners

While the daily debate centres almost entirely t
on ratings, Turner’s thoughtful examination of h
television current affairs is a much-needed
and timely commentary on the quality of e
the programs served up to the public.

AMANDA MEADE
a
media writer, The Australian
the decline
f
Commercial television current affairs is
f
crucial to the TV networks, yet most of it is of television
a
increasingly irrelevant to everybody else. It’s
a format that’s almost dead, but one which the
i current affairs
studio executives can’t afford to let die. Graeme
r
Turner’s book exposes the contradiction in
an insightful and entertaining way. It’s a in Australia
must-read for anyone interested in the media.
MICK O’REGAN
ABC Radio National
UNSW PRESS
ISBN 0-86840-864-6
� UNSW
9 780868 408644 � PRESS
EndingTheAffair6 30/5/05 3:56 PM Page i
ending the affair
GRAEMETURNERis Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for
Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. He is one of the
key figures in the development of cultural and media studies in Australia and
has an outstanding international reputation in the field.
His most recent book is Understanding Celebrity(Sage, 2004). Other pub-
lications include The Film Cultures Reader (Routledge, 2002); (with Stuart
Cunningham) The Media and Communications in Australia (Allen & Unwin,
2002); (with Frances Bonner and P. David Marshall) Fame Games: The pro-
duction of celebrity in Australia(Cambridge University Press, 2000).
EndingTheAffair6 30/5/05 3:56 PM Page iii
G R A E M E T U R N E R
e n d i n g
t h e
a f f a i r
the decline
of television
current affairs
in Australia
UNSW
PRESS
EndingTheAffair6 30/5/05 3:56 PM Page iv
A UNSW Press book
Published by
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
University of New South Wales
Sydney NSW 2052
AUSTRALIA
www.unswpress.com.au
© Graeme Turner 2005
First published 2005
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose
of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the
Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without
written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Turner, Graeme.
Ending the affair: the decline of television current affairs in Australia.
Includes index.
ISBN 0 86840 864 6.
1. Television broadcasting of news – Australia – History.
2. Television programs – Social aspects – Australia.
3. Broadcast journalism – Australia – History. I. Title.
791.45650994
Cover design Di Quick
Text layout Ruth Pidd
Print BPA
EndingTheAffair6 30/5/05 3:56 PM Page v
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Preface viii
One Television current affairs: does it have a future? 1
Two Popularising politics: the case of This Day Tonight 28
Three From trivial pursuits to predatory practices:
‘tabloidisation’and television current affairs 49
Four Shifting genres: the trade between news and
entertainment 70
Five Bullying the ABC: bias, balance and budgets 95
Six Other sources of news and current affairs:
pay TV and the Internet 123
Seven Why does current affairs television matter? 149
References 162
Index 168
EndingTheAffair6 30/5/05 3:56 PM Page vi
Acknowledgments
The research upon which this book is based was assisted by an
Australian Research Council Discovery Grant to investigate the history
of Australian television current affairs programming. I would like to
acknowledge the research assistance of Sam Searle and Rebecca Farley,
who did most of the archival work (and when she got bored, Rebecca did
the calculations that told me ten per cent of Australian current affairs hosts
have been called Mike). Some of the material which appears in the book
has been published in earlier versions in the journals Media International
Australia, and the UTS Review; I would like to thank the editors of these
journals for allowing me to draw upon this work and to reproduce some of
it in what follows. References to the earlier versions appear in the notes at
the end of the chapters concerned. The opening chapter was presented as
a plenary address to the ‘New(s) Times’ conference at the University of
Melbourne in 2003, and I would like to thank Simon Cottle for the invita-
tion to present my argument to the conference. I would also like to thank
those in attendance who gave me such useful criticism, comments and
suggestions, especially Murray Green, Philip Martin, Anne Dunn, David
McKnight, and Wendy Bacon.
I would also like to thank Rod Tiffen for encouraging me to have
another crack at getting this book published, as well as my editor at UNSW
Press, Phillipa McGuinness, for her support (again). Colleagues who have
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS • VII
patiently conversed with me on this topic over the years include Frances
Bonner, Michael Bromley, Stuart Cunningham, John Hartley, David
Marshall and Jason Sternberg. To my wife, Chris, who has had to sit
through far too many television news and current affairs programs every
night of what must feel like most of her life, my apologies for any damage
this may have caused to her perspective on the world. Her support for my
work has been a steady and confirming presence over all those years and
for that, among many things, I owe her my gratitude.
EndingTheAffair6 30/5/05 3:56 PM Page viii
Preface
Ending the Affair examines the state of short form1 television current
affairs in Australia today, questioning its future while drawing lessons
from the past. The research project from which this book emerged was a
history of television current affairs formats in Australia. Funded by the
Australian Research Council, its original motivation was to understand the
significance of the changes that had occurred in these television formats
and their function, particularly since the network upheavals of the late
1980s. Ending the Affair draws on that history in order to contextualise the
issues being debated in the present. This book also draws on more than ten
years of watching, researching, and writing about Australian television
current affairs, so that there are parts of this book that have appeared in
earlier versions in academic journals. Chapter 2, which deals with the
history of ABC TV’s This Day Tonight, is the only chapter comprised sub-
stantially of such material, but two sections of chapter 4 and one section
of chapter 6 also use previously published material. Elsewhere, where I
have drawn on ideas or arguments that have been published earlier in a dif-
ferent form, I indicate this in the endnotes.
This book is not a comprehensive history of Australian television
current affairs, although the arguments it makes certainly have such a
history in mind. Rather, what follows is a series of arguments, provoked
largely by the current situation and its attendant debates, and focused on
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PREFACE • IX
the programs and points in time most relevant to the argument being
made. Consequently, I will not discuss in detail every program or shift in
format, and I deal only in passing with the contribution made by the SBS,
for instance. For the most part, I have chosen to concentrate on the com-
mercial free-to-air networks and the ABC as the most significant forces in
the Australian television market today. My historical focus is upon the
years since the late 1980s when the development of the national commer-
cial networks changed the conditions under which television current
affairs was produced and consumed. The historical spread, nonetheless, is
as broad as possible: the book discusses the pioneering This Day Tonight,
which commenced in 1967, as well as current programs such as A Current
Affair and alternative platforms such as those provided by pay TV and the
Internet. The analysis is contextualised, too, against the industrial and reg-
ulatory conditions within which Australian television current affairs has
been produced.
The book proceeds from an ethical orientation that questions the social
and political value of what we now think of as television current affairs
journalism in Australia. Current affairs programs remain a staple compo-
nent of the evening schedule for most channels in Australia and, together
with news, they are routinely considered as among the most important
sectors of the industry when regulatory authorities inquire into the provi-
sion of broadcasting services to the Australian community. From time to
time, it will be necessary for me to talk about television news as well, as
sometimes it is difficult to disentangle the two. Jointly, news and current
affairs carry the responsibility of providing the information component of
free-to-air broadcasting; as a result, no matter how the formats mutate,
they remain among the central elements of the nation’s broadcast tele-
vision system. This is because, most of us would agree, television news and
current affairs programs serve functions that are fundamentally important
to a civilised democracy. Therefore, if the contemporary versions of tele-
vision current affairs are not serving such functions – and if there is
nothing else which is – then Ending the Affair argues that this is signifi-
cant cause for concern.
Those who work in the television industry are often, perhaps under-
standably, annoyed at criticism, from commentators, academics or the
public, which in their view reveals an ignorance of the conditions under
which their work has to be performed. In what follows, I certainly seek,
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X • ENDING THE AFFAIR
respect, and take account of industry points of view. However, I also
believe that this particular form of programming is too important to leave
entirely to the industry – or, indeed, entirely to the mechanisms of the
market. Given that free-to-air proprietors operate a highly lucrative but
scarce natural resource while being protected from the introduction of new
competitors, and given that the ABC is funded by our taxes – albeit,
perhaps, by not enough – there is a contract of civic responsibility and obli-
gation in place that needs to be invoked more than it has been recently.
Here, then, is a series of arguments about Australian television current
affairs programming, aimed at encouraging greater public scrutiny of its
current performance as well as a greater awareness of the histories which
have brought us to the position we now occupy.
Graeme Turner
Brisbane
NOTE
1 ‘Short form’ refers to (typically) 30-minute programs composed of a number of
items; ‘long form’programs usually deal with one story in a single 45- to 50-minute
edition.