Structure

Australian television broadcasting began in the 1950s (Sydney and Melbourne in 1956 and Brisbane and Adelaide in 1959) a date that links it with other "major minor" economies such as Canada, Italy and the Netherlands, whereas major economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan had all inaugurated television broadcasting in the 1930s and 1940s. The structure of the Australian television system was established in 1950 when the newly elected conservative federal government reversed the decision of the post-war socialist government that television was to be a monopoly in the hands of a public service broadcaster. Instead the 1950 decision decreed that television was to be a dual system containing a private, commercial sector as well as a public service sector. This decision could be justified on the structural grounds that Australian radio had been a dual system since 1932 when the Australian Broadcasting Commission had been established. (In point of fact the development of the Australian Broadcasting Commission [ABC] in 1932 had been intended to create a unitary, public service broadcasting system, an outcome thwarted when private, commercial broadcasters had bought out community radio licenses after they had surrendered their own licenses to the government.)

The dual system of Australian television was to remain in place from the beginning of broadcasting in 1956 until the licensing of community television stations in the most populous cities in 1992-93. This is not however, to suggest that the channel choice of viewers remained the same over this period. In 1956 viewers in the larger cities had two commercial and one public service channels to choose from. By 1964-65 there were three commercial services available. In 1980 a second public service channel went on the air while the community channel of 1992-93 signals both the advent of a third sector as well as the sixth channel in the system. In deciding on the shape of the commercial services the initial consideration was technical: how many transmitting frequencies could be made available in each centre of population? The answer generally was one, although in larger centres it was two.

Commercial television licenses were awarded to two operators in the state capitals of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, and one in Canberra, Perth and Hobart. One commercial license was awarded in smaller cities and towns. This development occurred in several stages and followed the Development of Television Services Plan, an engineering plan devised by engineers at the broadcasting regulatory body, the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB). By 1965 nearly 80% of the country came within the net of television.

The granting of two licenses in the four most populous cities facilitated the development of networking arrangements. It also allowed for a much weaker network arrangement elsewhere. Networking in Australian commercial television between 1956 and 1987 was a combining together of local interests for the purposes of cost sharing, on program buying and program production. With newspaper companies securing major shares in several of those stations, the first metropolitan networking arrangements built on long term associations between different capital city newspapers which were already in place. Thus, for example, Frank Packer's TCN Channel 9 Sydney had links with HSV Channel 7 Melbourne from 1956 to 1960. However, Packer had ambitions to establish a television network chain, applying unsuccessfully for commercial licenses in Brisbane and in country areas of New South Wales. In 1960 he bought GTV Channel 9 in Melbourne and the Nine Network came into being. Sydney and Melbourne with some 35 % of the national population were the hub of the network with Brisbane and Adelaide as satellites. The commercial stations with the designation "7" were forced into partnership but, lacking a common owner, the Seven Network (which emerged later in the decade) was always a looser association.

The Packer buyout was permitted under the two station ownership rule contained in the Broadcasting and Television Act and the Melbourne purchase highlighted the dominance of newspaper interests in Australian commercial television. Until the rule was changed in 1987, the Packer Consolidated Press group controlled TCN 9 and GTV 9, the Herald and Weekly Times group operated HSV 7 while John Fairfax and Sons controlled ATN 7. The other notable press entrant was the young Rupert Murdoch, owner of the afternoon Adelaide News, who in 1958 served the license for one of the first two commercial Adelaide Television stations, NWS Channel 9.

In 1953 the Royal Commission had recommended that the ABC run the public service television service. The government accepted this advice and allocated one channel to the ABC. The public sector radio broadcaster, the ABC was unaffected by these developments. Single ABC television stations began in Sydney and Melbourne in late 1956 and early 1957 respectively and other ABC stations rippled out across the country over the next nine years. Under its long-serving general manager, Sir Charles Moses, the ABC gave little thought to its new television service. By and large, it was television as an extension of radio, along lines generally pioneered by the BBC. Thus by 1964 when Moses retired, the ABC's audience share was below 10% and badly in need of a shake up.

Programs

Early television owners and executives did not give a great deal of thought to programs, concerned as they were with the capital cost of establishing and operating stations. Although several would-be licensees expressed commitment to the idea of locally produced programs both during the hearings of the Royal Commission and the License Inquiries (1955-59), their early practice did not encourage local production. Fortunately for them, the early 1950s had seen American television switch from the live production of network programs, especially drama, in New York and Chicago, to filmed production in Hollywood. By 1956 when Australian television began, there was a plentiful supply of cheap imported American programs available and these soon dominated local prime time programming on the commercial networks. Thus commercial owners and operators offset the initial establishment and operating capital costs against the relatively cheap costs of the imported material. The imported programs also subsidised the production of local programs in a variety of genres. Variety/light entertainment programs represented an important investment in the early years of Australian television and programs such as the Johnny O'Keefe Show, In Melbourne Tonight and the Bobby Limb Late Show rated extremely well in prime time. Other genres of local production included news, game shows and sporting broadcasts. There was also a small amount of drama produced in this period although, generally, it did not rate sufficiently well to justify the relatively heavy costs involved. The most interesting area of local production was however, that of television commercials. In 1960 the government issued a requirement that 100% of all commercials be locally produced. Even more than the "vernacularising" of formats and formulas, already underway in game shows and light entertainment, this protectionist measure signaled that the import substitution was underway and would shortly spread to drama.

The initial role of Australian television stations was one of both distribution/exhibition of programs. The blueprint for such a role lay in the vertically integrated structure of the Hollywood motion picture companies of the studio era. In the Australian situation, the creation of television production sound stages was necessary because the fragile Australian film production industry of the 1950s, mostly lacked such infrastructure. In addition owning these facilities would give television operators a power over advertisers that their counterparts in radio had, often to their cost, lacked.

The most notable of the stations for in-house production were ATN Channel 7 in Sydney, GTV Channel 9 in Melbourne and the ABC in those two cities. GTV Channel 9 continued with its successful In Melbourne Tonight until 1965. ATN persisted with in-house production until 1970, while the ABC only opened its doors to independent producers (packagers) in 1986.

Development

Television is a complex entity (economic enterprise, technology, entertainment medium, political platform, advertising vehicle and so on) and, thus, at any time in its history it is likely to show quite different features in different shapes and combinations. Thus in order to survey developments in Australian television, its particular features and details may be divided into four periods, each lasting for approximately a decade: this coincidence highlights their classificatory convenience.

In the period up to 1965, Australian television, like television in general, was bounded in part by its technology. The programs were either imported and therefore on film, put live to air or else kinescoped as a filmed record of a live broadcast. The first video recorder was imported by Channel 7 Sydney in 1958 but, until around 1965, when other stations and production companies had video playback and editing facilities, this first machine made little difference to the practice of "live" television. A second technical feature of the period was the local or regional character of television in Australia. Until 1964 there were no cable facilities that allowed the transmission of television signals from one capital city to another. Thus the continent consisted of a series of discrete, isolated television markets that often saw different local programs, regional schedules and frequently geographically distinct commercials.

News programs, soap opera and some early teenage music programs were fifteen minutes in length, although most programs ran for half an hour. A few imported drama series, plays and variety programs were longer, running sixty or ninety minutes. The programming schedule was dominated by half-hour programs such as The Mickey Mouse Club, The Lone Ranger, Sergeant Bilko, Hancock's Half Hour, I Love Lucy and others. The dominant drama genres were imported westerns, crime and situation comedies. This period was also marked by the popularity of the one-off television play. There were two kinds of play; the first, emanating from the BBC, was dominated by a West End conception of drama and theatre. It favoured theatrical works of famous British playwrights such as Shakespeare, Shaw and in the modern period, Coward and Rattigan. This model was the one adopted by ABC television. From the late 1950s it combined BBC imports with television versions of some famous Australian plays, essentially, for the latter, adapting pre-existing theatrical materials to television. The other kind of play came from U.S. television. In the early 1950s, in programs such as The US Steel Hour and Playhouse 90, playwrights such as Silliphant, Chayefsky and Mosel had written a series of original social realist plays for television including Marty, The Miracle Worker, and Requiem for a Heavyweight. The Playhouse 90 model was adopted in Australian television by ATN Channel 7 and its partner station, first GTV Channel 9 and then HSV Channel 7, under the sponsorship of both Shell and General Motors. Notable plays written for television under the aegis of these sponsors include Other People's Houses, Tragedy in a Temporary Town and Thunder of Silence.

Current Affairs were absent from television in this early period. Four Corners, modeled on the BBC's Panorama, did not begin on the ABC until 1961. In its earliest form it was more of a newsreel or news digest program, with several items in each episode, rather than the hard-hitting investigative program it would later become. Its first producer, Bob Raymond, left the ABC in 1963 and began Project 63 on TCN Channel 9. These programs were forerunners to the kind of current affairs television that blossomed on Australian television in the later 1960s and 1970s.

There was little in the way of locally oriented documentary films on Australian television at this time. The ABC did not establish a production facility (teams of cameramen available to news, documentary and drama), until 1959. There was, instead, especially in news, an enormous reliance on overseas material.

Any "Australian content" in this period, occurred in lower-cost production genres such as variety and quiz shows. Indeed there was a boom in local variety shows. Programs such as In Melbourne Tonight, In Sydney Tonight, Revue 60/61, Bandstand, Six O'Clock Rock, The Bobby Limb Late Show, Tonight with Dave Allen and the Johnny O'Keefe Show were important landmarks. In Brisbane and Adelaide local "tonight shows" were hosted by figures such as George Wallace Junior, Gerry Gibson and Ernie Sigley. Early successful local quiz shows included Concentration and Tic-Tac-Dough, all packaged for TCN Channel 9 by Reg Grundy.

A related feature of this period was that of switching various formats, programs and personalities that had worked well in radio across to the new medium. Australian examples included Consider Your Verdict, Pick A Box and Wheel of Fortune made successful transitions to television. There was also an attempt to move soap opera from radio to television in the late 1950s when ATN Channel 7 produced Autumn Affair and The Story of Peter Gray. These failed to find either sponsors nor audience. And although several radio personalities including Bob Dyer and Graham Kennedy moved successfully across, a notable casualty of the new medium was Jack Davey.

The local successes in variety game shows and to a lesser extent, drama, meant that, despite the overwhelming presence of American and British programs, Australian programs had a distinct place in the television schedule. It was through the presence of this variety cycle that Australian television was given a local look or flavour and developed a deliberate programming mix between overseas drama and local variety. But variety shows often had international guests, so that even if they qualified under ABCB regulations as Australian content, they had a distinctly international flavour.

The period from 1964 to 1976 was marked by a good deal of stability. The novelty of television was at an end. Television was increasingly a national service, a part of everyday life, and increasingly--a mirror for the nation to see itself. Between 1963 and 1965 new commercial stations appeared in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. The new stations were partly brought about by federal government's desire to introduce new players into the field of commercial television station ownership. Ansett, a major transportation group, secured the licenses of ATV 0 Melbourne and TVQ Brisbane while amalgamated wireless Australasia, a telecommunications manufacturing group, obtained the license of Ten 10 Sydney. The new stations formed themselves into the 0-10 Network, so that east coast Australia now had three commercial networks. The 0-10 Network was the weakest in terms of audience ratings--so much so that in 1973 a new federal Labor government briefly contemplated removing the licenses.

The advent of the new network meant that there was barely enough imported program material for the commercial networks and the ABC. This was an important factor in the sudden rise of local television drama production. A new drama cycle began with the unexpected success of the police series Homicide, which Crawford Productions in Melbourne began producing in late 1964. By the end of the 1960s there were three Crawford police series--Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police--on the different commercial networks and a fourth local series, Contrabandits, on the ABC.

There are at least four significant reasons for claiming Homicide as the most important drama production in the history of Australian television. Homicide ushered in a new production system that saw the integration of indoor electronic recording and outdoor filming that has become a mainstay of local television production. It signaled that the independent packagers now had a permanent place in the Australian industry with networks now farming out production and themselves concentrating on distribution. Thirdly, Homicide would help create a drama production industry which in turn became the endorsement for a state supported feature film industry and fourthly Homicide, not least through import-substitution, would help create "a vernacular literature" of the small screen which in turn would help a new Australian nationalism.

Homicide ushered in a new look to Australian television. It presented audiences with a different, more factual, image of Australia, especially urban landscapes, than anything hitherto. The increased use of Australian film footage in news programs assisted the factual tone and the authenticity of location and detail. This mise en scene could be found across a wide range of locally produced television drama such as Bellbird, You Can't See Round Corners, My Name's McGooley, The Battlers and Dynasty all produced in those years and all signs of an expanding television drama production industry. These programs were made with Australian audiences in mind. Because they were in black and white and shot on an integrated basis they did not export particularly well. Thus their producers worked very much to Australian audiences in terms of the rendition of language, accents, references and visual icons.

However, the popularity of local drama series resulted in an equally dramatic downturn in variety programs. From 1965 variety production effectively ceased in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. Fewer shows came out of Sydney and Melbourne and Graham Kennedy and Bobby Limb, the biggest stars in the variety cycle, were seen infrequently.

The development of a "vernacular literature" was not confined to drama but also occurred in current affairs and documentary. The importance of current affairs and documentary television increased markedly also. After a shaky start, the weekly Four Corners settled down to a new kind of investigative journalism. In 1967 the ABC started the daily current affairs This Day Tonight (TDT), modeled on the BBC series Today Tonight. The program had a hard-hitting journalistic drive that examined political and social issues in ways never imagined by earlier programs. It was a very big success for the ABC and markedly improved its ratings performance.

TDT and Four Corners were enormously influential in extending the range of current affairs television, on the ABC and commercial stations. In the 1970s many ABC journalists and reporters, of whom Mike Willesee was the most famous, would move to current affairs programs on commercial stations. This takeup of current affairs is one of the few instances where, contrary to the ABC's claims, the ABC has actually influenced commercial television in Australia. Documentary series also brought the life of the nation within their scope. The ABC's Chequerboard introduced cinema verite into Australian television, significantly expanding the range of social concerns and issues that could be examined in the medium of television. A second documentary series, A Big Country also enlarged the audience's sense of what constituted the nation.

However, one program, the family series, Skippy, anticipates the next stage of Australian television. Skippy was produced in colour on film and featured a bush kangaroo. The program included familiar international icons of Australia including beaches, bush and fauna and was consciously made with exports in mind. In the event the program did enormously well and pointed out the international sales opportunity for Australian programs.

With the rise in popularity of Australian programs there was a shift in the economies of local commercial television. Earlier cheap television imports subsidised the capitalisation, equipping and maintenance of new stations; they now allowed the commercial stations and networks to underwrite the cost of local productions. It was on the basis of their Australian programs that the commercial stations rose or fell in the ratings.

The state, through the ABC played a part in securing the place of Australian content on television in this period. The first content regulations, (effective from 1956 to the early 1960s) required stations to, whenever possible, employ Australians for the production and transmission of programs. But this regulation was too general to be enforceable; as imported programs were pre-recorded it was irrelevant. In 1965 the ABCB introduced a quota system for Australian content. Stations were required to screen three hours per week of Australian content in prime time. A precedent for the program quota had been set by the ABCB 1960 requirement whereby all television commercials had to be Australian.

Three hours a week was a fairly limited quota which the commercial stations had little difficulty in meeting. The quota rose slowly throughout the rest of the 1960s. In 1972 it stood at ten hours per week during prime time. In 1973 the ABCB introduced a "points system", which still operated on a quota basis but attempted to discriminate in favour of more expensive program forms such as drama. However, these measures did not cause the big upsurge in Australian television production that began in 1965. They did though set a minimum threshold for the scheduling of local productions, below which commercial stations could not fall. In other words, the quota and points system helped guarantee at least part of the market for Australian producers.

While the commercial television stations between 1964 and 1972 switched to using independent production packagers, the ABC continued its in-house production. However, with the retirement of Sir Charles Moses in 1965 and following comparable moves some years earlier at the BBC, a major restructuring of ABC television and radio took place. Television drama severed many of its links with the Australian theatre. Following a BBC example, the ABC Drama Department was organised into three strands--series, serials and plays. The series strand produced several successful series including Contrabandits and Delta. The success of British soap operas, most especially Coronation Street, also struck a chord with the ABC. By 1967, the serial strand had initiated Bellbird, an ongoing serial set in a rural Australian town and the most successful serial to play on Australian television up to that point. It ran for more than 10 years. In 1973 it was joined by another ongoing serial, produced by the ABC in Sydney: Certain Women. The play strand was of lesser importance. It was most active in the late 1960s when it produced several successful seasons of Australian Playhouse, an anthology series of one- off hour and half-hour plays written for television.

The range of viewer choice was extended between 1976 and 1986 with the advent of new services and technologies. A new network, the Special Broadcasting Services (SBS) came on the air in 1980, at first serving only Sydney and Melbourne but gradually spreading to the other capital cities. SBS Television was designed to increase the media services available to ethnic Australians and it did this with multilingual programming. But SBS, with developing strengths in the areas of news, current affairs, documentary and foreign films, also appealed to English-language viewers. As a second public service television broadcaster, it considerably extended the range of choice of traditional ABC viewers, giving them an option to the ABC just as commercial viewers had been given an option to the Nine and Seven Networks in the mid 1960s.

This extra choice was fortuitous as the fortunes of the ABC declined between 1976 and 1986. Its operating budget suffered constant government pruning from 1975 onwards, and the national broadcaster steadily lost staff, program ideas and ratings to the commercial networks. In 1983 the ABC was reconstituted as a corporation following the passage of a new act through the federal parliament but these moves did little to arrest this process of decline. The output of ABC TV Drama suffered badly during this period, falling to as low as 40 hours total output in 1984-85. Despite this downturn, the ABC did produce some notable work including Power Without Glory, Spring and Fall, Scales of Justice and Sweet and Sour.

If things were gloomy at the ABC, commercial television was booming. The other major move at this time was the reinvigoration of the Ten Network thanks to Rupert Murdoch's News Limited purchase of ATV Channel 0 Melbourne in 1978, and Ten Channel 10 Sydney in 1979. Determined to increase the network's ratings, Murdoch increased Ten's program budget considerably. The network programmed heavily in the area of mini-series and feature films. Many fine miniseries--including Water Under The Bridge, The Dismissal, Waterfront, Return To Eden, and Vietnam--were produced for Ten, which helped push the network ahead of Nine and Seven in the ratings.

A more dramatic technological change was the introduction of colour transmission in 1975. Colour proved a boon for the commercial networks. Advertisers were eager to show their products in colour and station finances rose considerably. Viewers also obtained what was, in effect, a movie channel with the advent of the domestic VCR and the mushrooming availability of feature films on video. The video boom from 1980 to 1985 offered viewers an alternative to broadcast television and constituted a sixth channel in cities such as Sydney and Melbourne and a third channel in regional Australia. It also offered viewers an alternative relationship with broadcast television by making it possible to time shift, zap commercials and store programs. A related, and, as far as networks and advertisers were concerned, equally pernicious technology was the television/radio remote control, which first appeared in 1980. The control enabled viewers to flip channels, and avoid commercials.

The period also saw a new regulatory regime with the abolition in 1976 of the ABCB and its replacement by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT). The ABCB had been an advisory body but the ABT was given the power to award radio and television licenses after a public enquiry. This feature, together with the early recognition of the right of public groups to be part of the licensing process represented a community-based broadcasting policy on the part of the government. However, the ABT also moved towards industry deregulation by giving commercial licensees control of such areas as program standards and advertising standards and scheduling. Although the stations were meant to be publicly accountable for their actions, in practice they were not. Australian content levels remained regulated under the points system although stations lobbied vigorously to be allowed to set their own content levels. One other gain for program- makers and audience was the introduction by the ABT of the C classification for children's programs in 1978 and a C quota in 1984.

Following developments in America, Australian television in the mid to late 1970s saw the emergence of two new dramatic forms owing much to the cinema. The first Australian telemovie, a television program with the running time of a feature film, was produced in 1976 with the film Polly My Love. The miniseries, a consecutive narrative intended for screening in large time blocks over a short period, came to television in 1978 with Against the Wind. The telemovie and mini-series considerably extended the scheduling possibilities of television: series pilots could be screened in one or other form, while features could be reconstituted as mini-series.

By the early 1980s Australian film producers as various as Paul Barron, McElroy and McElroy, and Kennedy-Miller had all moved into television, although without relinquishing their commitment to cinema. After the collapse of the Australian period feature film at the box office, producers found television to be secure financially. They could pre-sell the latter programs to the Australian television networks, thereby considerably diminishing the overall financial risks in their production operation.

The cinematisation also meant that television was now a textually worthy object. Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s, Australian television had been subjected to cautious attention by psychologists and social scientists such as RJ Thompson, David Martin and Fred Emery, who were anxious to gauge its possibly harmful audience effects, now media researchers such as Stuart Cunningham, John Fiske and John Tulloch celebrated the textual sophistications of Australian television, especially the miniseries.

These structural changes did much to foster drama production particularly in the areas of the serial, the mini-series and children's drama. Although drama serials had proved their ratings worth on commercial television from as early as 1972 with the success of Number 96, it was from 1976 that serials became part of the backbone of the program schedule. Serials such as The Sullivans, The Restless Years, Prisoner, A Country Practice, Sons and Daughters and The Flying Doctors ensured a solid audience for the networks other programs. Starting around 1982, and drawing in part on the recent international success of Australian cinema, Australian television programs, including serials, began to sell particularly well overseas. The move to colour substantially increased television's international sales opportunities as did the Australian stockpiling of episodes. When The Young Doctors, for example, went on sale internationally in 1983, Grundy had over 1,000 half-hour episodes on offer.

The richest crop in these golden years of Australian television drama lay in the miniseries. After the American and international success of Roots, Australian networks and producers made the miniseries a permanent feature in their schedule. Between 1978 and 1987 more than 100 miniseries ranging in running time from four to 13 hours were produced locally. The miniseries as special event television was one important counter to the lure of the VCR, and several miniseries--such as The Dismissal and Bodyline--pulled very large audiences for the duration of their screening. Notable mini-series include Vietnam, Return to Eden, The Timeless Land, A Town Like Alice and The Great Bookie Robbery. The miniseries, and, to a lesser extent, the telemovie, were also an important stage in increasing the power of packagers vis-à-vis the networks. Piggybacking on the generous tax concessions, introduced in by government in 1981 to bolster a faltering feature film production industry, the packagers found that they could make deals for the international sale of their products. Initially these sales were secondary to Australian sales but from 1985 on, they were more important. This "internationalisation" of the Australian mini-series could be seen in the shift away from Australian historical situations, issues and figures to more contemporary dramas, frequently located off-shore, and including figures from various nations.

Children's series also blossomed in this general upswing of drama which had previously mostly been the domain of the ABC. The C classification and quota had the effect of making this area more financially attractive for producers than it had once been. Among producers who partially or completely specialised in this area were the Tasmanian Film Corporation, Barron Films, the Australian Children's Television Foundation and Revcom. Many entertaining series for children and young people were produced including particularly innovative work such as Home, Sweet and Sour, and Dancing Daze. With general international shortage of good children's material, this drama exported particularly well.

In 1987 the federal government made a series of important amendments to the Broadcasting and Television Act. Under the new rules, cross-ownership among the different media sectors (print, radio, television and film) was forbidden. The two-station rule was abandoned in favour of limits based on total audience size. Regional commercial television, a loose "network" of single stations that enjoyed a commercial monopoly in their local area, was also re-organised and under the title of "equalisation", capital city television networking was extended into rural Australia. Thus over 90% of the Australian population now gradually came within reach of the three capital city commercial networks. Divestiture and the extension of networking would, it was hoped, bring new players into commercial television. Such hopes were soon realised with all three networks being sold in 1987--Nine to the Bond Corporation, Seven to Qintex and Ten to Northern Star. However, unable to meet their bank interest charges, all of the new owners lost control of their networks in 1990. The Nine Network returned to the control of Kerry Packer while the other two networks were in the hands of the banks. By 1994-95 Rupert Murdoch and Telecom, the Australian telecommunications carrier, had bought 20% shares in the Seven network, seeking to add broadcast television to their Asian satellite ventures. If television was once perceived as a license to print money, it was no longer the case. Instead it was clear that it would be some time before commercial television might again be a solidly prosperous sector of the media.

Although the networks claimed that their audience had remained mostly intact despite the VCR boom, nevertheless the advent of remote controls for VCRs and television sets led advertisers to look at some other advertising media, including direct mail. The stock market crash of October 1987 and the recession of the late 1980s caused a contraction in advertising budgets. In addition, the advent of people metres in 1991 indicated to advertisers that the television audience was far more mobile in shifting programs and channels than the diary method of gathering audience information had suggested.

The first AUSSAT satellite had been launched in 1986. Although much of its capacity was set aside for telecommunications, the satellite did symbolise the possibility of satellite delivered pay TV. After a protracted series of inquiries, ministerial statements, recommendations and policy changes, pay TV began as a new six channel service in Sydney and Melbourne in 1994.

The ABC also underwent upheaval after 1987. It had become a corporation in 1983 but even under a new administration its budgets still declined. In 1986-7 the new Head of TV Drama, decided, in line with the general moves by the national broadcaster towards corporatism, to farm out much of ABC's television drama requirements to independent or overseas packagers. Thus the ABC now makes little drama in-house, but is in the business of co-productions, supplying production facilities as its contribution to the making of miniseries, series and telefilm. In return for this investment the ABC secures rights to the Australian screening of the program. The packaging partner secures rights to the overseas distribution.

The wind-down of the generous tax concession in 1986 and the economic crises of the networks in 1989 also reduced drama and documentary. Producers increasingly target overseas market for finance and distribution with some companies such as Grundy, Kennedy-Miller and Beyond International relocating their headquarters off-shore. Such moves are indicative both of the internationalisation of markets as well as the continued depression of the Australian television program market. Indeed with production levels in the industry back to what they were around 1965, Australian television was witnessing the development of "underdevelopment".

The final feature of the present era in Australian television has been the creation of a new bureaucratic environment with the replacement of the ABT by the Australian Broadcasting Authority in 1992 and the creation of a new broadcasting bill, the Broadcast Services Act also in 1992. The two measures signified government commitment both to managerialism, new technology and liberal economic doctrines. The measures considerably lessened "public interest" as a factor in broadcasting policy and instead made technological innovation and economic viability of operators the most important criteria in the new broadcasting environment.

In summary then certain key features in the structure and development of Australian television are worth reiterating. Australia has in the past been relatively slow to innovate various technologies associated with television including the broadcast service itself, colour transmission and multi-channel pay services. Nevertheless despite these time-lags, the system has exhibited a "historical modernity" in terms of its dual sections, weak public service and strong independent commercial. Import substitution has occurred leading to a vigorous television production industry which by the 1980s became a significant export earner. In the process the system spawned a number of successful companies and groups such as Packer, Murdoch's News Limited and the Grundy Organisation which are important players not only by local but also by international standards. In recent years Australian television has been increasingly internationalised at a series of levels including ownership, program content and technology. This has also been a period of upheaval and transition and is still without an end in sight.

In 1987 the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal was abolished and the Broadcasting Services Act was introduced. The Australian Broadcasting Authority, introduced in 1992, heralded the beginning of a new regulatory era.

-Albert Moran

Australian television may be said to show a pattern of "historical modernity". The key features of this pattern are as follows: a dual or mixed television system consisting of private, commercial television broadcast networks as well as a public service television broadcast sector; a heavy reliance on American-style programming practices; and, initially at least, equally heavy reliance on imported programs from America to fill the television schedule; the start-up of local programs on the commercial networks which when coupled with imported programs guarantees the overall viewing popularity of this sector; a relatively weak public service sector, perpetually caught in the dilemma of attempting to hold its traditional minority audiences with innovative, local programs and attracting larger, entertainment-oriented audiences with more main stream programs, often imported. While this pattern has been generally true for Australian television, it has not, however, been a static one. In particular Australian television has followed a classic economic tendency of "import substitution" whereby, after an initial high noon of imported American programs, locally produced popular television programs soon appeared that displaced imported programs in the Australian television schedule. In other words, American imported program played an important role in the creation of a local television production industry. The germ of this situation is there in the second television program broadcast on the opening night of regular television broadcasting on 16 September 1956. Name That Tune was an Australian "vernacularisation" of a game show that had first been broadcast on American television in 1953.

These features then of the Australian television situation--vigorous private commercial networks, weakened public service sector; the progressive substitution of locally produced programs for imported ones are part of a more general international and historical pattern that is repeated elsewhere in more recent times (for example, Western Europe in the 1980s). Thus there is a good deal of interest for television scholars elsewhere in the historic trajectory of Australian television both for its own sake and also for the comparative opportunities it offers for understanding developments elsewhere. Marshall McLuhan once claimed that Canadian media developments were an "early warning system" for trends that would later appear elsewhere and Richard Collins has recently embraced this claim, warning pessimistically of the possible "Canadianization" of television in Europe and elsewhere. However, the Australian experience has been at once more complex, more interesting and more positive. Given the linguistic and cultural barriers at work in countries in Europe and in other parts of the world, there are strong grounds for believing that "Dallas-ization" of international television was in fact a passing phase and that the Australian experience of television, most especially that of "import substitution" is, likely to be being repeated.