FAITH IN INDONESIA

FAITH IN INDONESIA
The shape of the world a generation from now will be influenced far more by how we communicate the values of our society to others than by military or diplomatic superiority. William Fulbright, 1964

Wednesday, July 01, 2020

THE ABC OF STUFFING UP OVERSEAS TV


             SENDING A STRANGE MESSAGE TO THE REGION   
              
The slashing and burning of ABC workers, their goodies and services seems to have missed the overseas TV service ABC Australia.  That’s no reason to whoop.  Further cuts will kill.

It has to be seen to be disbelieved.  

ABC Australia is our TV showcase to 37 Asia Pacific nations we want to impress, particularly the biggest on the block - Indonesia.  Tune in! We belong here, have aid projects, can give a hand with a few jolly education slots, warn you about druggies.

More importantly we can sell tucker you want. Might share a nod and a wave.  Mateship’s too strong.  That needs closeness and trust.

Definitions can be a turn-off, but this one’s necessary. Patience, please. ‘Asia Pacific’ is a pendulum term and this story is more about the western arc. For Canberra right now it’s swung east with the ‘PacificAus TV initiative’.

For $17.1 million across three years, seven Pacific states including PNG will get 1,000 hours a year of free-to-air Aussie TV. So far islanders’ reactions have been muted, noting the info-flow is one-way colonisation by media – big countries produce, small ones consume.  MasterChef should go down well in dirt-floor kitchens with no running water.

Officially PacificAus TV ‘complements a range of initiatives to enhance Australia’s engagement in the Pacific’ which is a load of guff, though Shadow Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland sees Reds under the hammocks:


‘While the Morrison Government has been cutting the ABC and diminishing Australia’s soft power, China has been making significant investments in its global media footprint and growing its reach and influence in the region.’

‘Soft power’ also oscillates. Former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer defined it as ‘a credible and independent voice through programmes that present a window on Australia and Australian perspectives of the world.’
Logically we’d be putting money and imagination into revealing who we are and what we do.  That’s been our overseas media policy for more than a quarter-century but needs reglazing. Now’s the time, using the new free trade agreement with Indonesia.
Instead the panes on Downer’s homely metaphor are cracked and smeared, the frames rotten. The place is going downhill.  The residents don’t care a damn about separating plastics, tins and food; they bung the lot into one wheelie bin and put it out on the wrong days.  The homeowner is the ABC, the rubbish ABC Australia and its transmitters the trash truck.  Bundled together the result is an embarrassment.
But who’d know? The service can’t be easily seen in Australia so little interest.  Even ABC Friends, the ‘promoter and defender’ of the Corporation and chaired by former Labor Senator Margaret Reynolds didn’t respond to questions about ABC Australia. 
 So here’s an appraisal of the menu:
Our overseas viewers are being served with so much ill-prepared, repetitious, boring and inappropriate fare customers shop elsewhere.  They have choice aplenty -  the BBC, Al Jazeera, DW (Germany) France 24, Arirang (South Korea), Voice of America, NHK (Japan) RT (Russia) and other channels offering quality programmes screened to suit the  locals.
Now that sport is back from quarantine Okkers abroad can watch the big men fly three hours every evening from Thursday to Sunday on ABC Australia.  No matter that the AFL isn’t played in the target countries; this service is for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t get home before borders closed.

Head of ABC International David Hua offered this justification: ‘The code is uniquely Australian and being able to showcase it to audiences overseas is important.’  So viewers get 12 hours a week of physical clashes, about the same for the occasionally cerebral 7.30 Report, Insiders, The Drum, and the daily news The World combined. This last programme is produced for the service and does have merit.
Before the lockdown when about 1.3 million Australians went to Bali every year, Kuta bars billboarded Rules and Rugby to suck in thirsty fans. No point now.
Our Embassy in Jakarta reckons about 3,000 Aussies remain in the Republic.  Most are in business or retirees on the Hindu-majority island.  Some footy fanatics may need to hear sirens; it’d be good to think others moved to the archipelago to experience different cultures and live without a nostalgia kick.
Getting through to the masses is easy in Indonesia; TVs are as common as street eateries where sets are as essential as woks.  Likewise in shops, restaurants and government departments where the idle watch plot-thin sinetron (soapies) while waiting for work.
An estimated 64 million households in Indonesia (pop 270 million) have receivers, the highest saturation rate in Southeast Asia.  This is a legacy of last century’s Soeharto era when huge sums were spent using satellites to beam government propaganda into every nook of the 6,000 occupied islands.
During much of the dictator’s 32-years, the national broadcaster TVRI had a monopoly.  Now there’s democracy the cables and free-to-airwaves jostle for frequencies.  Many channels owned by tycoons are so partisan they make Fox News look balanced.
Our overseas TV ventures started in 1993 with Australia Television International.  Nine years later it became ABC Asia Pacific, and in 2006 Australia Network with funding from Foreign Affairs and Trade plus advertising.  Downer claimed it would reach ten million homes and 200,000 hotel rooms in 41 countries; maybe one million viewers a month.  The budget was $200 million for a decade.
He said the ABC would run the network offering ‘high-quality programmes about Australia and its engagement with the region.’ Also promised were ‘extensive news and current affairs programmes, Australian-produced education, drama, entertainment and lifestyle programmes.’ 
Australia Network CEO, the late Ian Carroll, added: ‘Our news and current affairs programmes provide more than the headlines – it is quality world-class journalism offering a different view from the London and US-centric networks’.
In 2011 the Australian Labor Government called tenders to run Australia Network. The two main hopefuls were the ABC and Sky TV which had long campaigned to get the job. 
When it seemed Rupert Murdoch’s company had the nod the process was scrapped and the task given to the ABC.
Revenge was rapid. After the Coalition won office in 2013 Australia Network was switched off. FM Julie Bishop said it ‘had failed to deliver a cost-effective vehicle’ though gave no facts to back the claim. The then ABC managing director Mark Scott said the decision:
‘…runs counter to the approach adopted by the vast majority of G20 countries. Countries around the world are expanding their international broadcasting services as key instruments of public diplomacy.
‘It sends a strange message to the region that the government does not want to use the most powerful communication tools available to talk to our regional neighbours about Australia.’
Turning off life support for Australia’s overseas TV service in 2013 may have satisfied the Coalition’s political ideology but a legal reality prevented burial: The ABC Charter says it must run an international service.
The result was Australia Plus with a $20 million budget for three years propped up by sponsors. The public service – commercial telecaster marriage was a disaster.
The ads from Monash University, the Victorian Government and food supplement manufacturer Swisse Wellness were repetitious, discursive and often plain weird.  Indonesian commercials tend to be as unsubtle as a runaway road train.
With 2018 came another change to the present tautology: ABC Australia and its banal slogan Yours.  At the time the Head of ABC International David Hua said ‘rebranding makes sense to our audiences overseas, who want distinctive Australian content from a highly-respected media organisation.’
The official blurb reads: ‘Our mission is to provide a television and digital service that informs, entertains and inspires our audience with a uniquely Australian perspective.’
Since then a new reason has wriggled in: ‘The ABC provides content for Australians living abroad and local audiences living outside of Australia.’ Hello, hello, what’s this?  A shift from ‘soft power’ to satisfying a few ex-pats?  
Hua responded: “I disagree with the premise that the ABC has made the shift you describe. Perhaps ‘local audiences living outside of Australia’ is an awkward description of Indonesians in Indonesia, Vietnamese in Vietnam etc.”
So ex-pats can feel at home with Lah-Lah’s Stripy Sock Club, Home and Away and Planet America.  Some may query that programme’s relevance on an Australian overseas service, but its presence shows our priorities.

In 2018 the Department of Communications and the Arts published a 193-page review of Australian Broadcasting Services in the Asia Pacific, mainly concentrating on short-wave closed the previous year.

The Lowy Institute submission claimed our international broadcasting was ‘under-resourced’. ‘...   Australia must overcome its poor record in this area, and make a renewed investment in international broadcasting platforms and content to restore its relevance as a constructive and independent soft power partner in the region.’
What’s happened to the review? The Department’s response was terse and useless: ‘The review is being used to inform policy development.’
Governments and Oppositions endlessly proclaim the importance of Indonesia, stressing the social, economic, defence, security and community benefits of developing a strong and enduring relationship. 
The politicians aren’t singing solo. Academics, business leaders, journalists, NGOs and politicians consistently chant the need for better education – particularly language and cultural studies - improved communications and closer contact with the neighbours.
Last year ABC Chair Ita Buttrose, a great fan of ‘soft power’ told the Lowy Institute: ‘The importance of journalism to our country’s Asia-Pacific interests cannot be underestimated and I believe a renewed ABC focus on international broadcasting would greatly benefit Australia.’
So it’s logical we’d be despatching our best and brightest programmes selected specifically for the Republic to back the chorus.
If only. Most offerings on ABC Australia were originally made for domestic audiences.  Programmes are moved around without notice. The presenter tells what’s coming next - then something different appears. The channel’s Internet TV Guide is a misnomer; TV Guesser would be better.
On 5 July the long-awaited Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement clicks into place.  The free trade deal includes education services, offering an opportunity to couple the ABC and other programme-makers with stations in the region.
ABC Australia is distributed by Intelsat and downlinked by 126 re-broadcasters across the region. They get it free, but the viewers don’t. In Indonesia, three pay-to-use cable services carry ABC Australia. A few take blocks of content – mainly educational - and insert into local channels.  

The ABC spends $11 million a year on its combined international services.  Hua estimated ABC Australia costs from $2.5 to $4 million a year.  That’s significantly less than the $200 million for a decade of Australia Network and the three- year $20 million budget for the old Australia Plus.
Another relevant figure is the $17.1 million suddenly found this year for the ‘PacificAus TV initiative’ which at its best will reach only 11 million.  That’s 0.4 per cent of the Indonesian population.
Commented Labor’s Rowland: “$11 million per annum is a drop in the ocean and insufficient to realise the potential of the ABC as a soft power asset.

“ABC funding has gone backwards as other nations seeking to exercise greater soft power increase their presence in the region.”

A report last month (May) by the ‘progressive think tank’ Per Capita for the activist group GetUp! claimed the ABC’s real funding had slipped almost 30 per cent since 1986.

After ABC MD David Anderson announced a new strategy and massive cuts Hua was asked if ABC Australia had ducked the knife:   “The proposed changes at this stage do not directly impact on the international services. Of course any cuts to the ABC effects (sic) the wider teams.”

The TV programmes we export are almost all in English. Those from Nat Geo are subtitled in Indonesian.  Likewise the History Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery, BBC Earth and many others, including crime and food channels.
Said Hua: ‘While it would be desirable to offer localised dubbing and or subtitles, the cost of this across all of our markets is prohibitive.”  So Home and Away along with other fare is only accessible to those with a good grasp of English, and that’s few Indonesians outside the well-educated elite.
A survey by the English First international chain of language schools ranks Indonesia behind Vietnam in proficiency.  Although English is taught in state schools it’s usually rote learning. Few graduates can handle the spoken word.  Subtitling programmes might make them useful in classrooms while helping the kids better understand their neighbour.
Hua said that before the 2014 funding cuts three satellites were used to break up timezones.  Now there’s only one, so News Breakfast is screened at 3 am in Jakarta and the 7.30 Report at 4.30 pm.  Come daylight saving and the times jump back an hour.
Hua: “With programming like News Breakfast, we do have a preference to run it live ... Our audiences have grown to be 1.6 million affluent Asians in 10 markets. In Indonesia it’s 304,745 viewers in the past 30 days.”  (It’s not known how many of these are in hotels.)
“We do seek to first reach audiences who have an interest in Australia and who wish to build on that through content across our platforms.”
Question:  The impression is that ABC Australia is an unwelcome chore maintained only because required by law yet given insufficient resources.  Is that a fair conclusion?
Hua: “No. The ABC marked 80 years of international broadcasting in December 2019. The reputation, audience reach, and the multitude of services is something that Australians should see as a national asset and be proud of.
“The ABC is keen to build more awareness of our services and to explore opportunities to expand Australia’s voice in the region and around the world.
“It’s important for Australians to share stories with people across the region and around the world to build mutual understanding and trust.”
Fine sentiments indeed.  Who’d disagree?  But this isn’t what ABC Australia is delivering.
First published in Pearls & Irritations, 30 June and 1 July 2020:

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