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.
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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