• Margaret Simons

06 August 2008We don't really know exactly what the ABC and SBS should do next, but they need to be given the scope to do it, writes MARGARET SIMONS

CRUNCH day is arriving for the ABC and SBS. During the next three months the public broadcasters will be compiling and lodging their triennial funding submissions with Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy. The government?s response will determine whether public broadcasting has a bright future in Australia, or whether it is always going to be a needy relation, scrabbling for cash and trying to do more with less until the question ?why do we need it? gains dangerous force.

It is probably safe to say that if the Rudd government does not deliver, then no government in the foreseeable future is likely to do better.

Just under the surface there is plenty of activity and lots of political manoeuvring. As I reported in Crikey some weeks ago, a decision has been made to conduct a public service?led inquiry into public broadcasting. Much to the frustration of some of my sources inside the ABC, the Minister has yet to announce this. It?s becoming a characteristic of the Rudd Government?s approach to communications. Make in principal decisions, then take forever to get them out there.. The conventional wisdom is that the blockage lies in the Prime Minister?s office.

My understanding is that there were originally plans for a white paper style of exercise, but that these were pulled back into a short, sharp and limited inquiry, designed to influence the triennial funding decisions.

In some ways this is a shame. In this time of media change, a white paper on public broadcasting might be a very useful thing, but there are cans of worms involved that nobody wants to open. One of them is the justification for public broadcasting in an age of media plenty.

Let?s track some of the undertow as the triennial funding submissions are prepared.

At the CCI conference last June, ABC head of television Kim Dalton delivered a speech which was a politic and politely phrased but nevertheless passionate plea for the government to stop being such a nerd, get its head out of its orifice and start thinking about what the ABC could do. Dalton protested that at present all the big thinking in government is about the ?tubes? ? communications infrastructure, and broadband in particular ? rather than what goes through them. While reminding everyone that the government had promised to lift Australian content levels on the ABC, and protesting great confidence that this promise would be fulfilled, he outlined how the national broadcaster could sit at the heart of innovation in drama, education and the creative life of the nation ? if it had the money.

But is there anyone in government with ears to hear this kind of message? Nobody seems to know ? not even those with the best access.

Meanwhile the ABC is doing its best with very little cash. Last month, as anyone who watches the promos on the ABC must surely be aware, it launched ABC iView, Australia?s first free internet based television service. All well and good, although it does raise a fundamental question: to what extent is this broadcasting, given that individual consumers can dial up what they want when they want it. And isn?t broadcasting what the ABC is for? Certainly that is what the ABC Charter says ? but more of this later.

Meanwhile there are worrying signs for the sorts of big creative thinking in government that might favour public broadcasting and a vibrant arts sector more generally. For example, the government has committed $17 million to a Creative Industries and Innovations Centre ? part of the Enterprise Connect election commitment. This should be a beacon to creatives and artists everywhere, and the ABC should be part of it ? but the signs are not good. Rather than being in the portfolio of Arts Minister Peter Garrett, it sits with Industry Minister Kim Carr. People in the arts community and the production houses that feed the ABC have noted with distress that the indicative budget shows that $14 million of the dosh will be tied up in consultants and bureaucracy. Only a measly $3 million will be available to partner organisations to actually come up with ideas. Those in the know fear this centre will be more about control and narrow political agendas than about edgy and creative ideas.

The other great white hope is the Innovation Review, presently being led by Terry Cutler, which is expected to lead into a full white paper on innovation. But will the arts, let alone the public broadcasters, have a place? The Cutler inquiry met to consider its draft recommendations in June but, as reported by the Australian this week, has now missed its end of July reporting deadline. What?s going on? Perhaps some last minute lobbying by the arts industry and others, who were notably thin on the ground when submissions were made. ABC watchers are hoping for something to help the national broadcaster, and the ABC made a submission once again pitching its case to sit at the heart of cultural innovation. (SBS did not make a submission.)

There are people on Cutler?s panel who have been thinking about public broadcasting for sometime. One of them is blogger and economist Nicholas Gruen, who earlier this year blogged on the future of the ABC. He had an extensive agenda ? much broader and somewhat different from that coming from within the ABC. He recommended, for example, that the ABC should post its entire archive on the web for downloading by whoever wanted to use it. Rather than charging for downloads ? which has been mooted by ABC Managing Director Mark Scott ? as much as possible should be for free. The cultural benefits would far outweigh the benefits of the revenue, said Gruen.

Gruen also wanted the ABC to embrace creative commons licensing, go further to embrace public comment on programming and embrace openness in planning programs by using the interactive capabilities of the internet. ?Websites could foreshadow possible and planned programs. This would enable commentators to suggest talent for various discussions, they could thrash through some of the arguments in a particular area and suggest angles they?d like covered.?

Gruen seems to be suggesting the ABC should get in to crowd sourcing: ?The ABC should scour the resources of Web 2.0 and community broadcasting more fully both in Australia and elsewhere with a view both to bringing them to greater [mainstream media] prominence and also to supporting their growth. I?d like to see the ABC make a more concerted effort to be part of the leaven with which the great broadcasters of the future are discovered.?
Those ideas go well beyond the more controlled plea for more money coming from the ABC.

At the 2020 Summit the ABC?s managing director Mark Scott made his pitch for more money, outlining a vision of a multi-channel ABC rich in Australian content. But the final report of the relevant panel went much further, calling for new charters for the ABC and SBS to reflect the changing times.

Meanwhile there is pressure both within and outside the organisation for the ABC to be even braver than it has been in embracing new media innovation. When Dalton made his speech at the CCi conference in June, he was met with a series of questions about embracing amateur content available on the web, and making the archive available for ?mash ups.? He responded that while all that had its place, he never wanted to see a situation in which the Chris Lilleys of the world were replaced by patchy amateur content.

Fair enough. But it is becoming clear that within the creative community ? and within the younger people on the ABC staff ? there is a head of steam behind Web 2.0 and the possibilities for the ABC to become less of an institution and more of a ?space? for its audience. This in turn goes to the heart of the nature of a lumbering institution such as the Aunty, with its many factions and internal battles. What role for professional content makers in the new media age? And what of the broader question: ?Why public broadcasting??

That brings us to the charters of our public broadcasters ? the oft-referred-to but rarely read holy writ with which they lay their claims on the public purse. Every time someone is cross with our public broadcasters, they ask ?What about the charter?? Is the ABC not being brave enough, different enough, or is too driven by ratings? Is it too like the commercial channels, or too elitist? Is it too left wing, or not controversial enough?

Spicks and Specks might be fun, but is a music game show ?charter?? East of Everything might be Australian drama, but isn?t it just Seachange revisited? Doesn?t the charter say the ABC has to be innovative?

At the 2020 summit, participants called for the charters of the ABC and SBS to be reviewed, but so far as I can determine gave no hint for why or how this might be done. The truth is that the charters of our public broadcasters are gloriously broadly worded, binding them to almost nothing, and open to interpretation by whomever is in power.

This is not necessarily a bad thing in a document governing an arts organisation. Ask the judges of the Miles Franklin Award whether they wouldn?t rather Miles had allowed them to give the gong to works by Australians, without insisting that they also be works about Australia.

So what do the charters say, and what do they not say, and what should they say in the new media world?

The ABC Charter binds Auntie to providing ?innovative and comprehensive? broadcasting services, and then goes on ?without limiting the generality of the foregoing? to talk about national identity, informing and entertaining, educating and reflecting cultural diversity, as well as encouraging the arts. In doing all these things, the ABC should ?take account of? services already provided by the commercials, and its responsibility to ?provide a balance between broadcasting programs of wide appeal and specialized broadcasting programs?.

So there you have it. Could mean anything. Clearly light entertainment is there as well as information and education. In the past critics like Michael Duffy have suggested the ABC should limit itself do providing those ?public goods? that the commercial sector cannot provide, and forget about everything else ? such as light entertainment and bite sized news. In other words, he would like to keep Radio National. More recently critics like Chris Berg have argued that activities like establishing an island in Second Life are not part of the brief. ?There does not appear to be any under-provision of idiots with money to spend in Second Life,? he says.

So how should the charter be reconsidered? The one thing among all the chatter that really sticks out is that the ABC is no longer only about broadcasting, nor can it be if it is to remain relevant. While the charter does allow the organisation to do pretty much anything it likes that helps it to broadcast, there is no doubt that the emphasis and end purpose is conceived as the airwaves.

What should a charter for a publicly funded new media ?space? require? The words that are clearly missing from the charter at the moment are ?participation?. The ABC should be chartered to encourage public engagement and participation in its offerings. The ABC is already moving in this direction. Look at Unleashed or Heywire. Both managing director Mark Scott and the 2020 summiteers talked about the organisation being the nation?s ?town square? in which Australians can meet to discuss their concerns. But critics like Berg ask how will this be different to the many other blogs and sites available for this, and why should the taxpayer fund it?

I actually don?t think this question is too hard to answer. First, the ABC is different precisely because it is paid for by the taxpayers, and employs professional journalists, producers and directors. The internet makes that relationship more direct, and raises the possibility of good quality content makers being in the commission of the public in a very direct fashion. Most blogs consist only of audience participation, and while this is useful it isn?t enough. What is needed is collaboration between professionals and audience, and professionals who are responsive to the audience. The ABC is one of the likely places for this to happen.

Second, the ABC does not take advertising, and that means that it can be a town square, rather than a shopping mall ? speaking to the audience as citizens, not only as consumers.

Which leads us to the SBS Charter. This too is non-prescriptive. It says the ?principal function of SBS is to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia's multicultural society.? But note that phrase ?all Australians?. The present managing director, Shaun Brown, has emphasised that phrase to argue that SBS cannot be only an ethnic broadcaster.

He has gone further. In a speech last August he argued that this part of the Charter meant that ?SBS must not and cannot be defined by its audience.? He went on: ?It is no more true to say that we exist for ethnic Australians than it is to say that all ethnic Australians watch or listen to SBS because they are ethnic. Such generalisations belittle all of us. Rather the Charter requires us to be defined by our content and services, reflecting Australia?s multicultural society to all Australians.?

This seems to be confused thinking to me, particularly in the interactive age. And if SBS is serving all Australians, then how is it different from the ABC ? other than because it takes ads?

Brown also said the preoccupation among commentators with the fact that SBS takes advertising has precluded broader debates about its function. He says that the ABC/BBC model of government funding is not the only way to do public broadcasting.

Perhaps, but I think the truth is that taking ads inevitably blurs the purpose and emphasis of an organisation. Would Brown be able to say that the audience does not define his service if he didn?t take ads? The risk, of course, is that the advertisers will come to define it.

Nor does remarkably thin corporate plan for SBS shed much light on how the organisation conceives its responsibilities. One of the few specifics is a commitment to major expenditure on Australian content ? but $100 million over five years will not change the course of history.

So where does this leave us? Yes, the charters need revisiting, if only to broaden the focus from broadcasting to all the many things a new media organisation must be. But in organisations that must indeed be increasingly defined by their audiences, we would be silly to make the documents too prescriptive.

What ?public goods? might the public actually require once given their voice in the new town squares? None of us know. It?s quite scary ? but good scary ? to think about it. ?

Margaret Simons?s latest book, The Content Makers: Understanding the Media in Australia, is published by Penguin.