It comes around every three or four years — an orchestrated push to pressure the ABC into spending more of its budget on locally produced drama. This time the lead agitator is former ABC TV boss Kim Dalton. A career bureaucrat, not broadcaster, Dalton penned a “paper” in late April calling for the government to impose content quotas on the national broadcaster.
All the usual suspects from the screen production sector then dutifully piled on. Review this weekend ran an extended feature on the same theme and allowed many of the more prominent participants a free kick. We heard from Penny Chapman (another former ABC TV head), from Screen Producers Australia, from Nick Murray (a principal of the powerful CJZ production partnership) and from Dalton himself.
These champions of quotas to increase local drama output at the ABC rely on the same fundamental claim. They prattle pompously about the need to “tell more Australian stories”, surely one of the most overworked cliches clogging any sensible debate about the proper shape of our cultural landscape.
[Local content rules not needed for ABC: Michelle Guthrie]
“More local content!” has been a reflex catchcry for half a century. It’s an easy way to paint yourself as a standard bearer for quality television. The idealism is admirable; the practicalities more complex. What seems like an inarguably positive goal has an underbelly of subtler, and sometimes counter-poised, factors.
From one perspective it can be seen as little more than special pleading. Dalton and his claqueurs are lobbying for commercial advantage. Every one of the prominent figures calling for quotas has a direct financial or career interest in drama production for the screen and would expect to benefit in some way if the ABC were compelled by legislation to broadcast nominated amounts.
They rarely acknowledge this in their media releases or interviews, instead wrapping themselves in the flag of Australian national identity. What they’re really asking for is a combination of subsidy and protectionism. In effect, they want a guaranteed increased share of the market, and for the taxpayer to fund those ambitions. Nice work if you can get it.
But what’s so special about drama that puts it above all the other forms of screen entertainment? There has been a far greater loss of arts and sports programming on the ABC during the past two decades, yet where are the “powerful industry figures” demanding quotas for coverage of opera, concerts, ballet, theatre, the plastic arts, cricket, football or golf?
Those arguing for significant increases in local drama transmission also never tell us that it is by far the most expensive form of television content to produce in Australia. The sector has become so accustomed to long, fully funded development lead times and inflated production budgets that they can’t understand that their asking price is often the crux of the problem.
But, to be fair, the ABC itself is far from blameless in this situation.
Twenty years ago Aunty’s senior executive group — including the aforementioned Penny Chapman — led a movement to take the corporation away from its traditional in-house production functions and towards what they liked to call the “commissioning model”, based on Channel 4 in the UK. It was far more efficient (they claimed) to contract out the ABC’s programming requirements to the commercial producers. Yet it never occurred to them that by closing down their own production capacity they would make themselves captive to outside companies.
[‘Cuts mean that I have nothing to aspire to’: ABC wields the axe, cutting morale to the bone]
At the same time, under managing director Brian Johns, the ABC embarked on a grand infrastructure initiative titled “Collocation”. Its major studio lots at Ripponlea and Gore Hill were abandoned for new office-style accommodation alongside radio in the Melbourne and Sydney city precincts. Previously busy TV departments such as production design and the scenic workshop (set construction) — both vital for making in-house drama — were wound up and their staff made redundant. Where once the national broadcaster had splendid sound stages, its new studios were equipped to do not much more than standard, talking-head television.
So the simple truth is that the ABC no longer has the skills base or facilities to make its own drama programming. It buys rather than makes. At best, the ABC co-produces with external companies — the self-styled “independents” — which quite reasonably lump a hefty profit margin onto their already daunting production budgets. Aunty cannot afford to make as much drama as she might wish to, and never will again.
Everyone (other, perhaps, than Eric Abetz and Pauline Hanson) would like to see our national broadcaster produce more of its output, but nobody is prepared to say (at least in public) where the extra money required should come from.
Privately, the drama spruikers suggest the answer is to cut into the corporation’s news and current affairs budgets. That’s hardly a convincing option. News and current affairs define the ABC, and they deliver far greater audiences than even the most popular dramas — and at a fraction of the cost per hour.
In any case, raw quotas in themselves provide no assurance of quality. “More local content” may seem like a noble cause, but content can only be measured by genre, duration and time-slot. Everything else — production values, relevance and artistic merit — is largely subjective. It’s easy to forget that Married at First Sight and The Biggest Loser are “Australian content” too.
You’re right about one thing – the “Collocation” putsch meant that the ABC no longer forms the spine of training it once did. A great shame, many, many lost opportunities there, not least of which is the powerhouse of knowledge and support available to new entrants.
While they are arguing the toss over producing new drama I suggest they re-televise a couple classics from the archives ie: The Scales of Justice and Phoenix.
Fine examples of quality drama.
It’s hard to know where to begin correcting the numerous errors of both fact and logic in this boneheaded commentary. Perhaps it stems from the fact that David has never produced a frame of TV that was not made within the warm salaried embrace of the ABC, but this is no excuse for being so ignorant of the realities of the production ecology in Australia.
For a start it is slanderous to argue Kim Dalton’s rational, well-argued essay on the ABC’s stealthful appropriation of drama funding for use elsewhere was made in self-interest. He in NOT a producer, but a hugely qualified industry executive with experience both inside and outside the ABC. He knows the business,
Second, the realities of funding quality TV changed long ago, and had little to do with ABC management decisions. More than anything they were driven by cultural politics and industry lobbying, including the determined efforts of commercial networks. It would be ludicrous for the ABC to attempt in-house drama, because it would be disqualified by law from accessing additional funding from the likes of Screen Australia or tax incentives. The net result would be that ABC in-house production would cost at least 40% higher than acquiring the same program from an outside supplier (but in reality likely even more than this).
Third, far from taking on independently produced programs that have padded budgets and fat profit margins, in fact the ABC benefits from being one of the very few buyers being offered products from a multitude of suppliers. It can pick and choose, and name its price— and the industry has to take what it can get. It might interest Crikey readers to know that on average the ABC might pay around 25-30% of the cost of an Australian drama production, and even less if the producer has managed to bring an international partner to the table (like the current Cleverman series). The producers must take the risk on finding the rest and the hope that anything they make might have value elsewhere in the world. Margins are incredbily thin, and contrary to your claim, the full costs of development are NEVER paid for by local broadcasters
Fourth, if David believes it makes sense for the ABC to maintain standing armies of drama crews and technicians on staff, (whether they are working or not) as well as large fixed studio spaces in six states then he has no concept of what a hugely expensive exercise this would be. A few years ago the ABC built a state of the art facility in Perth and it sat largely idle and moribund most of the time before it was finally unloaded. The vagaries of production are simply too risky to leave such expensive real estate unused. In any case, most modern drama required extensive location shooting these days (audiences expect more than Prisoner Cell Block A and its wobbling walls). Another reason it makes sense to outsource and buy productions at a fraction of their total costs.
Finally, and most importantly, for an explanation of why it matters for Australians to hear their own stories, in their own voice, by their own artists, I simply refer you to David Stratton’s current series reflecting on 50 years of Australian cinema. Then you might get it. There is no shortage of Australian sport on Australian TV, and while I am sorry the ABC is not being held properly to account for its charter obligation to the Arts, this simply underscores the real point: if the ABC is not held to a drama quota in the same way that commercial broadcaster are, it will continue to look increasingly like BBC Downunder, filled with cheap, forgettable and largely irrelevant British buyins. A bit like SBS actually.
Simon Nasht
… but without such brilliant and culturally definitive productions such as Newton’s Law our stale white bread suburban existence would lose all meaning!
Who’da thunk? The call for more local drama content from the ABC (without any thought of increasing the budget) is just another shameless rent-seeking exercise from that particular group of usual suspects.