conclusion_phd_terry flew
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Conclusion
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Chapter Eight
Conclusion
In this thesis, I have demonstrated three propositions. First, it is necessity to
understand the institutional and policy frameworks through which creative and
cultural practice occurs. In this thesis, I have been particularly interested in the
relationship between collective forms of political agency and institutional
structures of government and the corporate sector. I have also argued that
application of such a problematic to the media introduces issues that did not
sufficiently register in debates such as those surrounding cultural policy studies in
Australia in the 1990s. One of these has been the particular nature of privately
owned broadcast media as a form of soft property, and the resulting ambiguities
of government regulation. The thesis has also addressed the emergence of
distinctive institutional frameworks and policy settlements in national
broadcasting systems, such as the social contract in Australian broadcasting, that
has connected privileged access to the airwaves to pro-social policy obligations
such as those around Australian content. The thesis has also analysed the
implications of broadcast communications being potentially borderless, rather
than based within nation-states. Media policy concerning broadcast program
content has often constituted a form of communicative boundary maintenance,
particularly in countries such as Australia that are especially open to content from
the United States as the worlds principal audiovisual exporter.
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The second proposition that I have demonstrated in this thesis has been the
ongoing significance of citizenship discourses to Australian broadcast media
policy. It was argued in Chapter One that citizenship discourses emerged out of
the public trust aspects of spectrum ownership, as well as the public nature of
communications using broadcast media and their impact upon the formation of
national and cultural identities. It was stressed that citizenship concerns were not
exclusively associated with public broadcasting, but arose from both the public
nature of communications undertaken by commercial media, and the ways in
which regulatory and policy actions to shape the conduct of commercial
broadcasters were legitimised, on the basis of their private appropriation of a
public resource. Citizenship discourse possesses two parallel elements: a political
element that stresses the right of public participation in decisions affecting the
lives of citizens in a democratic society; and a national element that concerns the
role played by cultural technologies and institutions in the nationing of
populations. Both aspects of citizenship discourse possess significant areas of
tension and contradiction. In the case of political citizenship in liberal
democracies, it is apparent that the freedom of citizens has been premised upon
their governance as populations through what Michel Foucault refers to as the
process ofgovernmentality. Such processes create issues about the legitimacy of
governmental authority, or what has variously been termed the participation gap
or the democratic deficit. In terms of national citizenship, broadcast media
promote the uncoupling of space and time in communications, and an orientation
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towards international distribution that challenges the goal of modern nation-
building states to establish linkages between polity and culture within defined
national territories.
The third proposition that I have presented in this thesis has been that,
while there are underlying continuities in institutional structures and policy
settlements in Australian broadcast media, there have at the same time been policy
changes, and associated forms of policy activism, that have given distinctive
inflections to the social contract in Australian broadcasting. In the 1970s,
following a period of sustained campaigning for the democratisation of media
policy formation, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal sought to use the licence
renewal process as the basis for an open-ended engagement between the public as
citizens with commercial broadcasters as trustees of the broadcasting spectrum.
While such initiatives came to grief fairly quickly, they nonetheless promoted
more organised, collective and focused forms of media policy activism, that were
effectively mobilised in the 1980s around the ABTs inquiry into the
establishment of Australian content regulations for commercial television.
In the 1990s, with the passing of the Broadcasting Services Act, such
activism by public interest and media advocacy groups was to some extent
sidelined by the neo-liberal policy discourses of light touch regulation and
regulation by exception. It is less apparent, however, that the promotion of
competition and new services sought by the drafters of this legislation was
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achieved, as the Big Three commercial broadcasters thrived in the new
environment and new service providers such as the pay TV sector faced policy-
induced obstacles. Moreover, accusations existed that the new forms of regulation
had failed to govern enough, as indicated by the concerns raised about so-called
co-regulatory arrangements towards broadcaster conduct in light of the cash-
for-comment scandals in commercial radio, or that they governed too much, as
with the passing of new laws in the areas of censorship and program
classification. The balance between too much and too little governance
represents a classic problematic of liberal forms of government, and the basis of
policy failure and continuous policy innovation.
Policy developments in Australia since the late 1980s increasingly
occurred under the shadow of international trade agreements such as the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the resulting disciplines being
established by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Australian trade negotiators
have approached such agreements from the perspective of Australia as a nation
that is pro-free-trade, partly because of its status as a major primary products
exporter, but also as a result of the free trade consensus that had consolidated in
Australian public policy since the 1970s, as the culture of protection all round
(Emy 1993) has been eschewed in favour of policy settings that promote a more
open, dynamic and internationally competitive economy. Interestingly, this agenda
has been pursued more strongly by Labor governments since the 1970s, which
may reflect the heretical view of the Australian Labor Party as the party most
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likely to promote comprehensive economic reform on the basis of its lack of ties
to particular corporate interests (Catley 1996; Latham 1998).
This thesis will conclude with consideration of three current issues that
impact upon the analysis developed in this thesis. First, there is a discussion of the
Productivity Commissions inquiry into Australian broadcasting, which marks the
most sustained use of the competition policy framework to critique the regulatory
quid pro quos that it believes have governed Australian broadcasting policy, and
now constitute a barrier to the realisation of consumer and national policy
objectives from media convergence and the information technology revolution.
Second, there is a discussion of the contradictory elements of Australian
approaches to liberalising international trade in audiovisual services, that result
from the diverse range of policy discourses and policy cultures through which
such actions are apprehended. Finally, there is consideration of the implications of
media convergence, and the further development of media as a convergent
services industry. Further research questions arising from the analysis developed
in this thesis are also considered, around the nature of global media markets,
globalisation and questions of governance, creative industries, media and the
future of citizenship, and intellectuals and the policy process.
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Revisiting Competition Policy: The Productivity Commissions
Inquiry into Australian Broadcasting
The growing significance of competition policy principles to broadcast
media policy was a worldwide trend in the 1990s, as the focus of regulation
shifted from maintaining the viability of individual media organisations and
regulating their conduct to promoting a more competitive process (OECD 1993).
It was argued in Chapter Six that the Broadcasting Services Act1992 was
premised upon an in-principle commitment to making broadcast media policy
consistent with competition policy and microeconomic reform principles.
However, in practice, a range of restrictions remained that ensured the viability
and profitability of the commercial free-to-air broadcasting sector, seen by many
as the condition for guaranteeing Australian content and other pro-social
programming regulations such as those involving childrens programming.
In that light, the decision of the Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, to ask
the Productivity Commission, in accordance with the Commonwealth
governments Legislation Review Schedule, to inquire and report into the
operations of the Broadcasting Services Act1992 and related legislation, was a
very important one. Under the Terms of Reference of the Inquiry, the
Productivity Commission was required to:
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Advise on practical courses of action to improve competition, efficiency
and the interests of consumers in broadcasting services;
Focus particular attention on balancing the social, cultural and economic
dimensions of the public interest; and
Take into account the technological change in broadcasting services,
particularly the phenomenon of convergence (Productivity Commission
1999: xii).
It was also required to consider broadcasting legislation in light of both its own
guidelines under the Productivity Commission Act 1998, and the broader
parameters for regulation assessment outlined in the Competition Principles
Arrangement (CPA), agreed to by the Commonwealth, state and territory
governments in 1995. Of most significance was the requirement, under the CPA,
that any legislation that restricts competition should be retained only if the
benefits to the community as a whole outweigh the costs and if the objectives can
be met only by restricting competition.
The Productivity Commissions Report was highly critical of the
Broadcasting Services Act, which was considered to be outdated, administratively
complex, contrary to competition policy and other public policy principles, and an
inadequate base from which to respond to the challenges of digitisation,
technological convergence and new media services. In particular, it found that the
legislation was inconsistent with national competition policy in a number of areas,
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including Section 28 of the Broadcasting Services Act that sets a three-station
limit on commercial broadcast television services in a licence area, and the
operation of the anti-siphoning list which restricted access for subscription
broadcasters to various sports events. The argument that entry restrictions were a
necessary condition for enabling the commercial broadcasting industry to meet
cultural policy objectives, such as Australian content and childrens programming
standards, was believed to be an unconvincing justification for maintaining these
anti-competitive arrangements:
It is questionable whether the restrictions on entry are a necessary trade-off
for imposing such obligations on the commercial broadcasters. Few
industries enjoy entry restrictions to compensate for public obligations
All industries must meet the requirements of various codes, standards and
regulations It is not clear why the broadcasting industry is marked for
special treatment and compensated for meeting its obligations. Higher
costs do not justify restrictions on entry. (Productivity Commission 2000:
319)
The Productivity Commission argued that such restrictions were part of a
history of political, technical, industrial, economic and social compromises in
Australian broadcasting policy, leaving a legacy of quid pro quos [that] has
created a policy framework that is inward looking, anti-competitive and restrictive
(Productivity Commission 2000: 5). The Commissions arguments against
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perpetuating these quid pro quos, or what has been described in this thesis as the
social contractbetween broadcasters, regulators, the production sector and public
interest groups, were strengthened by two related arguments. The first was the
observation that, in spite of production industry arguments for continuation of
such regulatory arrangements (eg. SPAA 1999), the independent production sector
actually got very little from the arrangement in comparison with the broadcast
licensees. The Productivity Commission drew attention to the criticisms raised by
production industry groups such as SPAA, ASDA, the Australian Writers Guild
and the MEAA, that unequal bargaining power between the broadcast networks
and the content production industry had led to program licence fees remaining
static through the 1990s, in spite of high industry profitability and station licence
values Second, the Commission noted that the $105.1 million spent by commercial
broadcasters on the program areas that are governed by content quotas - Australian
drama, Australian childrens programs, and documentaries - accounted for only 14
per cent of total commercial broadcaster expenditure on programming, and 5 per
cent of the broadcasters total expenditure of $1.94 billion in 1996/97. This cost
was in no way commensurate to the benefits derived from restricted access to
commercial broadcast licences, calculated at $347.2 million in Sydney and $201.2
million in Melbourne (Productivity Commission 1999: 143, 147).
The Productivity Commission was particularly concerned about the
extension ofquid pro quo arrangements into the digital broadcasting environment.
The plan developed by the Australian Federal government for the transition to
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digital broadcasting, which mandated high definition TV, prohibited
multichannelling by commercial broadcasters, required analogue and digital
simulcasting until 2008, set restrictions upon the development of datacasting and
interactive services, and extended the prohibition upon new commercial broadcast
licences until 2006, was seen by the Commission as anti-competitive and deeply
flawed. In extending the logic of trade offs and protection of incumbent
broadcasters into a media domain that was likely to be profoundly different, the
Commission believed that government policy had placed considerable and
arbitrary limitations on the innovative, interactive and additional services made
possible by the technology of digital transmission (Productivity Commission
2000: 256). The current conversion plan was believed to generate outcomes which
reduced the efficiency of spectrum management; created complex, artificial and
arbitrary restrictions upon the development of new services; restricted the
diversity of services available to consumers; reduced the likelihood of developing
new and innovative media services in Australia; and maintained an anti-
competitive arrangement which unduly benefited incumbent broadcasters. The
Commission argued that, in an environment of pervasive technological change
and uncertainty about the impact of new services:
It is not the time to add more quid pro quo bricks to the wall, but to take
the opportunity to design a structure to serve Australians better. Greater
competition, less regulation, spectrum licensing reforms, and the rapid
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release of spectrum are the best means of achieving this objective.
(Productivity Commission 2000: 254).
The Productivity Commissions Report has, as of mid-2000, had little
impact upon the conduct of broadcast media policy in Australia. The Liberal-
National Party governments Broadcasting Services Amendment (Digital
Television and Datacasting) Bill 2000 was passed in June 2000 with minor
amendments related primarily to giving national broadcasters the capacity to
develop multichannel services, but with the three-station rule and strict limits on
datacasting remaining in place. ORegan (2000) has, however, cautioned against
concluding that the Productivity Commissions intervention into these debates
was a failure. Noting that the Productivity Commission defined its role as an
agenda-setting and an educative one, he observes that the Commission insists
that it has the luxury of the long view, and that its reports are not be judged in a
two- to three-year departmental and political cycle, but in a nine-year timeframe
(ORegan 2000: 6). What the Productivity Commissions Inquiry into
Broadcasting has forced on to the debate cultures of broadcast media policy is the
question of competition policy, and the question of whether critics of current
broadcast media policy arrangements should support measures to promote greater
competition in the broadcasting sector. To this end, the Commission used the
context of pervasive technological change and media convergence to give a sense
of urgency to these questions, and to lever dissatisfaction with thestatus quo.
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Contradictions of the Australian Position on the GATS and
Audiovisual Services
The globalisation of Australias film and television industries in the 1980s
and 1990s had contradicatory impacts. It stimulated investment and growth in the
audiovisual sector, including the production of high-budget films such as Star
Wars: The Phantom Menace and Mission: Impossible II. At the same time,
organisations such as the Australian Film Commission and the Film Finance
Corporation have expressed concerns that ownership and control of the film and
television industry is becoming increasingly concentrated into the hands of a
shrinking number of global corporations which have the market power and
international reach to reap the benefits of the digital revolution, and that the
possibility of a distinctively Australian film and television sector was being
eroded through such developments (AFC/AFFC 1999: 21). As a result, the
industry aspects of film and TV production were being uncoupled from their
cultural aspects, and an economic structure was emerging that would be
increasingly driven by decisions made outside of Australia. Such organisations
therefore supported proposals for a cultural exemption or a nw international
cultural instrument in the Millennium Round of GATS negotiations through the
WTO.
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These tensions are likely to intensify over the next decade. The free trade
consensus established in the 1970s and 1980s continues to be a shared position
among Australias mainstream political parties, partly because Australias primary
industries benefit from free international trade and because policies of domestic
defence for manufacturing are seen to have failed, but also because many
Australian service industries have an interest in progressive trade liberalisation,
either because they are significant exporters in these sectors (eg. education or
tourism), or because domestic policy arrangements have already been
significantly liberalised (eg. telecommunications).
1
At the same time, given the
strong and politically bipartisan support that has existed for cultural policy
measures such as Australian content regulations for commercial television as
instruments for building national cultural citizenship, and it is likely that articles
of the GATS and adjudications of the WTO that threaten such arrangements
would attract considerable domestic political opposition.
In this context, the question of regionalism has also become more, not
less, important in an era of multilateral trade agreements. It is apparent that the
hostile nature of theProject Blue Sky case stemmed not so much from the actual
threat presented by New Zealand-produced programming in Australian
audiovisual markets, but rather from a fear that any dismantling of local content
requirements could promote a race to the bottom, with competitive dismantling
of domestic content regulations in order to attract footloose international capital.
It has been argued in this thesis that, as the overwhelmingly dominant partner in
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such trade relations, Australia has little to fear from trans-Tasman trade
liberalisation if it is not the thin end of the wedge for abandoning local content
regulations. As the issue of bilateralism will not disappear, governments in both
Australia and New Zealand should be considering opportunities for regulatory
harmonisation and establishing bases for mutually beneficial trading relations in
the audiovisual sector.2 A principled bilateralism is likely to provide a better
position from which both Australia and New Zealand can strengthen the focus
upon the specificities of culture, rather than a perceived opposition to
multilateralism per se, that is not consistent with the economic dynamics of the
Australian film and television production sectors.
Media Convergence and Convergent Service Industries
The phenomena of digitisation and convergence are, as has been widely noted, the
central elements of the early twenty-first century media environment.
Convergence across the once discrete fields of computing and information
technology, telecommunications, and broadcast and print media has already
occurred at the levels of delivery networks, institutional alliances, and new
industries and services (Miles 1997; Barr 2000). In the early twenty-first century,
the move that is taking place from the convergence of IT, telecommunications and
media, towards next-generation convergence, where the implications of
convergence extend into the entire services sector, including financial, retail,
community, health and education services (CSM 1999: 5-6). Such convergence is
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associated with structural convergence, or the shift from traditional service
industry models to convergent service industry models. The Department of
Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) has noted some
interesting differences between traditional service industries, such as
telecommunications and broadcasting, and the convergent service industry model:
Table 8.1
Traditional and Convergent Service Industry Models
Traditional Service Industry Model Convergent Service Industry Model
Distinct and vertically integrated
industries
Well-defined market boundaries
Strong economies of scale leading
to dominant infrastructure providerswho regulate access to content
Standardised and mass appeal
content Limits to international distribution;
scope of service markets typicallydomestic rather than international
Disaggregation of infrastructure,
delivery mechanisms andapplications or content
Blurring of traditional market
boundaries
Reduced barriers to entry for new
players, and greater product and
service innovation User customisation of applications,
services and content
Internationalisation of service
markets, especially where servicesare delivered electronically
Source: DCITA 2000.
In traditional service industries, national regulators are able to control
service providers on an industry-by-industry basis by controlling entry to
domestic infrastructure markets. Content was able to be regulated through the
conditions attached to access to scarce electromagnetic spectrum resources within
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the domestic market. By contrast, convergent service industry models are seen as
being characterised by fluidity of content and services, disaggregation of the
infrastructure from the content, and internationalised forms of network-based
content distribution. The challenge arising in such an environment is how to meet
cultural policy objectives such as Australian content, childrens programming and
diversity of content where the traditional mechanism of indirectly achieving
content outcomes through the regulation of industry and market structures may be
les applicable than they have been in the period from the 1960s to the present.
The central policy issues arsing from convergence for broadcast media
policy so far have been the conversion from analogue to digital television, and the
question of rules for datacasting. Characteristically, technological questions have
so far predominated, with questions related to content in the new media
environment being relegated to second-order issues. The question of securing
public interest obligations in an era of digital broadcasting has, however, been
widely considered in the United States and Britain (Advisory Committee 1998;
Firestone and Garmer 1998; Graham 1998). Two conclusions are apparent from
this literature. The first is that rules-based interventions such as Australian content
or childrens programming quotas are likely to be less effective over time, and
their effectiveness in the new environment will be inversely related to the
development of new types of service; the more that efficiencies in spectrum use
lead to new types of service, such as themed channels, datacasting and pay-per-
view, the less relevant content-based rules will become. Second, the significance
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of a well-funded public broadcasting institution, oriented toward quality
programming, cultural and community development, political and national
citizenship, and responding to areas of market failure in the commercial
broadcasting sector, becomes more rather than less significant in the digital media
environment, even if it is also the case that more channels and services enhance
viewer choice. Graham (1998) argues that issues relating to gaps in the broadcast
media environment increasingly require qualitative judgments by broadcasters
rather than formal rules regulated by government agencies, because the effective
achievement of such pro-social goals requires an organisational culture where
there is a commitment to such goals, rather than to their evasion or a reluctant
commitment to minimum compliance.3
There are important interconnections between competition policy,
international trade law and media convergence in terms of their impact upon
domestic broadcast media policy. The OECD envisages that that with the
increasing number and variety of network-based services, competition policy
needs to play a much greater role in the regulation of audiovisual content (OECD
1999: 12), while international trade theorists argue that the international
harmonisation of competition policies and the relationship between international
trade policies and domestic competition policies will emerge as one of the major
new issues on the trade policy agenda in the years ahead (Trebilcock and Howse
1995: 124). While the Productivity Commission chose not to refer to international
trade agreements in its Final Report, Recommendation 11.4 of its Report for an
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independent public inquiry into Australian audiovisual and cultural policy to be
completed by 2004 explicitly refers to the problems likely to arise with current
Australian content regulations in the context of convergence and the emergence of
new services:
In the long term, the current system of Australian content regulation is
likely to become unsustainable as a means of addressing the social and
cultural objectives of broadcasting. An alternative, technologically neutral
policy approach should be developed - one which will not impede future
media innovation or convergence, and which is well integrated into the
audiovisual industry and cultural policy more broadly. (Productivity
Commission 2000: 420)
The End of the Social Contract?
The powerful forces of national competition policy, international trade law and
media convergence are likely to render the social contract in Australian
commercial television, where industry protection is exchanged for content
regulations, untenable. At the same time, an important lesson of the 1990s was
that claims about the immanent death of broadcasting can be premature (Given
1998). Australias commercial television networks continue to be powerful and
profitable economic entities, powerful political entities, and to have invested
heavily across new media from their base in old media. Moreover, for all the
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bright talk about media abundance and networked interactivity, there remain
major unresolved questions concerning culture, citizenship and the role of public
policy in Australian television. The three major issues that remain unresolved are:
How to secure levels and types of Australian programming that meet
cultural development objectives as well as sustaining a viable
audiovisual production industry in an era of media globalisation and
disciplines under the GATS that set limits upon the capacity to use
public policy to deliver competitive advantages to domestic producers;
How to guarantee the availability of a diverse range of program genres
in formats that are widely accessible to all sections of the community,
particularly in the areas of childrens programming and local
production;
How to ensure that media distributors have some degree of
accountability to the public as citizens in their use of public resources
for commercial purposes.
A further issue arises about the politics of media reform. It has been argued in this
thesis that the public trust doctrine of commercial broadcasters use of the public
airwaves provided the basis for ongoing activism in the policy process by media
reform and advocacy groups, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. Such capacity
for intervention by organised interest groups was diluted significantly with the
Broadcasting Services Act1992, but it is apparent that such legislation been
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neither consistent in its neo-liberal orientation towards consumer sovereignty, nor
have the co-regulatory regimes it has promoted sufficiently addressed public
concerns about the conduct of media organisations.
A major policy issue is how promote Australian content across all sectors
of Australian television in ways that are not premised upon the regulation of
market entry into the commercial free-to-air broadcasting sector. Strategies are
needed for the production and distribution of local content that do not hinge upon
the restriction of competition or upon the restriction of development of new
technologies and services, and which are not at odds with national goals of
Australia becoming an information economy. Evidence is emerging that the
existence of a largely unregulated pay TV sector is proving to be of benefit to
particular program genres such as documentary (Cunningham, 2000), while it is
increasingly apparent that program quotas in areas such as childrens
programming have not prevented a plummet in licence fees paid by networks to
producers (Aisbett, 1999). In this light, it may be worth having another look at
schemes to support local production that are not premised upon a binary
opposition between a regulated commercial free-to-air and an unregulated pay TV
sector, and to consider how local production can be stimulated by subsidies and
financial incentives as well as quotas. There is also a major need to consider the
current and possible future roles of national public broadcasters in the sustaining
of a viable local television production industry. The relationship between funding
of national public broadcasters and activity in the local audiovisual production
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industry, across a range of program genres, is an issue that needs particular
attention.
Further Research Questions
Among the many issues arising from this study, five questions can be identified as
requiring further research. One is the nature of media and cultural markets, and
the relationships between investment, production, distribution and consumption,
both domestically and internationally, in these sectors. It has been observed in this
thesis that, while there exists an important body of literature that seeks to analyse
the nature and dynamics of the cultural industries, there also exists a strong
tendency to dismiss such concerns as products of a misguided economic
rationalism, or to dichotomise media and cultural industries between the
commercial and state-subsidised sectors. Such thinking has been shown by
leading social-democratic theorists such as Hugh Stretton (1987) and Alec Nove
(1983) to be inadequate at a general level, with Stretton arguing that:
Wherever they work as they should, especially where they work without
generating undue inequalities of wealth and power, Left thinkers should
value them [markets] as highly as any privatiser does. Indeed, more
highly: the Left has such necessary tasks for government, and so much to
lose from inefficient or cumbersome bureaucracy, that it should economise
bureaucracy every way it can. (Stretton, 1987: 27)
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Thinking that dichotomises the relationship between markets and
government administration is likely to prove even more problematic as there is a
shift in cultural policy away from the subsidisation of the arts and artists, towards
the development of infrastructural support for the creative industries. Charles
Leadbetter has defined creative industries as those cultural industries such as
music, entertainment and fashion that are:
driven not by trained professionals but cultural entrepreneurs who make
the most of other peoples talent and creativity. In creative industries, large
organisations provide access to the market, through retailing and
distribution, but the creativity comes from a pool of independent content
producers. (Leadbetter 1999: 49)
While this way of thinking has not yet strongly developed in broadcasting, it is
very much characteristic of new economy areas of the cultural sector, such as
games, software and Web site development. A convergence between these modes
of production and distribution with the traditional, Fordist models of industries
such as broadcasting is anticipated by organisations such as the Creative
Industries Task Force developed in Britain in 1998. The Task Force, developed by
the UK Ministry of Culture, Media and Sport, links television, radio and film in
with a diverse range of industry sectors, ranging from other areas of media such
as advertising, music, performing arts and publishing, to fields such as fashion,
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crafts, design, interactive leisure software, and architecture (Creative Industries
Task Force 1998). It is also consistent with the move towards digitisation and
convergence, as there is increasingly an uncoupling of content from its delivery
platforms, and policies towards the content industries are likely to differ from
those towards the distributors of content, as is the case in computing and
telecommunications (OECD 1998; DCITA 2000).
Future research will also have to engage not only with the
internationalisation of media industries and media markets, but also with the
internationalisation of media governance. There are mutually reinforcing elements
between competition policy, international trade law and media convergence that
are moving media regulation away from frameworks that are national, sector-
specific and discretionary, towards frameworks that are generic, compatible with
international trade law and legally binding. Such trends can be seen as pointing
towards the internationalisation of media governance, where domestic laws,
policies and regulatory frameworks are developed with at least one eye on their
compatibility with binding bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral trade agreements.
In this respect, the significance of Australian broadcasting regulations to
multilateral trade agreements such as the GATS may have less to do with the
compatibility of existing legislation to this framework, and more to do with how
the existence of the GATS framework will shape future forms of broadcasting
regulation. It is in this respect that the proposal to shift GATS negotiations from a
bottom-up or a la carte approach to a top-down or across-the-board
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approach, where compliance with the GATS framework exists unless specified
otherwise, impinges significantly upon the future of Australian content policies.
The relationship between media and citizenship clearly requires further
consideration. It has been argued that citizenship is both a political and a cultural
phenomenon. Citizenship has also been a national phenomenon, where
individuals become part of a society that provides certain rights in exchange for
particular obligations, but where there are ongoing processes, that are primarily
cultural, where a nationing of citizens takes place in order to develop a binding
sense of membership of and commitment to an identified nation-state sand
national-political community. I have argued in this thesis that, in relation to
national citizenship and questions of national culture, there has been considerable
analysis of the role played by media in such processes of identity formation. Work
on the role played by print media in the formation of nations, histories of public
broadcasting, analyses of the implications of international media economics for
the maintenance of distinctive national broadcast media systems, and critiques of
the dominant structure of international communications flows have all played an
important role in clarifying the issues involved in the relationship between media
and citizenship.
One point that is apparent is that the framework of strong citizenship,
where there is strong congruence between culture and polity, is not an experience
that is characteristic of most national populations outside of Europe. As a result,
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accounts developed from the metropolitan centres tend to overstate the crisis of
culture, citizenship and the nation-state that is presented by economic, political
and cultural globalisation. In countries like Australia, the development of national
television cultures has always occurred, as Tom ORegan observes, at the
intersection of international, national, regional and local scales, in a wider
context where limited and shared sovereignty is nothing new (ORegan 1993:
xiv, 101). Settler or new countries such as Australia have been characterised by
a high level of permeability to imported economic, political and cultural
influences, as well as high levels of migration from a wide range of countries A
paradoxical consequence, observed by Castles and Davidson (2000) is that the
difficulties such societies face in asserting national sovereignty and a distinctive
national identity (strong citizenship) has enabled them to be more open to
multiculturalism, on the basis of the weak ties between a dominant conception of
the national culture and notions of citizenship and identity. Debates about the
relationship between culture and citizenship need to give greater consideration of
those societies characterised by a historically weak form of citizenship, and
whether they have proved more amenable to discourses of multiculturalism and
cultural pluralism than those societies where a strong congruence between
political, national and cultural citizenship has prevailed.
The relationship between media and political citizenship has not been
strongly explored in the academic literature. The dominant academic literature on
citizenship (eg. Heater 1990; Davidson 1997) has been reluctant to attribute any
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significance to the means of mass communication to the formation of citizens.
This is in spite of the awareness in the field that the ideal models of citizenship
are, in complex, modern and industrialised societies, mediated not only through
such institutional forms as representative democracy, but by technologies and
cultural practices associated with mediated interaction between government and
citizens. Within media studies, the debate has too often been polarised between a
Panglossian vision of a media in liberal-capitalist societies that serves its citizens
because it is free of government controls, and a tragic account of such media as
inevitably corrupted by corporate power and commercialism, that presents such
media as being in absolute contrast to the fading vision of public broadcasting
which fearlessly and wisely serves civil society and the public sphere. This thesis
has aimed to show that, in terms of political as well as national forms of
citizenship, commercial broadcast media matter. Moreover, they matter not
simply in terms of their reach to wide sections of the population, but in terms of
how the policy and regulatory frameworks within which they operate influence
their conduct as broadcasters and, hence, their role in citizen formation.
An issue that has been an animating concern of this thesis has been
whether broadcast media audiences as citizens have rights in shaping the conduct
of commercial broadcasters, and how such citizenship capacities are best
organised and facilitated through the media policy formation process. In the early
2000s, such questions are asked in the context of technological, structural and
policy shifts that may mean the gradual demise of the one-to-many modes of
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communication on which broadcasting regulation has historically been premised,
as well as the ability to influence the conduct through policy of identifiable
industry players within a definable national space by industry-specific regulatory
agencies. It has been agued in this thesis that, while the parameters in which such
issues are addressed have changed as the conditions underpinning the social
contract between broadcasters, regulatory agencies and media policy reformers
have changed, the concerns that motivate the formation of such institutional
settlements remain. These concerns include: ensuring satisfactory levels of locally
produced broadcast media material in the context of global media economics;
guarantees of program diversity; the availability of locally produced material
across a range of program genres and delivery platforms; and the capacity for
citizens to have input into the uses of media as influential public resources.
A final issue raised in this thesis has been the relationship of intellectuals
to the media policy process. The cultural policy studies debate in Australia in the
1990s made a series of telling points about the importance of media and cultural
studies academics engaging with decision-making cultural institutions, and
successfully linked these arguments to the ongoing capacity to engage in left-
reformist cultural politics, which has been the historical focus of media and
cultural studies. It has been argued in this thesis that such interventions were also
important in drawing attention to the network of activist-intellectuals operating in
state agencies, community and public interest organisations, and media and
cultural practitioners, and the scope for academics to contribute to important
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public policy debates that would affect cultural and creative practice in Australia.
An important observation made in this thesis has been that the traditional
understanding of the cultural policy debate as primarily driven by concerns
within the interdisciplinary fields of media and cultural studies is mistaken. An
equally important trigger of thinking about media and cultural policy in Australia
was the need to devise new advocacy strategies for policies that support a national
cultural infrastructure, such as Australian content regulations for commercial
television, while recognising the limitations of traditional cultural nationalist
forms of advocacy in light of the critique of claims about the uniqueness of
Australian national culture.
Such discussions in the 2000s will need to take account of three
developments. The first is digitisation and convergence, and the ways in which
broadcast media will lose its distinctiveness, and become part of a spectrum of
convergent services industries, characterised by widened consumer choice, greater
user-pays access to content and services, and the uncoupling of content and
services from delivery platforms and infrastructure. In such an environment,
concerns will shift from protectionist measures such as content quotas, towards
measures to stimulate innovative local content across delivery platforms that cater
to increasingly diverse audiences and communities. Second, the linking of media
to the spectrum of creative industries will mean an increasingly significant role
for the commercial sector in the creation and delivery of cultural content. It has
been argued in this thesis that dichotomies between the commercial and state-
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supported sectors have been unhelpful in understanding the role of media in
citizen-formation, and activists in the media policy process will be increasingly
engaging with private sector organisations as well as public regulatory agencies.
Finally, the association of citizenship with nation-states may be changing, with
the combined forces of globalisation, multiculturalism, new technologies such as
the Internet, and what John Hartley (1999) has termed a trend towards D-I-Y
citizenship, or the formation of identities as a kind of cultural bricolage. If these
trends do come to pass, intellectuals and policy activists will be less able to speak
on behalf of people as citizens within identifiable national spaces. It has been
shown in this thesis that, even in a context of dramatic technological and
structural change, the contribution of academics to the debate cultures that inform
Australian broadcast media policy will continue to be important, and the role
which intellectuals have played in the initiation of diverse forms of policy
activism in the broadcast media sector provides useful signposts for such
engagements.
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1 Support for a cultural exemption or an equivalent initiative would involve Australian trade negotiators taking aposition that was in opposition to the United States - a position that is not characteristic of Australias internationaldiplomatic history - and aligning itself with countries with which it has not had historically strong ties, such as France andCanada. An Australian alignment with France is particularly unlikely in light of past opposition to French nuclear testing inthe South Pacific, while the European Communitys Common Agricultural Policy is of particular concern to Australia as aleading agricultural exporter and founder of the Cairns Group of nations seeking liberalisation of world agricultural trade.
2 The election of a Labor government in New Zealand in 2000 has promoted a rethink of previous policies ofdismantling all forms of national cultural protection, and there is discussion about the possibility of reintroducing some for
of local content quotas. A problem will, however, be the fact that New Zealand has previously signed away the right to suchexemptions from the disciplines of the GATS (Lealand 2000).
3 In the United States, commercial free-to-air broadcasters are obliged by the FCC to broadcast three hours ofchildrens programming. It has often been noted that compliance with this rule is frequently poor, often involving adding oneducational materials to cartoons and sports programs (Geller, 1998).