The New Television Landscape

Australia's television drought is breaking. Instead of the lean dry years with only five channels of television we can now look forward to quenching our "thirst" with many more services offered on new and proposed pay channels. So far, with only a few extra channels gushing forth, the river banks are holding.

But don't put away the galoshes yet. Storm clouds and lightning can be seen gathering overhead. Over the next few years Australia will be caught in still more torrents of television programming raining down on us from several international satellites. And this is as well as our own Optus satellites delivering 20 or so locally distributed channels.

Such a deluge of programs from so many channels not only affects whether service providers like Galaxy, Telstra/News, Optus Vision and the rest can sink or swim, it also affects our homegrown film and television makers. Can our local film and television industry, the one that makes quality television comedies and dramas like Denton, Heartland and the recent crop of internationally successful movies, keep from going under in a flood of cheaper overseas programs?

Local production is a relatively tiny and expensive life-raft to maintain in the turbulent waters of the international entertainment industry, but it pays such a vital role in our lives as Australians it surely deserves to survive. Its lifeline to survival is money made from local television sales of product and, if it loses this lifeline, homegrown programs might quickly be swept away and disappear from view.

High television ratings for Australian series and movies seem to indicate the line will hold and that local producers need not worry too much yet. But, just as this next storm begins to abate, and the lightning fades, there's a much worse one forecast for 1997.

The government, somewhat bedazzled by the loud noises and brilliant flashes overhead, and giddy from being spun around in the powerful winds of change, has decided that the best way to sort out this likely tangle is to cut us adrift. The plan is to deregulate - or even entirely remove - most of the rules controlling television and telephones in a bold, and some may say optimistic, move that very few countries have yet tried.

Hold on to your waterwings! Now we'll have even more channels and services. Saturated by half a dozen "Telstras", each with its own multichannel service, large overseas television corporations offering their channels, newspapers and magazines, available on your computer and television, and the list goes on. After 1997, there may be no limit to the amount of services on offer or of the number of large, international media companies owning services. This will make the commotion we've been through up until now seem like an afternoon shower.

Apart from making good programs, local producers have been fighting hard to keep afloat by trying to include some rules in the game to ensure quality, locally made drama, documentaries and other programs maintain a place on our screens, a move opposed by commercial broadcasters. These broadcasters feel they're already doing a good job and want to cast off rules and regulations so their vessels might better weather storms and rough seas without the added ballast of local content quotas and the like.

In the end, how much the local industry is valued, and correspondingly supported, depends very much on you, the audience. After all, popular local programs have kept our television afloat for some time now. However, without wider recognition of the lifesaving capabilities of local, Australian films and programs, our local industry might just go down with the ship.