By Karen Fredericks
The commercial oligopoly which has been maintained in Australian TV broadcasting since 1956 may soon be dented by community TV groups, finally allowed access to the sixth and final high power channel. The report of the Federal Inquiry into Possible Uses of the Sixth High Power Television Channel, released on September 10, recommended that "The Channel should be made available immediately for community access television using low power transmitters on a continuing trial basis until July 1, 1997".
The report was endorsed by caucus on September 16. A spokesperson for the Public Broadcasting Association of Australia (PBAA), Jeffrey Cook, told Green Left, "If the government accepts the strong points of the report, we will see community broadcasters broadcasting on long term licences by the beginning of 1993".
Cook says there are at least 60 community access TV groups affiliated with the PBAA which have conducted test broadcasts and are "chomping at the bit" to get into long-term broadcasting.
Despite an overt preference for allocating the sixth channel to educationalists, an agenda left over from Kim Beazley's days as minister for transport and communications, the inquiry was forced to recognise that educational interests were neither ready nor willing to take on a purely educational channel. In contrast the report notes that "... the case for community access television ... was presented with enthusiasm by a large number of submitters and witnesses".
The broadcasting licences which may be made available will not be permanent. The new Broadcasting Services Act provides for a review of licensing arrangements by July 1, 1997, at which time it may be decided to sell off the sixth channel to a commercial broadcaster.
Community groups therefore have less than five years to make themselves viable and to gather enough community support to make it impossible for the review to throw them off the channel.
This task is made even more difficult by the inquiry's recommendation that community access TV should receive no financial assistance from the government. Groups will have to use sponsorship, sale of air time, membership subscriptions and other fundraising methods in order to acquire the expensive
infrastructure necessary for TV program production and broadcasting.
Some groups already have access to transmitters and antennae. "There is one group which cooperatively owns a small antenna", says Jeffrey Cook, "and a Melbourne group who bought a 200 watt transmitter and hire it out for community TV use. We are currently talking with a transmitter manufacturer about a sponsorship deal, if and when we get the service up. They are probably the three main ways we'll get hold of the hardware."
Sponsors
Asked whether this emphasis on sponsorship will affect the community orientation of the new stations, Cook admits there is some danger but points to safeguards in the terms of the licences he hopes will be issued.
"The Australian Film Commission's submission to the inquiry suggested that outright advertising would be better than program sponsorship because there would be less possibility of editorial control over the programming. However, we have been given a mere four minutes an hour for advertising, with a recommendation that it be increased to five minutes, in line with SBS.
"We don't see editorial control by sponsors as being a problem because in the first instance we will be operating under strict ethical sponsorship guidelines that will mean that green issues, health and welfare issues and things of concern to the community are given prime importance.
"Because we believe that groups should determine their own system, within certain limits of course, there is a chance there will be groups that will be more entrepreneurial than others. However, the Broadcasting Act provides that community broadcasters must: a) be non-profit or non-commercial, and b) represent the widest possible variety of interests. The 'non-commercial' rule means we get rid of most of the power-brokers from the existing system, and the other clause ensures that there will be at least some kind of limit on runaway entrepreneurs within the groups."
Cook says that if the government is looking at a national network of community TV broadcasters, it will have to provide funding. But the PBAA and its affiliate groups are pushing for the issuing of licences as soon as possible and the adoption of a "developmental" model in which funds for establishment and ongoing production are raised by the community, by all means necessary.
"Community TV arrives on the scene asking for funding at exactly the wrong time", says Cook. "Everybody is being cut back, and if the Liberals get in, the cutbacks have only just begun. We're not going to get direct funding from Labor or Liberal.
"We feel we can get by with other forms of revenue, including the sale of air time to education and training providers, programming groups, government information services and independent film producers, who get money from the Australian Film Commission.
"We have a lot of special interest groups involved: independent film makers, Kooris, women's groups, people from non-English speaking backgrounds. All these are able to get money from government, and do fundraising to produce their own program material. There will be a range of program-providers which can source their production funding elsewhere, thus taking the most significant load off the stations."
Licences
This model, however, is further complicated by the limited number of licences which can be issued for use of the sixth channel. Although the inquiry recommended that multiple licences be issued in certain areas, the PBAA believes technical problems render such a scenario impossible.
To get around these problems, community TV groups in Sydney and Melbourne have formed "consortia" to provide city-wide services which democratically allocate rotating air-time slots. (Sydney groups include a western suburbs group, a multicultural group, an inner-city group called Community Access TV, or CAT TV, Metro TV, which supplies programming material, and Community TV 1, or CTV1, a cablecaster that broadcasts to housing commission estates.)
This system not only reduces technical difficulties and inter-group rivalries, but it also ensures that the resulting consortia are representative of a wide cross-section of the community, thereby improving their chances of obtaining a long-term licence from the Broadcasting Authority. Such a model of decentralised, democratic consortia, says Cook, has already been proven successful in public radio in Australia, and in community TV overseas.
The PBAA is hopeful that the first city-wide consortium broadcast will occur late this year or early in 1993. The broadcast will be widely publicised, and viewers will be able to tune in via channel 31 on the UHF band, just up the dial from SBS at 28.
Geoff Morgan, community television coordinator at the PBAA, says, "When viewers are switching through the channels they will know when they find us. Community television will reflect the real concerns of the diverse communities which make up Australian society, in their own voices, telling their own stories."
People interested in becoming involved in community access TV can contact the PBAA in Sydney on (02) 310 2999 for the name and contact number of their local group.