As It Wobbles: TV in Australia
A revisiting
Three years and a couple of weeks ago, I published the piece As It Stands: TV in Australia. It was a primer piece that seems at once out of date and as if nothing has changed; Neighbours had just been cancelled, TV channels weren’t really helping themselves – Nine had/s Stan, Ten had/s Paramount Plus and Channel 7 hadn’t/haven’t really done much when it comes to streaming…are you getting déjà vu yet?
That article spent a lot of time commenting on an audience’s fractured understanding of the Australian TV industry. Unsurprisingly, shows felt as abstract as they do know, sometimes I can tell you what’s on but I wouldn’t know where or when.
Recently two long-running Australian shows were cancelled, Q+A and The Project.
Q+A first aired in 2008. On the ABC, it positioned itself as a ‘television discussion program that ranges across all of the big issues that set Australians thinking, talking and debating’. The show has been cancelled as a part of a restructure, one which is forcing them to ‘rethink how audiences want to interact and to evolve how we can engage with the public to include as many Australians as possible in national conversations.’ Before its termination the show seemed a little confused, there were rotating hosts and it was no longer a place to go to see challenging political conversations – we have social media for that.
One year later, The Project started on Channel Ten. At the time, it felt refreshing. 16 years later, it felt like another stop on the promotional circuit. The show had evolved in its hosting but even though it was once a different way to talk about the news, it was only ever different once, and then it stayed the same ever since. Channel Ten are replacing the project with a new show; it’s on earlier, it’s meant to be serious (the ads are touting the credentials of its journalists) and will put the truth first which has a shade of Fox News about it. Also, apologies for linking the Daily Mail (twice!) but this is the perception that is being presented to the audience.
Often, we speak about how the media reflects the society it lives in, as well as its audience. But this feels as if the media is holding up a mirror to itself. Yet, nothing ever seems to be done about anything. People are losing their jobs in swathes across all facets of the media, yet more than ever, the media seems determined to remain conservative (I don’t just mean politically) in its broadcasting decisions – recycling the same formats, the same faces and the same shows. For example, Channel Ten are bringing back Big Brother and Talkin’ Bout Your Generation. Mel Tracina from Nova Radio and The Cheap Seats is hosting the former whilst Have You Been Paying Attention? and Thank God You’re Here regular, Anne Edmonds will host the latter. I have nothing against either of these people, but Big Brother first aired in 2001 and Talkin’ Bout Your Generation in 2009, so for an industry that talks a lot about the evolution of audiences, this feels as if they are talking to audiences of the past. Another of their resuscitated shows, Thank God You’re Here, is on hold whilst they try CPR on these two others.
I appreciate I’ve spent a long time focusing on Channel Ten and not much on the other networks but honestly it all feels the same. And perhaps that’s lazy for a media writer to say, but if audiences are talking about what matters to them, and I’m not hearing anyone talk about anything other than the news above, then we must pay attention.
But maybe in another three years I’ll be writing the same piece again, recycling content in a way that makes me no better than these television networks.
This piece by Angela Malkin looks at the state of long form content.
This piece from Unmade looks at how audiences are turning away from news altogether.
Also, I used to watch Denham Hitchcock (one of the presenters of 10 News + as a correspondent on Today so like, what a journey for both of us.