Changing channels : an historical political economy of commercial television in Australia : 1954-1998
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2008
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| Filename | Description | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 01Front.pdf | contents and abstract | 1.46 MB | ||
 | 02Whole.pdf | thesis | 76.59 MB |
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NO FULL TEXT AVAILABLE. This thesis contains 3rd party copyright material. ----- In this thesis I outline the theoretical framework within which this history of
commercial television is analysed. I start with a consideration of the role of
theory in historiography and argue the necessity of making clear the
theoretical background, without becoming hostage to theory. Choosing from a
number of historical approaches that could inform this preparatory work to a
more complete history, I ague that commercial television has become an
institution of 'historically contingent social relations' (Mohr 2000,
Introduction: Structures, institutions and cultural analysis', Poetics, 27, p.S8).
Therefore, this is the history of the creation and development of a social
institution.
From its start commercial television was conceived of as a form of
broadcasting undertaken for profit and funded by advertising, in contrast to
the public service broadcasting sector financed by state mechanisms. Both
activities are economic, but with different characteristics. This is not the
history of the businesses that made up commercial television, but I argue it is
necessary to consider the frames that can be drawn from political economy
and mainstream economics, because questions of economics and politics are
at the heart of the creation and maintenance of the commercial television
system.
To do this I attempt to broaden what has to date been regarded as the political
economy approach to media history by turning to the in sights offered by
economic sociology and field theory. My argument is that these insights allow
a move away from the unproductive synchronic structuration of the
base/ superstructure model towards the diachronic structuration of fields or
networks. Here the work of Neil FIigstein (e.g. FIigstein N 2001, The
Architecture of Markets: An economic sociology of 21st Century capitalist
societies, Princeton University Press, Princeton) and his sociology of markets
as fields of socially structured exchange is central. This, I argue, gives a better
account of the structure or structuring of commercial television as a social
institution, the agency of those who inhabited or acted upon that structure
and the means by which it was reproduced and transformed from one period
to the next.
This work allows me to advance the argument that commercial television is a
network of three connected markets - audience commodity, program supply
and station/broadcast licence markets. By tracing the trajectories of
emergence, stability and crisis in each of these markets the shape of the
history of commercial television as a social institution can be fleshed out. In so
doing the crucial role of the state in the formation and maintenance of this
institution is also examined.
It is also recognised that commercial television is importantly a form of
cultural production. Using the term cultural production I mean to include the
processes involved in the production, exchange and consumption of programs,
(Williams 1974; Miege 1989; Lacroix and Tremblay 1997). Specifically it is a
form of large scale cultural production within a capitalist economy. I will
argue that the creative team, whether within the broadcast organisation or in
the network of independent producers that formed around the broadcasters, is
an essential element in large scale cultural production. The management of
the creative team, through the practice of formatting, provides an efficient
means by which large scale capitalist cultural production is managed and
commodified. This means that concepts of genre assume a new importance in
the analysis of the history of commercial television as cultural production.
Three hypotheses about the transformation of the markets are examined in
the main body of the work.
Hypothesis 1
The program station market emerged between 1956 and 1964 with the
extension of commercial television to the country and the licensing of the
third capital city stations. It then entered a period of relative stability until
approximately 1980 when the increasing speculative investment in stations
and the ownership policy changes of 1986/87 precipitated a period of crisis,
before stability was restored after 1992 and tenure was established by 1998.
Hypothesis 2
The audience commodity market emerged quickly between 1956 and 1958
remaining relatively stable until the entrance of the third capital city stations
instituted a growing crisis of competition, in combination with the move of
advertising strategy towards market segmentation. Stability was restored by
the advent of colour television in 1975 and the effect that had upon viewing,
but the market entered another period of crisis in the late eighties over the
change in the way of calculating the audience commodity with the use of
people meters.
Hypothesis 3
a) The program supply market has been the most subject to instability and in
parts subject to market failure that provoked state intervention. The foreign
program supply part of the market emerged quickly, became stable, but
became unstable in the early sixties when it entered a crisis of competition.
This was resolved only by collusion to restore stability until further crises
occurred in the early seventies and late eighties.
b) The local program supply market has had varying periods of emergence
depending upon the generic type of program, with those programs supported
by regulation being subject to market failure, chronic instability and periodic
crisis. To explain why this was so, I propose a frame with a more complex
notion of cultural production, which will lead later in the thesis to the
proposition that, over the long run, regulatory intervention has failed to
adequately support the market.
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