Communicating Culture: community media in Australia

Abstract

Australia's unique community broadcasting sector is the fastest-growing in the country. With more than 200 licensed local radio stations and a further 150 which offer specialist programming to Australia's Indigenous and ethnic communities, the mediascape promises extraordinary diversity. However, recent studies of the sector reveal that this promise, in many communities, has yet to be realised. This paper looks at the successes, stumbling blocks and failures of a communication system which has the potential to extend public sphere debates beyond the narrow confines of the mainstream media and their corporate overlords. It features the compelling and passionate approaches by some communities in using local radio to enhance the meaning of community; in others, broadcasting represents a powerful cultural resource which has the potential, at least, to contribute to public sphere activity. The paper presents a sample of views drawn from the estimated 20,000 volunteers who contribute to the sector across the country.

Introduction

The cultural importance of alternative and independent media becomes obvious when looking at the present Australian mediascape - arguably the most concentrated in the Western world (CommunicationsUpdate 2002). A shift in the past 10 years from broadcasting regulation to a ‘light touch' approach by the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) has accelerated the transformation of citizens to consumers. It has been accompanied by a political shift to the right and the re-emergence of intolerant and often racist ideologies. This was no more clearly demonstrated than in November last year when the ultra-conservative coalition government of John Howard was re-elected, based largely on its decision to imprison asylum seekers entering Australia by sea from Southeast Asia. With virtually no serious political voices raised in opposition, Australian politics remains the captive of conservative political and economic forces. During the run-up to the federal election late last year, few voices of opposition emerged from the mainstream media. It was one of the most deplorable recent examples of media complicity in Australia's history. It is only at the time of writing this that a Senate inquiry has begun to uncover the subterfuge that kept the real facts of the asylum-seekers' plight from the eyes and ears of the Australian public.

Australia's broadcasting system emerged in the early 1920s - a combination of America's virtually unregulated and Britain's highly regulated approach. Within a few years, separate commercial and government-funded radio sectors had been established and set the framework for the current Australian communications environment The first television station in Australia in 1956 (in time for the Melbourne Olympics) was commercial, preceding the government-funded Australian Broadcasting Commission channel to air. The introduction of community radio on the new FM band in the mid-1970s was the first real opportunity for truly independent voices to be heard on the Australian airwaves, including those ofthe multicultural and Indigenous communities. Corporate concentration of ownership in the Australian broadcasting industry followed the pattern in the newspaper industry and by the late 1980s, Australian commercial television was controlled by three corporations. This pattern persists with the Seven Network Ltd (television, pay television, publishing and online interests), PBL, and Ten Network Holdings (television and advertising interests) controlling commercial television in Australia (Communications Update 2002). Multicultural lobbying power translated into the government-funded Special Broadcasting Service and national television channel in 1984. Although the audience reach for SBS TV remains small, itnevertheless offers a wide range of programming diversity in a range of community languages. Its award-winning independent news and current affairs programs are in many cases the equal to or superior to the best offered by the ABC - a national leader in Australia in quality, independent news and current affairs production. But both the ABC and the SBS have been under sustained funding pressures from indifferent successive federal governments who seem overly sensitive about public broadcasters' ability to uncover corruption wherever it may lie. With the commercial television ownership pattern firmly set, by the timePay TV was introduced in 1995, within a few years, company names linked to these ‘new' stations bore a striking resemblance to those in the so-called ‘free-to-air' sector. By the end of 2001, pay TV had reached about 20 per cent of Australian homes (Communications Update 2002).

This is the modern Australian communications environment in which alternative voices increasingly struggle to be heard. In more recent years, the World Wide Web has become a valuable resource for grassroots organizations globally and locally to exchange information and ideas. Despite its propensity for inequality as a communicative medium, the net seems to have become a vehicle which serves both the corporations and those at the other end of the spectrum best of all (Hunter 2001, 11; Castells 2000, 425-426).

But this paper is about more positive developments. Apart from mainstream commercial and government-funded radio and television stations (ABC and SBS), Australia boasts a dynamic independent community media sector - print, radio, television and online publications that challenge the status quo, or at the very least, offer an alternative spin on local and global affairs.

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