Post by Kenny on Aug 11, 2005 9:38:04 GMT 10
As this was touched on in a thread a while back, I post this column from today's Australian:
David Salter: Why cultural programming has become a lost art on TV
Headline: "Nine Network pays $500 million for exclusive rights to Opera Australia." Patent nonsense.
Headline: "Nine Network pays $500 million for exclusive rights to rugby league." Perfectly sensible (and, as it happens, it's perfectly true).
That's the bottom-line difference in real television value between sport and the arts. One is a precious commodity; the other is an obligation.
Yet still the cultural commissars keep bleating about the unfairness of it all. They see no reason why we shouldn't have prime-time poetry readings on free-to-air TV or abstract expressionism gracing page three of the tabloids. Indeed, they claim the prevailing media pecking order in relation to the arts is a deliberate distortion.
These corduroyed urgers and touts love to enlist the dog-eared popularity myths of audience size as trundled out by the Australia Council whenever it goes on its triennial trek to Canberra seeking more taxpayer funds.
John Shand, an otherwise admirable Sydney jazz critic, is but one of a legion of arts journalists happy to regurgitate this quantitative tosh. Arguing for increased coverage he recently wrote, without substantiation, that "more people attend art galleries than sporting fixtures".
That is, of course, nonsense. Even including the busloads of compliant package tourists, hordes of sour schoolchildren dragooned on to gallery excursions (and those of us who've just wandered in to kill an hour before a dental appointment or get out of the rain), the claim defies reality.
It might possibly make sense if we accepted equating free admissions to galleries with paid attendances at sporting events, but that apples-to-oranges comparison also ignores the hundreds of thousands who regularly turn up to watch and-or participate in amateur sport. No amount of shonky statistics is likely to convince a hardened newspaper editor or TV executive that weekend watercolourists outnumber weekend golfers.
But propaganda aside, there is a genuine issue here. Cultural achievement does often get a raw deal, especially from the electronic media. It wasn't always thus.
Anyone aged 60 or older has enjoyed a lifespan that includes memory of the entire history of Australian TV. They can recall that in the medium's early days the arts were allowed generous time, even on the commercial channels. Fruity-voiced announcers in penguin suits introduced concert broadcasts. Bow-tied professors toddled over from the varsity to blink into studio lights and debate earnestly about books. Ballet and opera were proudly presented as uplifting technical triumphs, and at considerable expense. There were even hour-long telecasts of youth orchestras murdering Mozart.
But this apparent passion for culture didn't last long. For the commercial networks it ended the moment they felt confident the federal government had forgotten all those lofty promises about education and "the Yarts" they'd been given back in 1955 by print moguls desperate to secure the first few lucrative TV licences.
Decades later the ABC quietly sidled away from what had been a genuine commitment to cultural endeavour. Funding constraints, coupled with aggressive expansion in news and current affairs during the David Hill era, slowly throttled the arts division just when its most experienced producers were approaching retirement.
So, instead of original local programming, we were served up a succession of twee Sunday afternoon compendium shows in which some faintly refined presenter introduced re-runs of old BBC drama and music series, leavened with the ubiquitous Melvyn Bragg back catalogue. (And if you're wondering what this was like, flick to the Ovation channel on pay TV. It's one never-ending ABC Sunday afternoon of the mid-1990s.)
Every few years the national broadcaster responds to criticism that it is dodging its charter obligations by cobbling together a magazine-style show devoted to matters cultural. These always have hip names that nobody understands (or remembers) and soon sink without trace into their own cloying quicksand of hyperactive hosts and synthetically agitated camerawork.
The whole thing is now just a pain in the arts for mainstream TV. Comprehensive coverage of high-culture events has become witheringly expensive, partly because the performers who previously were grateful for any exposure now demand large fees. And the damn stuff never rates well, anyway.
Meanwhile, newspapers enjoy a huge advantage over TV because they don't have to ply their trade in real time. A broadsheet can tuck its cultural material away on ghetto pages from Monday to Friday, then make a big splash in the weekend supplements profitably underwritten by hectares of show biz and luxury-goods advertising.
But, even with that generous platform, an irritating "we don't get the support we deserve" tone is never far from the surface. When incoming NSW Premier Morris Iemma conceded he preferred football to opera, this newspaper's commentator tut-tutted that the admission "sent a chill down artistic spines". A politician confirming that he's like most other men in Australia was clearly much too shocking for the luvvies.
At their most cynical, the media likes to have a bob each way on culture. Before the recent State of Origin rugby league clash-fixture-showdown (take your pick), a posh ticket-only lunch was organised at which the featured speakers were the former NSW coach and a retired member of the state's forward pack. Mr Interlocutor was a second-string sports commentator from Channel Nine. Truly a meeting of great minds.
Yet The Sydney Morning Herald was pleased to advertise its own commercial involvement in this beano under the proud heading "Literary Events".
Regrettably, another engagement prevented me from attending, but I'm reliably informed there was quite a diverting little discourse after dessert on the Proustian sensibilities of blindside scrummaging.
David Salter: Why cultural programming has become a lost art on TV
Headline: "Nine Network pays $500 million for exclusive rights to Opera Australia." Patent nonsense.
Headline: "Nine Network pays $500 million for exclusive rights to rugby league." Perfectly sensible (and, as it happens, it's perfectly true).
That's the bottom-line difference in real television value between sport and the arts. One is a precious commodity; the other is an obligation.
Yet still the cultural commissars keep bleating about the unfairness of it all. They see no reason why we shouldn't have prime-time poetry readings on free-to-air TV or abstract expressionism gracing page three of the tabloids. Indeed, they claim the prevailing media pecking order in relation to the arts is a deliberate distortion.
These corduroyed urgers and touts love to enlist the dog-eared popularity myths of audience size as trundled out by the Australia Council whenever it goes on its triennial trek to Canberra seeking more taxpayer funds.
John Shand, an otherwise admirable Sydney jazz critic, is but one of a legion of arts journalists happy to regurgitate this quantitative tosh. Arguing for increased coverage he recently wrote, without substantiation, that "more people attend art galleries than sporting fixtures".
That is, of course, nonsense. Even including the busloads of compliant package tourists, hordes of sour schoolchildren dragooned on to gallery excursions (and those of us who've just wandered in to kill an hour before a dental appointment or get out of the rain), the claim defies reality.
It might possibly make sense if we accepted equating free admissions to galleries with paid attendances at sporting events, but that apples-to-oranges comparison also ignores the hundreds of thousands who regularly turn up to watch and-or participate in amateur sport. No amount of shonky statistics is likely to convince a hardened newspaper editor or TV executive that weekend watercolourists outnumber weekend golfers.
But propaganda aside, there is a genuine issue here. Cultural achievement does often get a raw deal, especially from the electronic media. It wasn't always thus.
Anyone aged 60 or older has enjoyed a lifespan that includes memory of the entire history of Australian TV. They can recall that in the medium's early days the arts were allowed generous time, even on the commercial channels. Fruity-voiced announcers in penguin suits introduced concert broadcasts. Bow-tied professors toddled over from the varsity to blink into studio lights and debate earnestly about books. Ballet and opera were proudly presented as uplifting technical triumphs, and at considerable expense. There were even hour-long telecasts of youth orchestras murdering Mozart.
But this apparent passion for culture didn't last long. For the commercial networks it ended the moment they felt confident the federal government had forgotten all those lofty promises about education and "the Yarts" they'd been given back in 1955 by print moguls desperate to secure the first few lucrative TV licences.
Decades later the ABC quietly sidled away from what had been a genuine commitment to cultural endeavour. Funding constraints, coupled with aggressive expansion in news and current affairs during the David Hill era, slowly throttled the arts division just when its most experienced producers were approaching retirement.
So, instead of original local programming, we were served up a succession of twee Sunday afternoon compendium shows in which some faintly refined presenter introduced re-runs of old BBC drama and music series, leavened with the ubiquitous Melvyn Bragg back catalogue. (And if you're wondering what this was like, flick to the Ovation channel on pay TV. It's one never-ending ABC Sunday afternoon of the mid-1990s.)
Every few years the national broadcaster responds to criticism that it is dodging its charter obligations by cobbling together a magazine-style show devoted to matters cultural. These always have hip names that nobody understands (or remembers) and soon sink without trace into their own cloying quicksand of hyperactive hosts and synthetically agitated camerawork.
The whole thing is now just a pain in the arts for mainstream TV. Comprehensive coverage of high-culture events has become witheringly expensive, partly because the performers who previously were grateful for any exposure now demand large fees. And the damn stuff never rates well, anyway.
Meanwhile, newspapers enjoy a huge advantage over TV because they don't have to ply their trade in real time. A broadsheet can tuck its cultural material away on ghetto pages from Monday to Friday, then make a big splash in the weekend supplements profitably underwritten by hectares of show biz and luxury-goods advertising.
But, even with that generous platform, an irritating "we don't get the support we deserve" tone is never far from the surface. When incoming NSW Premier Morris Iemma conceded he preferred football to opera, this newspaper's commentator tut-tutted that the admission "sent a chill down artistic spines". A politician confirming that he's like most other men in Australia was clearly much too shocking for the luvvies.
At their most cynical, the media likes to have a bob each way on culture. Before the recent State of Origin rugby league clash-fixture-showdown (take your pick), a posh ticket-only lunch was organised at which the featured speakers were the former NSW coach and a retired member of the state's forward pack. Mr Interlocutor was a second-string sports commentator from Channel Nine. Truly a meeting of great minds.
Yet The Sydney Morning Herald was pleased to advertise its own commercial involvement in this beano under the proud heading "Literary Events".
Regrettably, another engagement prevented me from attending, but I'm reliably informed there was quite a diverting little discourse after dessert on the Proustian sensibilities of blindside scrummaging.
?