Duncan Tanner Essay Prize Winner 2023: A ‘High Quality’ Deal: The Business of British Comedy Television in Australia, 1960–90

Abstract

Abstract Historians of the late British empire often cite the 1960s and 1970s as a turning point in Commonwealth nationalisms, when British sentiment abroad was in major decline. This article investigates one exception to that phenomenon: Australians’ continued appreciation for British television, especially British comedy television. While other historians have seen this as a symptom of ‘cultural imperialism’, this article argues that Australian stations purchased British comedies for complex commercial reasons that extended beyond imperial sentiment. Australian and British television stations worked together to bring British television programmes to Australia. Public and private British stations sold Australians programmes to finance their domestic activities, claiming their products were uniquely ‘high quality’. Australian stations borrowed British language of ‘high quality’ to describe these programmes, a rhetoric which filtered through to how Australian viewers described their television preferences. Combining international business records with viewers’ opinions, this article demonstrates the role media firms could play in positively framing consumers’ attitudes to Britain even in the post-imperial era.