‘INVASION BY THE MONSTER’

Abstract

This article explores links between the debates that surrounded the introduction of television in Australia, and parallel controversies in Britain, the USA and Canada. Richard Boyer, chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), looked for evidence of how these other places had experienced television to support his case for an Australian public television monopoly financed without advertising. For Boyer and many ABC colleagues, British regulatory practices and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television were the model for emulation. Boyer also hoped that public broadcasting would sustain Australia's Britishness, and deter broader American cultural influences. Canada potentially showed how British and American approaches might be reshaped to suit Australian circumstances. However, as the strength of US broadcasting influence became apparent, as the limits of the response of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to the television challenge were revealed, and as Britain itself adopted a ‘dual system’ of public and commercial broadcasting, the ABC found its position in the Australian television debate progressively and inexorably undermined. Transnational connections thus failed to serve the ABC's particular national agenda.