Australian Broadcasting Commission Research Articles

The Creation of the ABC Studio Orchestras, 1935–1945

This article analyses the creation of studio orchestras by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) as part of a policy of musical federalization. The orchestras were created in the decade after 1935 in all six Australian states, and later expanded to form state symphony orchestras for radio broadcasting and for public performances in concerts. The article argues that the combined effort of a group of men appointed to managerial and controller positions in the ABC was responsible for the oversight of the founding of the studio orchestras; that they spread the available musical talent across the six states; and that they succeeded in their attempt to stimulate public demand for listening to orchestras on radio by paying close attention to the musical capabilities of conductors and thorough auditioning of players joining the orchestras. Within a decade after their foundation, the studio orchestras became permanent ambassadors for the programming of live classical music on the ABC's radio stations.

Representing Transgender in the 1970s Australian Media

AbstractIn 1970s Australia, magazines and newspapers regularly featured stories about transgender women. The articles were often exploitative and depicted transgender people as freaks, with headlines designed to shock and mock. Digging deeper, there is another side to transgender people in the Australian media. Notwithstanding the exploitative nature of the coverage, the media was still a site of transgender visibility in an era where there otherwise was none. Oral histories with transgender Australians often mention the importance of a particular television show, article or magazine because they saw others ‘like them’, and they realised that they were not alone. Some transgender people even kept those articles for years because of the connections they felt to an otherwise uncertain identity. There were also features in the press that were empathetic to transgender Australians, whether that be on the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), in magazines such as Cleo or in broadsheet newspapers. This article analyses the complex role that media played representing and relating to transgender Australians in the 1970s. Drawing on a mix of newspaper, magazine and television sources, as well as oral histories, the article opens new lines of inquiry about histories of transgender visibility, public discourse and understanding the self.

Kindergarten of the Air: From Australia to the world

This article considers the radio programme for kindergarten-aged children that the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) launched during the Second World War and continued to broadcast until 1985. Kindergarten of the Air, thought to be the ‘first of its kind in the world’, was to inspire interest from, and similar programmes throughout, the British empire and beyond. The article examines the imperial and international broadcasting networks that enabled the exchange of ideas and initiatives within the field of educational broadcasting, and the export of one of Australia’s most successful radio initiatives, while also considering the willingness of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to be influenced by a dominion broadcaster.

Broadcasting inclusion and advocacy: a history of female activism and cross-cultural partnership at the post-war ABC

During the first decade of television in Australia, a cohort of female broadcasters used their hard-won positions at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) to challenge the social and cultural complacencies of post-war society. Counteracting the assumption that women were largely absent in post-war broadcasting, this research discusses how two of these producers used their roles as public broadcasters to enact their own version of feminism, a social and cultural activism framed through active citizenship. Critiquing race, gender and national identity in their programmes, they partnered with Indigenous Australian activists and worked to amplify the voices of minorities. Referring to documentaries produced in Australian television’s formative years, this article describes how ABC producers Therése Denny and Joyce Belfrage worked to disrupt programming cultures that privileged homogeneous Anglo-Australian perspectives. As a consequence, documentaries like A Changing Race (1964) presented empathetic and evocative content that challenged xenophobic stereotypes and encouraged cross-cultural understandings.

“A Girdle of Thought Thrown around the World”

This article outlines impulses toward internationalism in women's programming during the twentieth century at two public service broadcasters: the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in Canada and the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in Australia. These case studies show common patterns as well as key differences in the establishment of an international frame for the modern domestic sphere. Research conducted in paper and audio recording archives relating to nonfiction programming for women demonstrates pervasive tensions between women's international versus national solidarities. The article argues that these contradictions must be highlighted—rather than papered over in a simplistic understanding of such programming as reflecting a binary domestic ideology of private versus public, home versus world—to fully understand media history and cultural memory from a gendered perspective.

‘Let’s Join in’: Children and ABC Radio

This article considers the world for children created by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) and its predecessors between the 1920s and the 1970s. Beginning with the ‘Aunts’ and ‘Uncles’ of early radio, it looks at the ABC’s endeavours in the areas of children’s and educational broadcasting, focusing particularly on the Argonauts Club, Kindergarten of the Air and Let’s Join In. It also explores the work of ABC identities including composer Bernard Heinze and eurhythmics teacher Heather Gell, and a succession of innovative and committed programmers. But it goes beyond on-air programming to consider the extracurricular world created for young listeners by Australia’s public service broadcaster. The article points to the interactivity of Australian broadcasting, examining how a mass medium sought to build communities of young listeners across Australia, and the role of ABC programmes and associated activities in children’s lives.

The ‘radio service’: Religion and ABC national radio

Abstract This article discusses religious broadcasting in Australia on Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) Radio during the 1940s and 1950s. ABC policy in this period was strictly ecumenical, at a time when Protestant/Catholic sectarian bitterness was a significant social issue in Australia. The article considers the ABC’s motivation for this ecumenical policy, as well as the broadcasting strategies employed in pursuit of this approach. ABC religious broadcasting is considered as part of the ABC’s contribution to a national conversation on religion, tolerance and national culture.

Video on Demand for People with Disability: Traversing Terrestrial Borders

Within Australia, the approach taken to the ways in which disabled people access television is heavily influenced by legislation and activism from abroad. This is increasingly the case as television moves to online modes of distribution where physical and legislative boundaries are more fluid. While early investigations of the intersections between television and the concept of abroad focused on the impacts of representation and national reputation (Boddy), the introduction of new media technologies saw a shifting focus towards the impact and introduction of new media technologies. Drawing on Chan’s definition of media internationalisation as “the process by which the ownership, structure, production, distribution, or content of a country’s media is influenced by foreign media interests, culture and markets” (Chan 71), this article considers the impacts of legislative and advocacy efforts abroad on Australian television audiences with disabilities accessing subscription Video on Demand (VOD)...

Being a ‘Host’ or a ‘Journalist’: Orientation to role on the ABC׳s Q&A

Broadcast nationally, Q&A is a television program promoted by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), Australia׳s national broadcaster as an ‘adventure in democracy’. Previous academic study on the program has considered the program from a range of perspectives but this paper specifically examines the techniques used by Tony Jones, long-time host of Australian current affairs program Q&A, to facilitate panel discussion and interaction between members and the studio audience. This paper considers the way Jones is skilfully able to transition between the role of host and journalist, arguing that these are two quite different roles. The analysis also demonstrates the way in which the audience members in turn orient to the role Jones plays, and suggests that this occurs through familiarity with the show׳s formula and consistency of approach by Jones.

The Right Stuff? The Original Double Jay as Site for Youth Counterculture

The Right Stuff? The Original Double Jay as Site for Youth Counterculture

The Press and Public Service Broadcasting: Neville Petersen's News Not Views and the Case for Australian Exceptionalism

This article revisits historical rivalries between established and emerging media, namely the press and broadcasting, during the first half of the twentieth century. To this end, the author constructs a dialogue between Neville Petersen's broadcasting research and his own press research over a similar period. In his major work, News Not Views: The ABC, Press and Politics (1932–1947), Petersen (1993) elaborates in detail the ongoing constraints imposed by Australian newspaper proprietors on the fledgling Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in their ultimately unsuccessful struggle to restrict its news supply and influence. Drawing on subsequent press research based on international forums, the author revisits this rivalry, particularly Petersen's thesis that Australian press proprietors exercised disproportionate influence over the national broadcaster when compared with other English-speaking countries, such as Britain and Canada.

Orchestrating the Metropolis the Creation of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as a Modern Cultural Institution

In 2012 the Sydney Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 80 th birthday, dating its beginnings from the establishment of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) on 1 July 1932. Yet a body of instrumentalists called the ‘Sydney Symphony Orchestra’ began holding regular subscription concerts as early as 1908. This article explores the early history of the orchestra and argues that it was part of a broad-based community drive to promote civic values and claim the perceived benefits of the ‘civilised’ world for a growing urban community, laying the groundwork for the development of modern musical institutions.This article has been peer-reviewed.

‘INVASION BY THE MONSTER’

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.

Cultural Advance: The Formation of Australia's Permanent Symphony Orchestras, 1944–1951

This article explains why and how the six main Australian symphony orchestras were established on a permanent basis in the five years after the end of World War II. It analyses the role of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in fostering radio orchestras and classical concerts from 1932 as part of its broadcasting and cultural remit, and explains why federal music policies implemented on a state-by-state basis were seen as the way in which orchestras could progress. The article examines Eugene Ormandy's report on the state of Australia's orchestras, written in 1944 and promoted by the federal government, as the main catalyst for action over the formation of permanent orchestras. The article then explores the reactions to the report and the reasons why such ensembles needed to be shared between the ABC, the municipal authorities of leading state cities and state governments. The final part of the article investigates the financial, cultural and political complexities that needed to be surmounted at state and civic level to establish orchestras in Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth between 1945 and 1951. These developments, it is argued, formed a significant cultural advance in Australia's provision for the performing arts.

Mythbusting Publishing: Questioning the ‘Runaway Popularity’ of Published Biography and Other Life Writing

Mythbusting Publishing: Questioning the ‘Runaway Popularity’ of Published Biography and Other Life Writing

Retaining a frisson of the ‘other’: imperialism, assimilation, integration and multiculturalism in Australian schools

In Australia, the 1960s saw a broadening of music offerings from other cultures in school materials from the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). This is a useful indicator for changing perceptions. Since then, increasingly ‘authentic’ materials have become available but how far have we really come? Blacking (How musical is man? University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1973) identified the difficulty of acquiring and understanding, skill and authenticity in the music of another culture. He stressed that musical acquisition should occur in a cultural context. Removing music from one culture and presenting it in the symbolic gestures of another may strip its meaning. This is particularly true for musics from cultures removed from the Western paradigm. The further we move from our cultural norm, the harder it is to produce authentic experiences for students. By considering the African music resources offered to schools by the ABC, we can explore the attempts we have made to move from colonialism to multiculturalism.

Fear and loathing in the sunshine state*

In June 2003, Queensland Chief Magistrate Diane Fingleton was found guilty in the Queensland Supreme Court on a charge of retaliating against a witness, and was sentenced to 12 months' gaol with no...

The Coverage of the Vietnam War in an Organizational Context: The ABC and CBC Experience

The Vietnam War occurred at a time of considerable internal disputation over the role and nature of news within the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) which had its origins in the competing and contrasting values of two groups of professional journalists. In both organizations the traditional criteria for defining and reporting news came under challenge from the new and apparently less constrained field of television current affairs. Each vied for organizational priority. In important respects this mirrored the breakdown in journalistic consensus which was occurring in liberal democratic societies worldwide over attitudes to authority and official sources and reporting of widespread social protest. The period of “high modernism” in journalism was ending. This paper examines aspects of the coverage of Vietnam by the ABC and CBC within this organizational climate.

The Q Story

In 1945, as Australians unknowingly entered the last year of the Second World War, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in Queensland undertook a unique radio history project that ran for two years. The original intention of the programme, as suggested by its title The Q Story, appears to have been propagandist and thus in keeping with official policy: to provide morale-boosting entertainment with a nationalist theme in the context of wartime. As the programme progressed, however, it appears to have developed an alternative legitimacy in response to public demand.

The Great Deception: Working inside the Bureaucracy

After leaving school in 1972 I was content to obtain employment wherever I could. Being an impressionable sixteen year old, the world seemed my oyster then I had clothes, a car, a boyfriend and my choice of jobs. Those were the good old days when jobs were plentiful especially for a young and enthusiastic Black woman. The Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) had just begun a policy to recruit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the workforce and other places where we dared not go. Consequently I ended up in the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) which is a statutory authority but a bureaucracy just the same, bound down by rules and regulations and a hierarchical pecking order. Unbeknown to me but not surprisingly, I was right at the bottom of the imperial pile an Aboriginal female Typist Grade 1. I never knew anything about class then but had had many experiences and was matured in the area of racial inequality and discrimination. The money is those days was absolute heaven. My $75 per fortnight went a 1-o-n-g way from paying my Mother board to raging a Saturday night away. They say the more you earn the more you spend, and it couldn't be truer in my case. I just loved paydays and would spend money wildly being the extravagant Leo that I am. I also began to learn of the mysterious ways of the tax man. Beginning to wonder if it was all worth it, I guessed I'd have to play this game until my earning days were over. All visibly Aboriginal people without exception are plagued by racism in some shape or form. The public service is not immune to it (racism), and in fact like most workplaces where people of different nationalities are prone to mix, a festering intolerance of difference can be found. This intolerance often reared its ugly head against me but I recall one vivid experience as if it was only yesterday. I had arrived one morning to find two middle-aged co-workers huddled in a corner desk sniggering and laughing. The short fat bald ex-Vietnam veteran marched over to my desk as I began settling in for the day. 'Hey, Jackie do you speak that boong language that they speak at West End?' he roared. Much to my surprise I roared back in a triad of emotional and gabbled defence. Later that morning I was sent to the Boss's office where he told me not to be so sensitive.