Australian Television Research Articles

Power dynamics, inclusion, trust and leadership in TV script development

ABSTRACT The television writers’ room is a major site of screen production that brings writers together for funded periods of development for series ideas with potential, and the script development processes for series in production. Maloney and Burne have described Australian television writers’ rooms as, ‘a place where story developers, script editors, script writers and script producers gather to create stories, devise character arcs and plot episodes’ [2021, So Much Drama, So Little Time: Writers’ Rooms in Australian Television Drama Production.” In Script Development. Critical Approaches, Creative Practices, International Perspectives, edited by Craig Batty and Stayci Taylor, 185–204. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan]. Television production in Australia, and many other countries, has a history of creative hierarchies and script departments, isolated from the rest of production, with highly systemised creative processes [Maloney and Burne 2021] [O’Meara 2022, “Scriptwriting on the Inside: The Streamlined System of Prisoner and the Collaborative Community of Wentworth.” In TV Transformations and Transgressive Women: From Prisoner: Cell Block H to Wentworth, edited by Radha O’Meara, Tessa Dwyer, Stayci Taylor, and Craig Batty, 63–80. London: Peter Lang]. This article considers Australia’s evolving writers’ room dynamics and hierarchies by way of an observational study of a ‘training’ writers’ room. The ‘trainees’, a new generation of writers, were more diverse than the typical writers’ room demographic. The point of the simulation was to educate the 10 new writers in the norms of behaviour expected in writers’ rooms and the values of ‘good’ television storytelling. A senior writer in Australian television drama led the writers in developing a hypothetical second series of an existing drama. The room was run according to industry standards, with some exceptions. The room explicitly practised inclusivity, and as a training exercise, common roles, expectations and values – often tacitly accepted in professional settings – were explicitly questioned and discussed. One of the authors, Radha O’Meara, participated in the room. From this fieldwork, the authors are able to make a study of the possibilities for disrupting power dynamics and unproductive hierarchies, building on other observational studies of television production [Born 2005; Hartzheim 2024. “Crafting Consensus in Anime’s Writer’s Room: Uchiawase as Script Development.” Mechademia 16 (2): 75–98; Phalen and Osellame 2012. “Writing Hollywood: Rooms with a Point of View.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56 (1): 3–20; Redvall 2013. Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark: From The Kingdom to The Killing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan].

Restoring cultural identity in a global world: a ‘place-based’ test for Australian feature films

ABSTRACT Globalization, the internationalizing of the Australian screen industry, is having a strong, negative impact on the production of culturally specific stories. Recently, there has been push-back against this and calls for more ambitious measures to protect and promote Australian content. Lotz and Potter have proposed a ‘place-based’ culture test for projects funded by Australian taxpayers. (Lotz, Amanda, and Anna Potter. 2022. ‘Effective Cultural Policy in the 21st Century: Challenges and Strategies from Australian Television.’ International Journal of Cultural Policy 28 (6): 684–696). This paper considers the efficacy of a ‘place-based’ test in relation to two feature films, Frank and Frank (2023) by Adam Morris and The Rooster (2023) by Mark Leonard Winter. The case studies confirm Lotz and Potter's contention that a ‘place-based’ test will help ensure the production of culturally specific stories. However, the test does not address the question of the form in which the stories are told which also conveys deep cultural values.

From Scandi noir to Tassie noir: Victoria Madden’s adapting auteurship of noir in Australian television

Tasmanian writer/producer Victoria Madden has made no secret of the influence of Scandinavian noir (also known as Nordic noir) on her work. After working in the United Kingdom and Ireland on several prestige television productions, Madden moved back to her native Tasmania and created two locally set and shot limited television series: The Kettering Incident (2016) and The Gloaming (2020). These well-received crime series – dubbed ‘Tassie noir’ by the local press – have staked out a place within the wider emerging genre of Australian noir and the perennially popular global television crime market. The Tasmanian landscape lends itself to comparison with Scandi and other European ‘noirs’ (such as Scots noir) due to its climate and topography, as well as for depicting crime narratives set in remote or marginal places. Looming mountains, treacherous coastlines and cold, rainy weather all contribute to their gothic-noir style. This article will examine Madden’s two programmes in comparison with two classic Scandi noir series, Forbrydelsen (The Killing) (2007–12) and Bron | Broen (The Bridge) (2011–18), tracing commonalties in narrative construction, character, mood and the use of landscape.

Enchanting things: the scientific communication of Julius Sumner Miller

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the popular educational broadcasting of Julius Sumner Miller and its intersections with contemporary science policy and education.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on archival research including resources so far unused by historians of science or of broadcasting and audio-visual resources of Sumner Miller’s broadcasts on Australian, Canadian and American television. It begins by contextualising Sumner Miller as both an academic and broadcaster. The second section interprets the core points of his educational philosophy which he articulated in his written and broadcast works. The final section uses his private papers contextualised by works on the history and philosophy of science to interpret and delineate the disparity between Sumner Miller’s influence as a populariser of science and the prevailing trends in scientific policy and teaching.FindingsThis paper proposes that reconstructing the themes and recurring points he asserted in his broadcasts reveals disjunction between Sumner Miller’s high-profile successes and the contemporary trends in both science policy and science education. This paper interprets the circumstance of an internationally known and influential science populariser who was coterminous with but against the grain of the notion of “big science”. He therefore sought to popularise science precisely as it was developing in ways he disparaged.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper breaks new ground by interpreting the different sources, audio-visual and written, created by and about an influential television broadcaster.Originality/valueAlthough he was widely and internationally known, and the range of his influence on science communication is generally noted, Sumner Miller’s broadcasting and the themes and educational philosophy espoused in it is little researched and contextualised. This paper sharpens understanding of his influence but also his points of intersection and disjunction with scientific culture. Hitherto unused archival resources contribute to this understanding.

Duncan Tanner Essay Prize Winner 2023: A 'High Quality' Deal: The Business of British Comedy Television in Australia, 1960-90.

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.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and nonbinary representation on Australian scripted television in the 2000s and 2010s

Over the past few decades, there has been significant industry and scholarly interest in diversity, equity, and inclusion in television. Alongside this, attention has been paid to the politics of queer representation in screen and media contexts. Providing much-needed data on these issues, this article catalogues the representation of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and nonbinary characters in Australian scripted television since 2000. We highlight the inclusion of more queer characters onscreen and situate this in the context of two significant decades of change in the Australian television industry and the broader socio-political context. In teasing out recent trends around gender and sexually diverse representation, we identify shifts toward representing more complex and inclusive queer story worlds on Australian television. We also note significant tensions in these representations, highlighting how Australian television remains quite conservative in depicting queer sex, intersections between sexualities and gender identities, and bisexual identities.

‘Whitefellas got miserable language skills’: Differentiation, scripted speech, and Indigenous discourses

Abstract Linguistic differences in staged or scripted performances matter, since language, or language-ing, is a critical component in structuring power and maintaining unequal social differences or challenging and complicating them. To investigate such scripted speech in the context of Indigenous characters, we draw on the semiotic processes of erasure and rhematisation as well as the newly proposed concepts of erasure marking and semiotic overlay. We examine a dataset of Australian television series with Indigenous characters that feature significant creative involvement by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander individuals. Crucially, these series address mainstream, mixed audiences, meaning they must blend multiple perspectives to reach diverse viewers. We explore overt meta-discourses and subtle signs of linguistic characterisation to show how Indigenous screen creatives counter or challenge erasure and rhematisation by diversifying and complicating characters’ linguistic repertoires and bringing in Indigenous discourses and perspectives. (Semiotic processes, ethnoracialisation, decolonisation, Australia, mainstream media, Aboriginal English, language ideologies)*

Viewing place: Australian queer screen audiences born in the 1970s and 1980s

This article investigates how viewers born in the 1970s and 1980s recall Australian film and television LGBTQ+ themes, characters and narratives they viewed while they were growing up. Aspects of place and space were centred in these accounts, from memories of watching a shared television in the domestic family setting to the physical artefact of the video tape. Participants emphasised the theme of mobility toward the city and a rural/urban distinction in the film and television they discussed, and the role of city contexts in providing better access to screen media that represented LGBTQ+ lives – for example, through access to independent cinemas. These memorial accounts were considered formative and often provided the framework by which participants perceive and navigate everyday life as members of minority communities. At the same time, these place-bound accounts of encounters with LGBTQ+ screen texts expressed a complex attachment to domestic spaces, tangible objects and narratives of mobility.

She Must Be Seeing Things! Gender disparity in camera department networks

She Must Be Seeing Things! Gender disparity in camera department networks

Representing Online Hostility against Women

Representing Online Hostility against Women

Broadcaster video-on-demand in Australia: Platforms, policy and local content

Over the last decade Australia's free-to-air commercial networks Seven, Nine and Ten have undergone a protracted digital transformation with the development of their online, ad-supported broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD) platforms 7Plus, 9Now, and 10Play. The present article considers some of the questions these commercial BVODs raise for television policy in Australia, with specific reference to local content regulation. Through content audits of 7Plus, 9Now and 10Play, we assess the localism of the BVODs’ catalogues in terms of the availability and discoverability of Australian titles. We find that these BVOD services – which are not presently regulated for local content – are less local in their programming than the networks’ free-to-air linear channels, but are more local than competing subscription video-on-demand services such as Netflix and Prime Video. We also reflect on how the networks position themselves in the newly expanded Australian television market, and how they reconcile their historical status as protected national broadcast institutions with their newer status as ‘just another app’ in the streaming ecosystem.

Investigating older women as lead protagonists: an Australian case study of Stateless (2020)

ABSTRACT Screen Australia’s Gender Matters Program (2015–2023) addresses the underrepresentation of women in the screen industry. Older women continue to be less visible and stereotyped on screen which will be examined in this paper on the Australian television mini-series Stateless (Freeman and Moorhouse 2020). Stateless is an award-winning series commissioned and screened by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and acquired by Netflix. This case study will apply a framework comprised of five guiding principles to writing older women to analyse the portrayal of the two major female characters. The five principles are based on unpublished Honours research data addressing the representation of older women: as the lead protagonist; as authentic, capable, complex characters; in powerful leadership positions; depicted at work in an occupation in a non-traditional role; and as flawed imperfect characters. Lauzen’s 2021 Boxed In report highlights the underrepresentation of women forty and over on broadcast and streaming services. The case study reveals that the female protagonists in Stateless are two contrasting complex, authentic characters who actively pursue their respective goals.

Class Acts: TV Larrikins and the Advent of the Ocker, 1957–1984

ABSTRACTStephen Fry has described the typical American comic hero as a freewheeling “wisecracker” compared to the English type, who is apt to be an aspirational lower-middle-class failure. With Fry as a prompt, we consider humour and class in the evolution—or devolution—of that representative local hero, the larrikin, during Australian television’s first three decades. This was a period that saw a realignment of the nation’s political, economic and cultural affiliations away from Britain towards the US, and in which the ocker came into sudden prominence as a less benign version of rowdy male identity. If media larrikins such as Graham Kennedy and Paul Hogan excelled at the kind of sketch-based humour that had its origins in vaudeville and were unsuited to sitcoms, ocker characters such as Wally Stiller from My Name’s McGooley and Ted Bullpitt from Kingswood Country found a home there. Our analysis of larrikin and ocker humour is triangulated with that of Norman Gunston, as played by Garry McDonald: a desperately aspirational failure with his own mock variety show who emerged from the dialogue between these two comic types. We conclude with some thoughts on post-ockerism and the emergence of the bogan.

Nurses are background actors in medical reality television: A character network analysis and call for authentic action.

The aim of this study was to describe how nurses' dialogue compares with that of doctors in the Australian reality television program Emergency and to explain how this dialogue and the use of narration and direct-to-camera monologues contribute to the portrayal of nurses. The final aim was to outline how these findings can inform the actions of nurses, nursing organizations and writers and journalists. A descriptive study conducted in 2021 and 2022. Character network analysis was used to describe the verbal interaction of nurses and doctors and identify major, minor and background characters. Narration and direct-to-camera monologues were analysed through frequency counts. Cultivation theory was used to interpret the results. Fifty-four characters were identified, with 19 of these being nurses. Doctors spoke 87.9% of the dialogue. Most of the dialogue (43%) was monologue by doctors directly to the camera. All major characters were doctors, and only one nurse was a minor character. The mean number of mentions by the narrator of a nurse per episode was 4, and 30 for a doctor. The portrayal of nurses in Emergency is inaccurate and the production methods are used to privilege the role of doctors. This finding comes after decades of research showing inaccurate images of nursing in television. Drawing on recent Australian inquiries and the challenges experienced by mental health and aged care nursing, several approaches for collaborative action to improve these images are suggested. This is the first study of the portrayal of nursing in reality television. These results suggest that much effort is still required even in contemporary reality television to accurately reflect the work and contribution of nurses. It is the shared responsibility of individual nurses, nursing organizations and writers and journalists to accurately portray nurses in the media. This network analysis of a postproduction television program did not allow patient or public involvement in the design or analysis.

White noise

First Nations content on commercial Australian television drama is rare and First Nations content makers rarely produce the content we see. Despite a lack of presence on commercial drama platforms there has been, and continues to be, a rich array of First Nations content on Australian public broadcast networks. Content analysis by Screen Australia, the Federal Government agency charged with supporting Australian screen development, production and promotion, aggregates information across the commercial and non-commercial (public broadcasting) platforms which dilutes the non-commercial output. The research presented in this article focused on the systemic processes of commercial Australian television drama production to provide a detailed analysis of the disparity of First Nations content between commercial and non-commercial television. The study engaged with First Nations and non-Indigenous Australian writers, directors, producers, casting agents, casting directors, heads of production, executive producers, broadcast journalists, former channel managers and independent production company executive directors—all exemplars in their fields—to interrogate production processes, script to screen, contributing to inclusion or exclusion of First Nations content in commercial television drama. Our engagement with industry revealed barriers to the inclusion of First Nations stories, and First Nations storytelling, occurring across multiple stages of commercial Australian television drama production.

Emerging visions: the (hero’s) journey to a career in Australian film and television production

ABSTRACT Despite an increasing proportion of the film and television workforce with tertiary qualification, the value of higher education as a source of training and development for, and a pathway into, the industry remains unclear. Education and screen policy could do better preparing emerging filmmakers for their career but there are few studies that consider the pathways and the journey from emerging to established screen practitioner to support improvement. Drawing from historical interviews with Australian screen creatives, this article adapts the monomyth framework of Joseph Campbell’s ‘hero’s journey’ to smooth the narrative of filmmakers’ trajectories as they establish careers in the industry. It then identifies recurring patterns within that narrative structure to explore concepts and construct theory relating to the pathways to a successful screen career. The findings reveal general themes of cognitive (i.e. self-efficacy), emotional (i.e. resilience) and social (i.e. periphery to core) transformation in the career journey, shaped by social structures, human agency and luck. The implications for screen education and screen policy are also considered.

Transmission interrupted: Australia’s international television broadcasting

ABSTRACT Australia’s efforts to pursue public diplomacy through a government-funded international television service have been sporadic and ineffectual. The reasons for failure lie in the way such efforts have been pawns in other political conflicts and relationships – conflicts between Coalition governments and the ABC; conflicts between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard that dominated the Labor government from 2010 onwards; and the wish of key players in both major parties to please Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. The Abbott Government’s 2014 axing of the ten-year contract with Australian Television slashed Australia’s international broadcasting capacity. Domestic agendas have repeatedly trumped what should be a tool of international policy.

Publics of interest and the death of the critic on Australian TV

This article charts a turning point in recent Australian broadcast television history, where enduring institutions of media criticism in popular formats rapidly disappeared from screens. We firstly situate media criticism and the roles of the ‘television critic’ within theoretical paradigms of Bourdieusian taste-making and publics of interest, before undertaking a close analysis of three case studies circa 2015. Examining Good Game, The Book Club and Movie Juice demonstrates variations in critical and presentational aims and tones, influenced by such factors as media types and associated cultures (games, literature and film, respectively), network/broadcaster interests, scope of media operations and engagement with online publics. Our assessments of these formats are then placed in their historical context of media production and consumption, whereby we retrospectively find that the retirement of the popular film criticism show At the Movies marked the beginning of the Australian television critic's extinction event.

A future of uncertainty: school, class, ethnicity, gender and power in Australian television’s ‘chalk-operas’ of the 1970s

High school education underwent a radical change in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s, commensurate with the major changes experienced within other institutions and social environments. This article is an exploration of Australian television’s use of the schoolroom within drama during the 1970s, with a focus on three productions: 290 half-hour episodes of Class of ’74/’75, 39 hour-long instalments of Glenview High and a pilot for Jackson High, a one-hour show that was not developed but which proved to be a forerunner for Glenview High. The article demonstrates that such shows provide insight into attitudes to both schooling and to teenage life in Australia in the 1970s, as well as being in themselves important and engaging examples of early Australian television drama.

Engaging Audiences Through Multi-Platform Television: Danger-5 and the Diamond Girls

This paper examines the production processes of an Australian television drama, focusing on webisodes produced as part of a multi-platform program Danger 5. This program was broadcast on the Special Broadcast Service (SBS), Australia, in two series (2012 and 2015). Levine’s (2007) modes of production are applied to the creation of the webisodes. Through set visits and nine interviews with key creative staff, this study examines how cultural factors shaped these ancillary texts. The SBS’s chartered purpose to use innovation to reach audiences was a key factor in the creation of these webisodes. The findings from this project include that the environment, routines, and practices in the creation of the webisodes were very similar to the broadcast Danger 5 program. However, this paper will demonstrate that shaping story for the webisodes and the efforts to reach an online audience meant that content changes were made. The more immediate feedback and clearer ability to measure audiences using social media were the reasons for a change in emphasis toward this form of online engagement during production in the program’s second season.