Our Kind Of Television

What have we have to show for 40 years of Australian television? Although much is said about our domestic electronic assistant, television, very few opportunities arise where the good and bad, the past, present and future of television can be discussed. Certainly not the multimillion dollar fiasco of the ABC's defunct "TV TV" - sort of an infantile "Simon Townsend's Wonderland of TV". Can anyone give us a great program about our favourite pastime?

The many programs destined this year for television's big 4 - 0 will show us some of the glorious and inglorious past of our televisual medium but none will examine where we've gone wrong and how to perhaps improve in the future. The largely Sydney-based broadcast television elite does not take to criticism - or competition - at all well.

So it's a welcome relief that Melbourne's Monash University recently held the "40 Years of Television" Conference to look at where we've come from and are going to with one of the cultural landmarks of the twentieth century. Many deliveries were a side-splitting - if rueful - history of the foibles and failures of Australian television and provide much food for thought as we contemplate the next 40 years of the industry.

Tom O'Regan, Director of the Centre for Research in Culture and Communications at WA's Murdoch University, related the experiences of regional television in the new environment of Sydney-originated networking and how HSV7 Perth stubbornly resisted twenty years of takeover attempts by Rupert Murdoch and steadfastly beat Channel Nine. In the end, he explained, Murdoch simply bought the brains behind the operation - one of Australia's cleverest and most consistent operators - Sir James Curruthers.

Graeme Turner, Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, discussed the loss of journalistic integrity with tabloid television programs like 60 Minutes masquerading as "current affairs". To illustrate the point, he used "Frontline" and its expose - under the guise of parody - of the "Mike Monroe-Moore" style of performer who has taken journalism to a low point of an ethical and responsible portrayal of issues.

Jonathan Dawson, Head of the Pacific School of Screen Studies at Griffith University, presented a devastating and hilarious - but ultimately very sad - history of the destruction of the ABC's Children's Educational Unit as an example of the damage caused to Australian television and public broadcasting by the overpaid and aging elite that dominate our bloated and increasingly irrelevant - particularly with the young - ABC.

Where to now? That's up to us.