Communication Structure of Australia - Essay Example

It may be reasonably argued that a very large proportion of technological developments over more than 3,000 years have been directed to one problem -enabling people to have influence over a larger area over a shorter period. Based on that, two quite distinct technological thrusts have been evident: first, changes directed at moving people physically more quickly over a greater distance, and second, changes directed at increasing the influence of people to interact with each other over a greater distance. We have steadily increased our capability to interact with others over greater distances. Methods are ranging from writing and loud hailers, analogue radio and television, and to the present digital communication and Internet. This seems to be the ultimate trend, because it has affected everybody and every form of organization, including governments. So far transnational communication and use of electronic-based services has been very limited for the great majority of people by physical and linguistic barriers, to remain virtually unaffected. But it seems very likely that as transnational electronic communications and services tend towards a zero marginal cost, their effect on national institutions and organizations will be profound. Because no extensive replacement of printing has taken place to date, it is tempting for skeptics to suggest that printing is safe from electronic predators. However it might be unwise - the critical technologies needed for widespread use of electronic information are reaching the stage at which they are becoming available to a significant number of people. This combination of technological and economic pressures is likely to lead to a very sizeable change in all information handling organizations, over the next ten years. We can now reasonably assume that for Australia in ten years time, anyone who is in a position which involves any significant use of information on a day-to-day basis will have convenient access to a global network which provides full information access. This might include messaging and electronic publishing facilities as well as the traditional broadcast receipt capabilities of radio and TV. The big part of the people living today have led their lives in times when they have been subjected to a very limited number of mass media channels. Many Australians, for instance, read no newspapers at all, and of those that do, very few read more than the same newspaper each day. Until recently, no Australians had access to more than five television channels, and many still have access to only three or four channels. In few places are there more than about six acceptable quality radio stations, and in many country areas people are restricted to one or possibly two stations. It is arguable in any case whether any sizeable audience uses these broadcast media for more than pure entertainment plus, possibly, keeping in touch with happenings of major news interest which is not the same as events of major significance nationally or globally. But we are in the early stages of moving from an era in which we have had only a relatively small number of broadcast channels controlled by a small number of organizations, to one in which people will be able to choose among a very wide range of sources of entertainment and information - sports channels, news channels, weather channels, talk show channels, etc, etc. While a small number of major media interests will attempt to continue to control the content across all channels, the move from broadcasting to narrow-casting is based on a continuing reduction in the costs of communication, a trend which is inexorable, as it rests on continuing advances in the efficiency of use of increasing cable capacity, and the ability for the radio spectrum to be split up digitally into many more non-interfering channels. Given that this development is also just another example of the move to mass customization and given that content can now be created much more cheaply by small organizations and even individuals, it is questionable that the fragmentation of broadcast industries can be prevented in the longer run. Nevertheless, this issue remains a significant area for public policy decision in Australia, if an undesirable concentration of media ownership and therefore policy influence is to be avoided. It clearly has significant implications for the diversity of multimedia outlets. The previous separation of mass media communications from information channels such as libraries rested on the fact that the entry capital required for running television and radio stations, newspapers and mass circulation journals was very high, thus limiting the number of publishers and broadcasters. Now, when we have tools such as the World Wide Web, that situation changed dramatically. It is not only that Internet improves access to information but that it makes everyone a potential publisher. For a cost of about $A3,000, one can now personally transmit not only text, but hypertext documents containing images and sound to anyone on the Web. This clearly makes most information more transparent thus reducing the governmental role as censor and distributor. Australian government have traditionally been comfortable with a limited number of communication channels that it can influence. As digital division of an increasingly available communication spectrum allows more and more channels of broadcast capability at an ever lower capital entry cost, then government influence on electronic content must inevitably decline. This is likely to provoke, a continuing debate over issues of intellectual freedom and community standards, as one of many issues of public policy. In any society where a government has neither the will nor the power to act in an authoritarian way, the existence of that government rests on acceptance of its validity and utility by its people. The purpose of the government is to add value to the lives of the people it serves. In practice, in a modern economy, government and the commercial sector have become increasingly linked and interdependent. During the recent years in Australia there has been a move to reduce the scope of direct government activity. One of the problems of modern democracy has been the development of balanced public policy. In many countries, and certainly in Australia, most ongoing national public policy has had very little significant input to it from outside the relatively few active members of the governing political parties, senior business people, organized lobby groups and the public bureaucracy. The use of the Internet as a communication mechanism relies on the facts that : first, almost all textual documents and multimedia objects such as moving pictures and sound recordings, are now initially created in digital form; second, once the communication infrastructure is in place, the cost of transmitting any document anywhere in a country or around the world is tending towards zero; and finally, much communication results in interaction and manipulation of documents - any system which enables remote manipulation without recreation of the original is likely to result in considerable cost savings. Traditionally, a very large part of the information within government has not been available for outside usage. Now almost all government documents and databases are created in electronic form in the first place. Once this access infrastructure is in place, in the form of Internet connections to and from each government agency, the marginal cost of making that information publicly available is very small. While of course some government information needs to be restricted for reasons of privacy, national security or occasionally special commercial advantage, that is no reason to restrict access to the vast bulk of government information, collected at public expense. Also in Australia the problem of rural stimulation is a real one. How to prevent the economic and social costs of the continuing drift to the cities from declining agricultural and mining areas Extending Internet-type services offers the potential for business and government in rural areas to offer a similar level of capability as in urban areas. For government this includes the cost associated with health and education, but there are many quality of life factors affecting groups like the disabled. If the disadvantages of distance are reduced through external communications, then perhaps the cost advantage of cheaper land in rural areas may actually allow some kinds of business to have a competitive advantage from outside city areas. There can be no conclusion on this issue at the present, but it is certainly arguable that the apparently expensive extension of the Internet into rural areas represents a very sensible national strategy when total infrastructure costs are taken into account. Working via the Internet may well be significantly cheaper for society as a whole than forcing workers to travel over ever larger distances into city locations for work purposes. Since the advent of television, we have worried about the Americanization of Australian culture. That was nearly 50 years ago. Australians today seem more confident of their culture than ever and arguably exert a bigger influence in global culture than any other nation of 20 million people. A free trade agreement with the US is likely to reinforce that confidence and influence. Australia switched on TV for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. It was a new funnel for American values, but probably not all that significant. Movies and popular music had carried American dreams, slang and ideas into Australia. We seemed to like it. "Pick a Box" was one of the most popular and long running Australian quiz shows on television. The host was Bob Dyer, an American. Don Lane, another American, was a staple on Australian television for nearly two decades. Australia has been a relatively open migrant society since European settlement. We import ideas and values from everywhere. US culture is internationally ubiquitous. Not because of Hollywood and TV, but because it has been the leading global nation for nearly 100 years. Everybody absorbs some US culture. Open societies like ours absorb more. The consequence is cultural vitality. Today we produce more movies and TV series than ever before in Australia, thanks in part to generous subsidies and rules requiring that TV broadcasters must show a minimum amount of Australian material on TV. Thanks also to US investment. More than half of production of TV and movies in Australia is for the US market. Never has the industry been as large and never had more actors and directors and worked in Hollywood. We hear Australian accents and expressions in mainstream Hollywood movies. Recognition of Australia is higher in the US than of any other comparable country, except Canada. This is cultural expansion, not cultural suppression. Australians like Australian productions. As a result of lobbying from the Australian film industry, the Government has effectively given an assurance that it will continue to support the Australian film industry. The industry should be well satisfied. Television programming in Australia can only be understood by examining its origins in radio and film. As in the American experience, and unlike the British, the major impetus to radio programming in Australia came from the commercial sector with the explosive growth of commercial radio in the 1930s. The Australian experience mimicked the American from the soap opera to the singing commercial. Australia is one of the few places on the globe where radio drama was considered as an art form, the vast bulk of commercial radio dramatic product was of the soap opera variety. In its heyday, it succeeded brilliantly by its own commercial standards, meeting not only a domestic niche, but also providing a steady stream of programs for export. It employed a small army of professional writers and production people who formed the nucleus of writers, actors and producers for the infant Australian television industry when it began in the mid-1950s. The Australian television and media have become americanized through the influence of American media and television programs in Australia. To fully understand the topic of the hypothesis, proper exploration of the definitions of 'identity' and 'culture' are of relevance. 'Identity' and 'culture' play an integral role in what an Australian represents as well as how the world views Australians. The meaning of 'identity' can be summarized as the collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known as well as the set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group. Culture one the other hand, can be simply coined as the way of life, language and traditions that are common amongst a group of people. The Australian identity and culture is something that is unique and exclusive to its people. Australians pride themselves as hard-working, humorous and jovial people, who love the outdoors and good food. But in recent times we notice that Australians, are not being Australian enough. Gone are the days where men wore rabbit-fur and trusty leather work-shoes. New York Yankees caps worn backwards and polished white Adidas Superstar sneakers have replaced these. Ten years ago, the mentioned situation could only exist in the United States of America. Today we see it happening in almost all major cities and suburbs in Australia. Throughout the years, we have heard the term Americanization frequently invoked but seldom defined. Originally, Americanization was the label used to define the assimilation of immigrants and other minorities seeking citizenship in the United States of. In most cases, Americanization was defined broadly as the process by which an alien acquires our language, citizenship, customs and ideas. The overall term Americanization is most of the time no more than an assumption regarding the origin of cultural values (language, food, fashion) that come from the USA, which may not be accurate. It is applied indiscriminately within the Australian media to label array of factors seen as threatening to national identity, way of life or values. This uncomplimentary use of Americanization sees Australia as adopting social practices and cultural values which originates in the United States. Television has, without doubt, received more attention from Americanization critics on media globalization, more than any of the other domains e.g. fashion, language. The early 1960s represented the peak in the Americanization of popular culture measured by the proportion of American material transmitted. Most analysts now agree that about half of Australian television scheduled is taken up with imports, with US material dominating the commercial channels and British programs comprising the bulk of overseas material broadcast by the ABC. It has been reported that Australia has seen a decline from 57 per cent of imported programming to 40 per cent in 1983, although the proportion of imported programs at prime time was slightly higher at 46 per cent. Although Australia's proportion of imported television is high compared to the Western European countries (yet significantly lower than New Zealand), commentators have generally claimed that such imported programs do not attract overwhelming audience attention. US programs do undoubtedly lead the world in distribution and even manage to dominate schedules in some countries; they are rarely the most popular programs where viewers have a reasonable menu of locally produced material from which to choose. The US sitcom Seinfeld is clearly symbolic of this generation shift towards the Americanization of cultural choice. Twenty-one percent of the entire allocations of the top 30 choices of youngsters are for this program alone; but when it comes to the 60 year olds and above, it goes almost unacknowledged. However, it has also been pointed out that the coding system used to come up with these statistics may in fact be underestimating the degree of Americanization in Australian television content. Several of the programs considered to be Australian are actually clones or remakes of their American counterparts. These results clearly show that young Australians inhabit a world which is clearly saturated with American materials, but that they are more likely to prefer this material, in some cases to the almost exclusion of other national products. Many Australians share this view, although a handful of social commentators and economists view this as the merging of cultures due to globalization. Noting the fact that Australia and the USA share similar characteristics and history, it can be seen that Australia itself is leaning to become like its successful Big Brother. But this opinion can be heavily criticized, as cultural absorbency not necessarily means that America is exerting dominance over Australia. This may be exactly what Australia along with the rest of the world is experiencing. There is no doubt that USA has managed to spread just about everything from fashion and fast food to hip-hop music throughout the world creating a popular culture. Australians may enjoy and appreciate this popular culture, but this by no means making them any less Australian (people still prefer watching cricket to professional wrestling). An interesting fact is that the USA has its own cultural dilemma, it should be recognized that the US has likewise absorbed diverse cultures and traditions making many people question who is a real American. The idea of Americanization should not be ignored but rather regarded as part of the cultural assimilation of the world leading towards globalization. Eric Wainwright, Emerging Australian Policies & Developments Diane Baird, Attuned to the Background J.Ritter, F.Gengaroli, TV broadcasting in Australia Richard M Barton, Australian Assessment of TV broadcasting Read More