Here is a situation which looks as if it is about an arcane squabble between television channels, and a minor protest by a couple of indy filmmakers crushed by bureaucratic shenanigans. But it is much more than that.

First, I’ll recap some basic information, which is all naturalised in our minds but is actually pretty peculiar. Australia has not one but two public broadcasters – the ABC and SBS, both of which cover television and radio, even though SBS is a modern invention. SBS was created by the conservative Fraser government to support the “ethnic” communities, because more radical ideas of television recognised that the medium could validate or oppress our various migrant cultures. Community based radio and television was seen as a different kind of relationship, in which the media was responsible to the audience, recognised as what we now jargonise as “stakeholders”.

In so doing, Fraser sucked the primary energy from the original community television movement, which helps to explain why the various Channel 31/TVU broadcasters mimic commercial stations today.

The ABC was seen as a hopeless case, resolutely anglo, white bread to the core, awash with aspirant middle class values, still clinging to a vision of itself as a psychic bud of the BBC. The relationship between the two had been uneasy ever since. In Howardland, SBS was a useful irritant to the ABC – working on a fraction of the money, outsourcing production, embracing advertising and cheerfully commercial. SBS has adopted that huckster agenda precisely because it is antithetical to the ABC – it has lived with the real threat of amalgamation for decades.

Compared to the way in which the commercial broadcasters maul each other, the conflict between these two is still pretty small beer. It is all about secret joy and muted point scoring, beneath a veneer of politeness.

Last night, Jonathan Holmes on Media Watch turned on his own broadcaster, as the show is wont to do. He agreed publically and explicitly with the critics of a very daggy bit of behaviour, in which the ABC was screwing both SBS and an independent production company, risking a substantial swag of income, and failing to deal in good faith.

Here’s the background. Nick Torrens and Frank Haines, a pair of Sydney documentary filmmakers, agreed in early 2006 with SBS to make a three part series on the Liberal Party over the last 30 years. They then embarked on the usual marathon journey to find the finance, and approached ABC Archival to make a bulk deal on which to set a budget.

Half way through 2006, the ABC offered to sell them 60 minutes of footage for $160,000, which secured them half price for a job lot, but gave the ABC a handy profit.

Over the next year, Frank emailed the ABC to say it was a handsome offer, but he did not actually explicitly say that he accepted it. And he shouldn’t have to, though a more careful producer might have locked it in. Nick Torrens has told me that the deal was actually more complicated, and they didn’t really know what they wanted to commit to until they knew how much money they had.

Eventually SBS agreed to finance the whole project, extra footage was shot, the two worked out what they needed, and went back to activate the arrangement. An ominous silence prevailed, and the producers found out just before they went into the cut in June, that News and Current Affairs in the ABC had kyboshed the deal.

I have some sympathy for the reason. Newscaff is making its own series on the Howard Years, and didn’t want to be gazumped. Eventually, it did agree to release some footage, but only that material which the ABC approved, and only if the production company agreed that any broadcast is delayed until after January 1st, 2009.

Nick Torrens pointed out that the production company had no power over that question, which is the province of the broadcaster. He fired off letters to all the relevant parties, and never received a reply from either the managing director, Mark Scott, or the Board. Instead, he dealt with Alan Sunderland, the ABC TV Head of National Programs, which is really head of News and Current Affairs. (We note, as an aside, that ABC Archival does not belong to this department, and the use of Sunderland to comment is a little odd).

Nick and Frank went public, the Australian Directors’ Guild made a statement, and Screen Hub rumbled into action as well. The ABC replied with a press release, again quoting Sunderland. He said:

“The ABC has been working on a documentary on the Howard Government since 2005, when the first major research was commissioned and conducted. Like Labor in Power before it, documentaries like these are important projects for a publicly-funded national broadcaster, and the ABC takes them seriously and produces them to a high standard. Currently the vast bulk of our archive of the Howard Government is in Sydney, while we prepare our forthcoming documentary. We are in no position to hand it over to someone else.

“For the entire period that the Howard Government was in power, SBS
maintained its own Canberra bureau, and participated fully in shooting
all of the available vision during this time. Whenever and wherever
“pool” vision was shot, it was provided to SBS at the time.

“If the ABC has additional exclusive material shot by our key programs, we remain happy to assist when we can. However the ABC has never indicated that such material is available for license in every circumstance.”

This acknowledges that the ABC saw the programs as competing with each other. As Nick said to me, the notion that this entire period of history can only be covered by one film is obviously absurd. Competing points of view can only enliven the public discussion, and he reckons his line is different from the ABC. Aside from anything else, he is covering a longer time frame.

The ABC newscaff mob are not stupid. They know that SBS has never had the resources to match the whitebread gang in accumulating the kind of searching archival scenes which 4 Corners shoots and goes far beyond Howard bouncing up and down on the kerbside. The two collections are simply not comparable. Indeed, Sunderland comes from SBS.

I think there is a trace in here of that battle about in house v independent production. The ABC emphasises that it produces them to a high standard. But the series is not being made by ABC Documentaries, which outsources – it is being kept in-house. Where the real experts do the job properly, you see.. (but we won’t talk about the fact that Labor in Power was full of fascinating people and stories but was also a bit .. um.. dreary. Sort of pompous and self-important).

One reason why SBS doesn’t have a lot of archival of its own is precisely because it outsources. The independent community owns the footage, and it is harder to gather and organise. Part of the ABC’s strength is that collection at their fingertips.

The rest of us are a bit bemused by the claim that the ABC needs all the stuff in Sydney. Surely it has been at least keyworded and basically itemised? Nick and Frank will know when and where most of the footage was shot, because the ABC has used it in programs. So, the search can’t have been too difficult. Have you got this in the cutting room? Er, yes. Can you make a dub? Sure, we have already digitised it and you can access the betacam in the ABC at Ultimo… The ABC has, after all, admitted that it has brought all the footage to the city in which Nick and Frank work.

Let’s not forget these shows have different time frames. Some of the most important footage for Nick is well outside the Howard years story.

What about the risk of being gazumped? Many people around this case argue that the shows have different audiences anyway. And a committed viewer will watch both. The fear is really just part of the dinosaur reflexes of old journos. Always be first, always break the story, whack the opposition if they are getting ahead.

The ABC does have a right to assert a time frame. It happens all the time, as rights owner do exclusive deals, or programs are financed subject to prior usage by cable, or terrestrial broadcasters, or film festivals. Hold-back clauses abound, and they are annoying, as they are supposed to be.

I don’t really see why SBS, as the broadcaster, could not simply have acceded to the request. Six months is not long to complete a three part series, though it could conceivably be finished a little earlier, if they got into a mad race. But the ABC must surely have a broadcast date which is earlier, because it won’t throw away good TV in a non-ratings period. SBS has a contrary view, and runs a strong program over summer. I am betting, though no-one has admitted the fact, that the ABC will go out in October, and wants to stop SBS from broadcasting this show directly after The First Australians, which SBS believes is truly brilliant.

I talked to various people inside SBS about the case, and they have been reticent to get involved in a public slanging match. I suspect they reckon that Jonathan Holmes, the Directors Guild and a few op-eds in newspapers might do the job for them, spiced perhaps with some secret phone calls. There is a fair amount at stake. They have a slot for the series, they have committed all the budget though they are nearly broke, and they don’t want it cobbled together from long zooms to newspaper photos.

But I have been told one useful fact. SBS reckons that it would not put conditions on an archival sale. If someone ponies up the money, and won’t break the law with the footage, they can have it. (We can imagine situations where they would balk, but they are to do with porn and ultraviolence.)

The ABC is not running that line. Sunderland told Holmes in an email that

“The ABC is, first and foremost, a public broadcaster. Its primary responsibility is to make programs for the Australian public. Any use of the ABC archive of program material by outside parties, including any use which involves the “commercial opportunity of archive recoupment to the ABC” will always, and should always, be of secondary importance. In seeking to negotiate an appropriate arrangement with this particular independent company, it has been deemed essential to protect the integrity of the ABC’s own program making processes.”

That is horseshit, and arrogant horseshit at that. The “integrity of the ABC’s own program making processes” is not at issue, if the staff were prepared to run a bit of give and take. After all, the organisation stood to make a cool $160,000.

The ABC actually has a responsibility to sustain and make available the heritage of its program making, as part of our cultural fabric. A responsibility which it is quietly coming to understand more and more, as its archive becomes more accessible and staff (who the independents celebrate) learn to do constructive deals.

The ABC is maintaining that it can decide when and whether it will release footage. It is asserting a right of approval, of veto. Remember the line?

“However the ABC has never indicated that such material is available for license in every circumstance.”

I don’t think they should decide what the circumstance should be in which they release footage. They are not some dragon sitting on a hoard. The footage is not theirs’, but the nation’s. There are limits to usage – and we could tangle ourselves up over the rights of Nazis here – but they should be explicit.

They are implying a right to censorship. The “circumstances” in which it would stop material includes those in which they fear offending the government of the day.

You think I am being ridiculous? They have already done it.

In 2004, independent filmmaker Judy Rymer asked the ABC to sell her a number of clips for this film -

“Punished not Protected is an educational documentary series in four parts (on tape) featuring the views of leading Australians and concerned citizens on the effects of government policy on asylum seekers and temporary protection visa holders.
-Ronin Films web site”

Media Watch covered that debacle too. With these words -

“Back in January, the ABC told Rymer she couldn’t buy a dozen or so news clips, unless she first got permission to use them from the politicians involved – the Prime Minister, Philip Ruddock, Peter Reith and Amanda Vanstone.”

Etcetera. The story is worth a read, and shows you just why I am so uncomfortable about this latest turn of events.

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