Graeme Turner - Ending the Affair: The Decline of Television Current Affairs in Australia
Graeme Turner,
Ending the Affair: The Decline of Television Current Affairs in
Pp. x + 173 Paperback $34.95 ISBN 0 86840 864 6
Graeme Turner is concerned about the decline of the half-hour, multi-item (‘short-form’) news magazine on Australian television. The format, he believes, has never recaptured the influence of the ABC’s This Day Tonight and the Nine Network’s A Current Affair, both of which ended in 1978. Television bosses regard the 6 p.m. to 7.30 slot as the opportunity to hook viewers for the rest of the evening, but the various experiments with the early-evening magazine format have all experienced massive falls in ratings over recent decades – a slide which Turner finds all the more depressing since Australia’s population has grown by six millions since the glory days of TDT. ‘Tabloidisation’ of television has helped neither analysis nor viewership. ‘Whole areas of public affairs have been ignored while we have learnt how effective the latest low-carb diet has been for Janine and Damien from Balgowlah who are trying to shed ten kilos each in the two months left before they are due to marry in swimsuits at the water’s edge on Bondi Beach.’ (p. 152) When real issues are reported, the need to retain the audience points to simple endorsement of popular hysteria, for instance fanning the belief that the country is over-run by illegal immigrants. Budgetary discipline and bullying allegations of ‘bias’ have combined to deter the ABC from mounting considered challenges to established viewpoints, and if the public broadcaster is not making the attempt, the commercial channels have no reason to compete. Pay TV and the Internet are unlikely to fill the gap. Turner writes in the first person in a pleasantly opinionated style. If he sometimes seems to be stating the obvious, it is because the obvious needs to be reiterated. As he insists, this is not just a ‘chattering classes’ issue. In the short run, it suits the politicians to intimidate the media into acquiescence. In the longer term,