What has caused the changes: technological Western advancements
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES:
How has TV changed in the Western world in terms of technology?
The entire Western world is in the midst of a monumental shift in the availability and fluency of technology and its applications within society. The Australian television industry has been heavily impacted by these changes, resulting in a number of challenges and opportunities arising that will determine the future of TV.
Television begun with the promise of delivering information and entertainment into the home. It bathed its viewers in it’s light and came to be ‘the hearth of modernity’ within the home of the 20th century nuclear family - as Turner and Tay define it in their writings ‘Television Studies After TV: Understanding Television in the Post-Broadcast Era’, (2009).
From the beginning, TV became a symbol of home, a symbol of family and also representative of the ‘post-war, consumer society’, who would spend hours basking in the glow of their television sets - the stilted box that stood in the living room and became a cornerstone of Western society at the time. This notion of TV, however, is dead. TV is no longer the centerpiece of the family living room and no longer that chunky piece of machinery that captured the attention of the nuclear family. TV is well and truly in the midst of a complete overhaul, leaving behind its old self and being re-born to suit modern people in a modern world.
From CRT displays that consumed astronomical amounts of electricity for comparably mediocre picture quality, to smart-phone screens which are now capable of producing resolutions equal to and greater than that of the once revolutionary Bluray disc and Full HD 1080p televisions, technology is moving faster than ever before - television is well and truly at the center of our technological revolution.
With the shift in availability of top-grade electronics and gadgets from the elite and super-wealthy, to every man, woman and spoiled 13 year old, society’s craving for more content, faster and more accessible than ever before will only continue to push the technology we use to new limits and also result in the development of new technologies being sped up.
Through all this change, the idea of television itself has remained relatively consistent. It is most simply recognised as ‘a technology for sending audio-visual information from one place to another’, usually from a broadcast location (e.g. TV studio), out to a mass audience (e.g. the public), until portable screens and piracy became second nature to Australian audiences.
The Portable Screen (Moving Away From The Traditional):
Since the availability of televisual content has shifted into the digital realm, it has been all too easy for people to pirate and take such content with them wherever they please. The film and TV industries have long being plagued by a history of piracy and this technological revolution has only made it easier for anyone to get their hands on content, sans payment, causing much consternation for an industry depraved of financial reward and support. Furthermore, the developments in computer and mobile power and portability also meant that this content could be consumed at the discretion and convenience of the viewer, indicating a shift in power from the broadcaster to the pirating consumer. This trend has only been exacerbated by the increased power of mobile devices.
When content producers began releasing entire series of TV shows on DVD for unrestricted play within the home, this represented a ‘subtle, yet important’ (P. David Marshall) impact on the migration of Television to other screens - the introduction of portable DVD players were the first step towards truly ‘mobile’ content. Once again, piracy furthered this shift and gave willing Australian audiences the opportunity to secure whatever content they wanted, taking it with them on laptop computers and jump-starting a trend we now know as ‘binge-watching’.
Whilst piracy has long been an issue in Australia, it was arguably the lack of convenience and breadth of content that led Australian audiences away from the traditional broadcast televisions sitting in their living rooms and towards other methods of consuming televisual content. Enter the internet.
The Rise of the Internet (Dawn Of A New Age):
Up until the late 2000s, there were no streaming options for the Australian consumer besides the very basic, narrow libraries of our own local TV stations ABC, Ten, Nine and Seven. But with the introduction of faster ADSL2 and ADSL2+ internet services becoming readily available by 2006, the way TV was watched began to change. This year, 2015, saw the largest breakthrough yet, with the introduction of Netflix, Stan and Presto - three monthly one-off subscription streaming services with libraries that were beginning to approach what had been available in The US for the last 5 years (CNET 2015). The welcome introduction of such services has had quite a profound effect on the Australian TV consumer, who was now offered choice and flexibility like never before. Not only that, but most of this content was produced overseas, meaning more competition for Australian TV producers to capture audiences on the traditional method of broadcast transmission.
When asked about the potential future for traditional broadcast television in Australia, Daniel Wilson (Editor at Dreampool Productions 2015) commented that ‘it’s definitely getting harder to get programs to air’, but that “the work doesn’t seem to be running out”. This reflection most likely points to there not being enough broadcast airtime available for the amount of content which is being produced in Australia - an encouraging sign for prospective television industry workers.
Noni Hawley, (Production Manager at Dreampool Productions 2015) who has a long and esteemed career in the Australian TV industry, recognised that the sheer number of ‘talented’ Australian television professionals points towards a future for the industry - basically, as long as there is workers and content being produced, the industry will survive, even if it isn’t reaching the same numbers that streaming alternatives are in modern Australia.
Into the Slipstream (Realising The Future):
Stuart Cunningham, within his chapter ‘Reinventing Television: The Work of the Innovation Unit’, (Turner & Tay 2009), registers concern with the ‘“significant declines among young people” who are watching traditional, broadcast format television - something he refers to as the ‘death of the broadcast format’.
The inevitable fall of the outdated, restrictive means of broadcast consumption is well underway and Australia is responding quickly, adopting the idea of streaming better than expected.
Since the introduction of legitimate streaming services to Australia, the public has responded - Netflix Australia monstered all predictions and reported 766,000 (Mumbrella, 2015) subscribers in its first active month (equivalent to approx. 3% of the population, ABS, 2015), which demonstrates hope for content producers - piracy can arguably be beaten, as long as legitimate means of content acquisition are made readily available, affordable and desirable.
The challenge for the Australian TV industry now lies within producing content that is watched, both within Australia and internationally, as well as having that content readily and legitimately available to an audience who wants to be able to stream their content… and wants to stream it now.
Australian content on Netflix Australia’s library is very limited - something which is concerning to Australian television producers. A complete list of Australian content on Netflix, published on May 6th, 2015 is strikingly bare - almost entirely consisting of Chris Lilley’s ‘Angry Boys’, ‘Summer Heights High’, ‘Jonah From Tonga’ and ‘We Can Be Heroes’, raised concern as to the legitimacy of streaming options as a substitute for broadcast television. Some of these concerns have been alleviated by the fact that Netflix Australia’s Australian TV Shows library now features approximately 35 different programs - a massive leap in the right direction. There is definitely hope for Australian televisual content within the streaming age. And whatever the future of technology holds for Australian TV.