Careless, crude and unnecessary

On July 13, with the launch of the new National Indigenous Television (NITV), Indigenous Community Television (ICTV) was switched off so that NITV could be given sole access to Imparja’s Channel 31 carrier. For the last six years Channel 31 delivered ICTV free-to-air in more than 150 remote Aboriginal communities and uncounted homes with satellite receivers. Denial of access to the carrier will effectively scrap the much loved and irreplaceable ICTV - a proven remote community television network that is already working.

Dr Michael Meadows et al have noted the special significance of ICTV in a groundbreaking Griffith University study of the Australian community broadcasting sector:

ICTV represents the most significant advance for remote Indigenous communities in the past 20 years in terms of its potential to contribute to the maintenance of languages and cultures, boosting self-esteem and making a significant contribution to reinforcing a sense of identity amongst its diverse audiences. It has already begun to achieve this, according to the audience feedback we have included in our study.

The proposal to install a one-size-fits-all Indigenous Television service at the expense of ICTV, is looming as the biggest policy failure in Indigenous media since the invention of Aboriginal television in the Pitjantjatjara and Warlpiri lands over 20 years ago. It is a clumsy shotgun wedding between disparate Indigenous media interests that will set remote community media back a decade.

People in remote communities speak “with passion and pride about the importance of seeing images of local, identifiable Indigenous people on TV… ‘Our voices’; ‘our images’; ‘the Anangu way’; ‘black voices, black issues’”(Meadows, et al. 2007).

As a co-worker, I have heard Indigenous media workers speak about their remote community media as “a survival mechanism that can literally save lives”, as an “essential service that helps to address life and death issues”, including suicide, child abuse and domestic violence.

They are adamant that ICTV should stay and have said this time and again in various forums and submissions during the development of NITV. This advice has been determinedly ignored.

I do not argue here that NITV does not have a place (it does!), but rather, that its implementation is imprudent and destructive. NITV will not, cannot, replace the crucial function of ICTV because it is designed to serve different ends, it will usurp ICTV without discharging ICTV’s most important functions.

In the current context

The magnitude of this policy error is underscored by lessons highlighted in the Little Children Are Sacred report (PDF 6.35MB) which stresses that: locally based action and control are needed to really make changes; the most successful programs are community-owned, adapted to the specific needs and cultural dynamics of individual Aboriginal communities, and cannot be imposed from without. The report says that there cannot be a “shrink to fit” approach to reform in Aboriginal communities.

Further, this report declares that an improvement in outcomes will only be achieved by addressing chronic communication failures between government and Indigenous communities and by bolstering communication strategies and capabilities in remote communities.

By eliminating “the most significant advance for remote Indigenous communities in the past 20 years”, current policy impacting on ICTV flies in the face of common sense. Now as much as ever, it is vital to maintain the functionality of communication systems in remote communities and to reward their successes. It is not a time to be dismantling such an essential service as ICTV.

Lest history be re-written

Minister Coonan’s statement, in the Second Reading of the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill 2007, that the government provision of $48.5 million over four years for NITV would “for the first time” give Indigenous communities a dedicated Indigenous television service, was mistaken.

The honour of creating the first Aboriginal television service in Australian history clearly belongs to ICTV who have been free-to-air broadcasting a regular schedule of Indigenous programming to remote communities since 2001. Today ICTV boasts a widely recognised “brand” that is cherished by the loyal producers and viewers who sustain its operation. Children singing the “ICTV, Showing Our Way” motto greet crews throughout the Centre and the North.

ICTV programming was gathered from scores of communities from the Warlpiri, Pintubi, Anmatjere, Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara lands, and from many more language groups represented by PAKAM (Pilbara and Kimberley Aboriginal Media). These contributing communities, represented by four major media hubs, made up half the total 150 communities that received ICTV. Programming was also drawn from further a-field, as it became available: from Roebourne, Warburton, Broome, Tennant Creek, Northampton, Batchelor, Alice Springs, and increasing numbers of urban producers.

ICTV and IRCA’s achievement is especially notable because it has been accomplished with no dedicated funding whatsoever. ICTV was not formed in response to a consultant’s report or a government program, but through partnerships and the ingenuity and energy drawn from remote communities themselves.

It is important to note that it was the enormous success of ICTV that put Imparja Channel 31 on the map as an Indigenous broadcaster. Essentially, Imparja Channel 31 was ICTV. Indeed, the ultimate success of the lobby for the $48.5 funding allocation for Indigenous broadcasting was in large part due to the heavily cited, pioneering example of ICTV, which was recommended as a foundation for the NITV service.

The irony is, that now, with the most generous allocation of funding for Indigenous media ever, the remote communities that got the ball rolling, will be penalised.

Original intents and purposes of remote Indigenous media

Twenty years ago, at the beginning of this journey into self-representation, clear distinctions were made between the needs of, and strategies for, promoting remote media practice on the one hand and urban-based Indigenous media on the other.

The BRACS or Broadcast for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme was conceived and initiated in the mid-1980s to service the distinctive needs of REMOTE Indigenous communities. Subsequently, cities and large urban centres did not figure in the development of ICTV or the content it produced and screened. Now in a regressive stroke, this lesson has been disregarded and NITV has been installed as a one-stop-shop through which all networked Indigenous media will be filtered.

It should also be acknowledged that the radical expansion, the doubling of the number of television transmitters and satellite decoders, which NITV has now taken over, would not have occurred without the determined effort of the remote television sector represented by the Indigenous Remote Communications Association (IRCA), the ICTV membership and remote media organisation managers who successfully lobbied for the transmitter roll out with the specific purpose of extending the reach of ICTV.

The Minister’s caution

A telling gap between intention and implementation is revealed by the failure of NITV to follow the sensible guidelines outlined by the Minister and expressed in her letter to the Australian Indigenous Communications Association (AICA) on August 14, 2006.

In this letter the Minister directed that the new service be based on Option 3 of the Indigenous Television Review Report (PDF 1.05MB). This report states that the new NITV service should: “Build on the Indigenous Community Television narrowcasting service [ICTV] transmitted by Imparja Television …” This has clearly not happened.

Option 3 also states that: “Under this option, ICTV would be funded to commission or produce additional Indigenous content to strengthen its schedule.” This cannot happen since the ICTV play out has been terminated and no content provision agreement between ICTV and NITV has been put in place.

Further, the Minister stated that: “one of the pillars of Option 3 is the programming developed by remote communities”, and “the business plan should articulate the proposed accommodation of the existing ICTV programming within NITV.”

In fact, “existing ICTV programming” has simply been cut off, and NITV has not made any provision that might satisfy the Minister’s direction that there be “substantial participation” of remote television (ICTV) in NITV.

This should come as no surprise since it is clear that NITV, by its organisational design, cannot fulfil the community television function that ICTV has been purpose-built to perform. It is true to form, then, that NITV have rejected the possibility of ICTV maintaining its own community programming block on NITV, and that their inaugural programming schedule does not contain one program made by media makers living and working in these remote communities.

Two different concepts

NITV, with its corporate, top-down, professional structure, and its aspiration to cater to urban audiences, has put in place a raft of commissioning and acquisition guidelines governing everything from program “relevance”, the staging of submissions and the skills levels of proponents, to production values, chain of title and stipulations for English language versions.

The reality is that imposing such a regime on the unique community television model that ICTV has developed, which is based on principles of open access and responsiveness to community initiative, is a death sentence. The vast majority of remote Indigenous producers are simply not resourced or inclined to deal with all the red tape.

It was precisely to break through such gate keeping structures that the remote community media networks evolved, giving community-based media makers the opportunity to say the things they wanted and needed to say to their own communities without the mediation of prescriptive, “professional” oversight, or the intervention of external authority and experts. And ICTV has done this exceedingly well.

ICTV - custom fit

ICTV’s success in producing high volumes of affordable television for remote community audiences has come precisely from the flexibility it commands in relation to production processes.

Decisions regarding what was made for ICTV were not centralised but made by each contributing media organisation according to directions from their elders, cultural imperatives, the current of local events, language and information needs within a local-regional context; authentic community self-representation was preserved through local ownership and control of the production process; each community determined the production values that might be appropriate for them; open access to ICTV for Indigenous producers was assured since all programming submitted to ICTV was broadcast, with exceptions made only in deference to cultural sensitivities attending the deceased.

Such an inclusive and non-discriminatory approach is anathema to conventional, “professional” television organisations, and something that NITV cannot hope to match.

A fair and rational outcome

ICTV does not deserve to be punished for its success. The Minister should pause now and gather better-informed advice. With a fresh approach that demonstrates understanding for the crucial and distinctive role that ICTV plays, the Minister should reconsider the “one organisation” position that is at the root of the current crisis, and reinstate a satellite carrier for ICTV.

Given the opportunity to serve their respective domains, ICTV and NITV could achieve something great for Indigenous broadcasting, they could compliment each other while serving their own distinct roles, and instead of being stuck with a scenario of winners and losers, we could be carrying forward ICTV’s gains co-operatively.

Whatever the outcome, ICTV will persist because ICTV is a product of, and can do media better, for the bush because it provides an essential service that cannot be replicated by NITV, and because those who understand how much community media means to people in the bush, cannot walk away from their obligations.

The Minister, DCITA and NITV must now decide whether they choose true partnership with the bush.