Important:
Senate submissions are due by 9th September 2011
ABC management has not only announced the end of Art Nation in November but they plan on axing its long-standing and valuable TV Arts department. All but a few commissioning executives will be made ‘redundant' and with it the ABC’s capacity to give the arts the regular coverage that Australian’s deserve.
Is there no longer a need to have a dedicated team making TV programs and online content covering ongoing developments in Australia
What Australians will lose if the ABC is allowed to axe its TV Arts Unit
- Weekly in-depth coverage and reviews on free-to-air TV and online of Australia's diverse creative output will be lost if Art Nation isn’t retained or replaced, which amounts to around 350 stories per year of artists, performances and exhibitions not seen elsewhere.
- This timely and regular coverage affords vital exposure for our arts industry and encourages thousands of Australians to attend an exhibition or a performance soon after. Artscape documentaries will be retained (to be outsourced) but they take months to produce.
- The hundreds of well-researched stories covered by Art Nation are vodcast on the online portal ‘Arts Gateway’, which also features web extras, previews and blogs produced by the specialist arts unit.
- The ABC says it wants a ‘mixed model’ of internally and externally produced content, and this mix has applied to Artscape documentaries. But now all of these programs and the rights to them will be outsourced to the commercial sector. The arts unit is highly efficient and completes post-production of these documentaries quicker than external producers.
- We will see far fewer in-depth stories covering the following art forms, and many others:
Ø Architecture
Ø Contemporary art forms
Ø Dance
Ø Design
Ø Installation art
Ø Music forms not covered on other TV programs
Ø Opera and musical theatre
Ø Painting
Ø Photography
Ø Sculpture
Ø Street art
Ø Theatre
Ø Visual art forms
- Art Nation hasn’t received a publicity budget since its launch in 2010. The ‘flagship’ program for arts has continued to be shown at a dead timeslot on Sundays with very little promotion. Numerous staff ideas for new stories and programs have been ignored by TV management who’ve replaced the Executive Producer of Arts nine times in ten years.
- The national conversation on free-to-air TV about culture and a range of art forms across metropolitan and regional
Australia - Independent TV Arts coverage produced free of commercial influence and considerations will be lost.
- An invaluable national archive of TV Arts owned by the ABC in perpetuity will not be added to. When Margaret Olley died recently the ABC was able to screen a documentary made by the Arts Unit, which it owned the rights to - that will not be possible in future.
- Arts needs a specialist unit to draw upon more than 50 years of TV arts programming, that has the knowledge of the people, the performers and the trends of our ever-changing and diverse art industry both at home and on the international stage.
What’s left of the arts on ABC TV? At the Movies and First Tuesday Book Club will be the only internally-made regular programs. Messagestick contributes some indigenous arts stories. All other content will need to be acquired, despite Head of TV Kim Dalton noting that the rising cost of acquisitions is hurting ABC budgets.
Art and cultural organisations are urged to make a submission to the Environment and Communications Reference Committee by 9th September. Please use this opportunity to express your thoughts and concerns about the implications of the ABC’s decision for the future of arts broadcasting. The terms of reference and how to make the submission can be found on these links (and blog post: Action Needed: ABC Inquiry)
