Ok, first of all I must disclose, before I start this rant, that I support Australian music 100% and I always will.
I have been following closely the progress of, and submissions to, a media review panel set up by the Australian Government into the convergence of distribution methods used by media organisations in this country.
By convergence, we mean that the various media organisations now have a variety of means in which to disseminate their content - through terrestrial broadcasting, the internet, digital broadcasting and the like. Convergence largely means that using all of these outlets, radio stations can almost be regarded as something more than just a radio station, because of the various other ways they can deliver their services now. Newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph and The Sydney Morning Herald now disseminate their news via the internet. They even have WebTV set up and also they show video news on alot of their stories. The internet has allowed far more methods of communication for newspapers that just in print.
I have been reading a few of the submissions to the review panel (which can be found here), and while some submissions make some good points, some, like the Commercial Radio Australia (CRA) submission and the Austereo submission make one particular point that is highly laughable and somewhat disturbing:
That the Australian content quotas should be dropped.
I, for one, think this is a ridiculous proposal, however I will examine the issues for and against.
As pointed out in the submission from the Music Council of Australia, Australian music quotas exist purely because of the behaviour of Commercial radio programmers. Local content quotas were first introduced in the late 1940s and have steadily increased over the years to a minimum of 25% locally produced music across all music played, and 6.5% of that must be new or recently produced Australian music.
These quotas exist because commercial radio just did not play locally produced music. Things have not changed at all over the years. Commercial radio has always lauded the new release from America before a local release. Most Australian music that gets played on Commercial rock stations has been played for months prior by the ABC's station Triple J.
Listening back to the history of Triple J and you will find that Australian music wasn't played on radio when the station started, and if it was, you probably couldn't tell it was Aussie. For example, the biggest Oz band in the 1970s was Little River Band, or LRB for short. They were huge in America, because they sounded American. And with lyrics like "Can you guess where I'm calling from? The Las Vegas Hilton...", you'd be forgiven for thinking they were based in LA instead of Melbourne. And yet, this was the standard for Aussie music on commercial radio in those days. Triple J changed that, by actively seeking out new local music and putting it to air. By the time Triple M in Sydney had started playing Midnight Oil (whose music it now plays heavily every day), they'd been featured on JJJ for over 3 years.
The argument against the local content quota, according to Commercial Radio Australia is that all the other content platforms do NOT have local content quotas, and yet commercial radio is bound by legislation to play local music. Fair point. So why not expand the legislation to cover all media outlets? Internet radio streams based in Australia and online content providers in Australia included? I think that'd be great, but it would difficult to police. For example, any Australian resident can start up an online radio station with the US based Live365.com and, being based overseas, could escape the local content rules. Additionally, any Australian can listen to hundreds of radio stations online from the same place and never hear an Australian song in any of it. Keeping track of it all would be a nightmare.
The other argument they make is that the Local content rules often don't fit the station "format". Considering that the local top 50 singles chart has only 5 Australian songs in it, I can see why "hit music/top 40" stations feel this way. However, it should be Radio, more than any other media's job to seek out and promote new music as music, apart from advertising and stupid people who think they're celebrities trying to be funny, is the other core part of their programming.
Southern Cross/Austereo also make the point that, even without the quotas, audiences will still seek out Australian music and then they, the radio stations, will respond to what the listeners want. This is complete and utter rubbish. The core audience of radio stations don't want to research music and discover for themselves. They want to hear it on the radio FIRST before they buy it. If radio don't plug it, there's every chance it won't get heard. To Austereo's credit, they have started a digital radio station called "Radar Radio" which plays unsigned local music, but of late it has seen established overseas bands like Amy Winehouse and Snow Patrol creep into the playlists which means that it could decide to take the overseas music option as a preference, as history shows it has done in the past. It needs to work both ways - listeners tell the station what they like, radio plugs music that the listener hasn't heard and the cycle perpetuates.
It could also be argued that the Australian content quotas don't work anyway. Inevitably Austereo's Triple M get around the local content quotas by playing INXS and Cold Chisel's greatest hits ad nauseum every day, at the expense of local bands. But, there are other stations that have taken the lazy way out, and avoid the Australian music rules by not playing music on air at all. Once great rock stations like 2UE (the first radio station in Sydney to play rock 'n' roll music) and 2SM have both been converted to talkback stations, with grumpy old men ranting and whining across the airwaves 24-7.
There are, of course, a number of barriers to the expansion of the local content quotas, talkback radio notwithstanding. Namely, the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement stipulates that local content quotas are NOT to be increased for the life of the agreement, thus giving ample opportunity for US imports to succeed in our marketplace. I don't see why this is necessary since the commercial media mindset has been for years that anything cultural that has been imported is automatically superior to anything created here. And if that hasn't been the case, then why did (now legendary) local acts like The Seekers, The Bee Gees, The Saints, The Triffids, The Go-Betweens and The Vines all have to go overseas in order to get noticed back in Australia?
It's my view that media can create the audience, and by extension, can create the buzz around a band, if they plug it enough. If radio make the effort and play a record a lot, it can get in peoples heads and then it becomes a hit. But, like it appears to be on most stations in England (except the top 40 ones) and America, that locally produced music is a top priority, over and above anything else. There is no reason why mainstream media in Australia cannot muster the same sort of confidence in the local music scene while still keeping an eye on what's happening overseas....
...and if Commercial radio think they are already doing that, then they are sorely mistaken.
