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Friends
of the ABC Australia
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Cash for ContentThe Telstra deal These days sponsors, advertisers and patrons rarely have to make their requirements for program content explicit - the recipients of their largesse soon develop a sense for what is acceptable and what is not. It is really not necessary for the purchaser to have regular meetings 'to discuss the mix and variety' of content. It is no longer necessary to specify, as the ABC/Telstra document does, that the ABC must consider Telstra's 'reasonable suggestions' about this mix and variety. If the ABC wants the Telstra dollars to keep flowing, it knows it must do more than just listen to 'reasonable suggestions'. Erik Barnouw, author of the definitive three volume history of broadcasting in the United States, underlined this significant point in the introduction to his book - The Sponsor: Notes on a Modern Potentate: 'According to some network executives, he (the sponsor) no longer makes decisions that deal with programming. Spokesmen for sponsoring organisations tend toward similar statements, but with a difference. They say they don't want to control programming, but insist on the right to decide with what programs their names or commercials will be associated. They leave it to broadcasting companies to provide suitable settings for this participation. The broadcasters do so. 'Perhaps all they are saying is that sponsorship has become so essential, so crucial to the whole scheme of things, that interference of the old sort is no longer necessary. A vast industry has grown up around the needs and wishes of sponsors. Its program formulas, business practices, ratings, demographic surveys have all evolved in ways to satisfy sponsor requirements. He has reached the ultimate status: most decision making swirls at levels below him, requiring only his occasional benediction at this or that selected point. He is a potentate of our time'. |
The
Telstra / ABC deal is not your typical sponsorship or advertising agreement,
but it does retain the essential features. In a typical commercial television
situation the sponsor buys the right to place his advertisements on the
broadcaster's medium and next to the broadcasters content, in the belief
that people drawn to the content will also see the advertisements. In the
Telstra/ABC deal the sponsor buys the rights to reproduce the broadcaster's
content on his own medium, in the belief that people drawn to the content
will see advertisements on the Telstra site.
While this is still essentially a sponsorship deal, with all the implications for ABC independence that sponsorship means, it doesn't look like one at first glance. You won't hear any Big Pond advertisements on ABC Classic FM, and The Bill won't be interrupted by offers of a free set of steak knives when you buy a mobile from Telstra. True, the ABC will flog Telstra products in its shops, and vice versa, but there will be no commercial content on air. True, the index page for the ABC news on the Telstra site will be plastered with ads, but they won't find their way onto radio or television. So there are some significant differences about this sponsorship deal, but the fundamentals remain. Telstra will pay the ABC $13.5 million a year, plus a percentage of the advertising revenue that it generates from its website - the same website that carries ABC content. If the ABC wants to keep this income stream it will need to pay very close attention to the 'reasonable suggestions' of one of Australia's largest and most powerful companies. When the Senate begins its Cash for Content inquiry will the Senators remember that 'Whose bread I eat, his song I sing'? DARCE CASSIDY President FABC SA |