In April 1916, my grandfathers started walking to Dublin from opposite ends of Ireland. Their goal was to take part in the rising that had erupted in Ireland’s Capital over Easter weekend, when a rag bag bunch of Irishmen took on the mighty British Empire. Neither of them made it to Dublin as it happens and never met each other either.
But it has always given me an interest in that period and brought out my inner rebel. I’ve just finished a fantastic book about the subject and while reading it on the tram, I found myself bristling when I heard English accents, as though my grandfathers ghosts were travelling with me. But it doesn’t last long. I have matured over the years to the point where some of my best friends are English and I now have a genuine soft spot for them, as opposed to my younger days when the only soft spot I had for them would have been a bog in the Wicklow Mountains.
I think my change of heart arrived in my teenage years when I went through one of those “What have the Romans ever done for us” moments as found in The Life of Brian. I asked the same question of Britain and came back with good football, some of the world’s best comedians and the best TV in the world. The last point is the clincher because without a doubt, the BBC is the leader to which all other TV has to aspire to.
I first noticed this when I lived in Luxembourg, but at least they had the excuse of being a non English speaking country. There may have been some quality programs in French or German but I was a tongue tied mono linguist and spent three years watching CNN and obscure winter games on Eurosport. It’s only now that I live in an English speaking country like Australia, that I realise how bad television can be and how lucky I was to be have access to the BBC for most of my life.
There is pay TV here of course and that brings generic programming that you find elsewhere. There is, for example, the History channel which shows hourly documentaries about World War Two and the Discovery channel which seems to concentrate on killer sharks. I expect a new channel to be launched soon which will only show programs about Nazi trained fish in the Atlantic war of 1940.
But most Australians refuse to pay to watch TV and they enjoy free to air programming. Except it’s not free of course. You pay for it by being bombarded by more advertising than you’d find in a “free” newspaper. In Australian football matches for example, the free to air channels break for an ad after every goal and when you think that there can be up to 40 of these in a game, that adds up to a lot of temptation to visit McDonalds or to buy a new car.
The government here ensures that most sport is shown on free to air channels, as preventing your average Aussie from enjoying his footy would be as dangerous as banning Guinness in Ireland. It is said that people here would prefer to watch an Australian win a medal at the Olympics than to see one win a Nobel Prize. I think this is unfair as it is probably true of most countries. I’d wager for example that more people watched Sonia O’Sullivan win a medal at the Sydney Olympics than watched Seamus Heaney collect his Nobel Prize. Perhaps we should turn the prize giving event in Oslo into a sport. My competitive edge would then point out that Ireland is leading Australia 4-1 in the thrilling Nobel Literature Prize contest.
Sport is the main driver for pay TV in other countries and the lack of opportunity to make millions here might explain why Rupert Murdoch gave up his Australian Citizenship and became an American.
In Australia, sport is divided between the three commercial channels (seven, nine and ten). They offer the same over excited style of coverage laced with advertising breaks and ex footballers in tight fitting suits who stare into the camera as they were taught to do in their media training class. When not showing Sport, they tend to concentrate on glossy American shows that all begin with “CSI”. They also scramble for the rights to show the local version of whatever lowest common denominator TV is coming out of the US or the UK. So there is an “Australia’s Got Talent” show that has everything except talent and a “Biggest Loser” show that involves extremely fat people losing a lot of weight and even more dignity.
In the old days of course, there was only State controlled TV and the remnants of this can be found in ABC and SBS. ABC harks back to the days when Australia was a cosy member of the Commonwealth and looked to London for inspiration. They still get a lot of their programming from the BBC, which is comforting and provide the best news service. It’s also the go to channel if you’re looking for a little religion on a Sunday night.
SBS, I’m guessing, was set up to cater for those post World War Two immigrants who didn’t look to Mother England as their moral compass. They came mainly from Southern Europe which explains why SBS has the unfortunate nickname of “Wog Waves”. It shows European soccer and cycling and interesting documentaries. Taking its inspiration from non English speaking parts of Europe, SBS shows a lot of sub titled movies, including the most popular show of the week which is the Friday night film (usually French) which involves generous amounts of nudity.
The way around all this of course is to watch DVD box sets. There are no ads, no fixed starting times and sub-titles for those difficult American series like “The Wire”. The right to be entertained seems sacred these days. Is that what my Grandfather’s fought for?
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