Southern stars and secret lives: International exchange in Australian television

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Notes

 1. The series is so described in its unpublished press books, produced by Southern Star in 2001. As a ‘high end’ drama, production costs (Southern Star 1999, 10) may be estimated as around A$600,000 per hour, with around 40 per cent of the overall budget accruing from overseas investment. Even such basic figures indicate the relative expense of local versus imported drama to Australian programme providers.

 2. The first series (episodes 1–22) was transmitted 3 July–7 November 2001 (UK), and 16 July–26 November 2001 (Australia); a second series (episodes 23–44) began production in early November that same year and was transmitted 16 July–10 December 2002 (UK), and 18 February–5 August 2002 (Australia); series three (episodes 45–66) was aired only in Australia from 10 February 2003–11 August 2003, although a single episode appeared in the United Kingdom on 16 January 2004; a fourth series (episodes 67–86) was shown in Australia from 18 February 2004–5 April 2005, before cancellation by the Ten Network, following a hiatus in transmission of nine months created in response to a very poor ratings performance.

 3. In 2001, Samuel Johnson won ‘Best Actor’ recognition at the 2001 AFI Awards; the series itself picked up a bronze award in the New York Festival in early 2002. Subsequent seasons garnered little in the way of award recognition.

 4. See Jennifer Dudley (2003), who comments: ‘The Secret Life of Us was once a quasi-realistic show about the lives of twentysomethings and the demons they faced. Now their lives have become such obscure realities few viewers could relate to …’; or Kenneth Nguyen (2005), who pronounces a final death sentence on the series: ‘now showing the wounds of age, it's probably time for it to grow up—or move out’. Many other such dismissive reviews are recoverable from the websites detailed below.

 5. IBIS is one of Australia's leading business and economic analysis agencies.

 6. In 2001, the group generated total revenues of over A$200,000,000 including sales and other revenue, as its share prices reached record highs. By 2003, Southern Cross Broadcasting valued Southern Star at around A$99 million, as it prepared for the latter's takeover (see Frew 2003). For subsequent performances see corporate profiles downloadable from: Investor Web, Available at: http://au.biz.yahoo.com/profiles/s/ssr.ax.html

 7. Southern Star (1999, 5) suggests that the value of Australian drama exports rose from A$59 million in 1994 to A$117 million in 1997, commenting: ‘television programme exports have grown much more rapidly than other categories of Australian exports, increasing by more than 230% over five years from 1991–92, compared with 60% for total exports’.

 8. Southern Star's divisions include a distribution arm, a Los Angeles-based animation unit, a video/audio duplication operation, a merchandizing section distributing BBC/Columbia/Paramount materials, and a home video distribution unit.

 9. In July 1997, Southern Star completed its acquisition of the UK-based Circle Communications plc, and in 1998 also purchased Primetime Distribution, another UK-based company. The year 1999 saw the signing of a joint venture agreement with China Central Television, the world's largest television broadcaster, under which it has produced and sold a range of wildlife and natural history programmes. In 2003 the Group announced plans to develop further production facilities in Singapore. These various interests are represented by Southern Star ‘Entertainment’, which acts as co-venturer with a wide range of established producers. See Cunningham and Jacka (1996, 108–9) for details of Southern Star's persistent market positioning.

10. Very much a follow-up series to The Secret Life of Us, the relationship drama Love My Way (2004–2007) was co-produced with Foxtel Productions; the ‘service’ narrative Fireflies (2004) reunited Southern Star with the ABC drama department; ‘reality’ medical melodrama The Surgeon (2005) was independently produced for the Ten Network, whilst the ‘street’ series Dangerous (2007–) was co-ventured and distributed with Fox ‘8’ and the Australia Network.

11. Southern Star (1999, 7) suggests that Water Rats had been sold into 180 territories, Blue Heelers into 86 territories and Murder Call into 134 territories by the company.

12. The limit-case is probably represented by Granada Television's afternoon soap opera Families (1990–1993), set simultaneously in both Britain and Australia, and involving the regular migration of characters between both playing spaces. The new ethnoscapes of globalizing culture were dramatized in several storylines, which turned regularly on questions of cultural identity, citizenship and new diaspora politics.

13. The commercial television production fund was abolished in 1998, whilst related restructurings under the post-1996 Howard administration dramatically also reduced support to the ABC, with significant implications for its drama output over the next five years.

14. Most conspicuously by the disposal of its Duplitek (tape and DVD duplication) division, sold to the US-based Technicolor Group, for amounts variously estimated between A$30 million and A$65 million.

15. A move credited by some commentators with rescuing the company from financial catastrophe. See ‘Big Brother gives big lift to Southern Star’, Available at: www.smh.com.au

16. Schiller's (1970) Mass Communications and American Capital, (1976) Communication and Cultural Domination and Hamelink's (1983) Cultural Autonomy in Global Communications are suggestive of the emphases and assumptions of ‘classical’ theories of globalization as media imperialism and cultural ‘homogenization’, often invoked in the context of discussion of the cultural effects of international television programme flow and exchange.

17. Various, Submission to Australian Broadcasting Authority Review of Australian Content Standard, unpublished, 1998, p. 9, Available at: www.aba.gov.au/tv/content/ozcont/review/19sstar.pdf

18. Production Producers: John Edwards, Amanda Higgs; Series Writers: Tony McNamara, Elizabeth Coleman, Andrew Kelly, Roger Monk; Telemovie Director: Lynne-Maree Danzey; Series Directors: Cate Shortland, Stuart McDonald, Kate Dennis, Daniel Nettheim; Telemovie Director of Photography: Ellery Ryan; Series Director of Photography: Brendan Lavelle; Costume Designer: Jane Hyland; Composer/Music Co-ordinator: Martin Armiger.

19. Series one failed to make the ‘official’ top 10 drama rankings in either, but was credited with capturing the always fickle 16–39-year-old demographic. Popular press reports suggested that the ratings for the series in the Australian market fluctuated between around 1.3 million and 900,000 viewers, but more importantly reached relatively affluent social groups of particular importance to the networks. Such a demographic reach helped secure the $10 million necessary to produce series two. In the United Kingdom, tracking the ratings is more difficult; the series failed to gain the 4.5 million viewers or so necessary to make the top 50 programmes listed in BARB ratings published weekly in the trade paper Broadcast, nor did it gain the 2.5 million or so viewers which would have lifted it into the top 30 programmes listed in the separate ‘minority’ channel (i.e. BBC2, Channel 4, Channel Five) tables. Unconfirmed estimates by Channel 4 spokespersons have suggested to me that the series gained, on average, about 1.8 million viewers in the United Kingdom.

20. For typically negative responses see Moran (2001, 9) and Sturges (2001, 47). More non-committal reactions come from Joseph (2001, 27) and Pile (2001, 12).

21. Flett (2001, 20) comments: ‘lacking the self-conscious archness of youthful British dramas, this is Sex and The City but without all the cynical urbane posturing … The Secret Life of Us is very obviously the product of a country that is feeling supremely good about itself. There is nothing remotely parochial about it, far less any lingering signs of the old Aussie cultural cringe.’

22. The series attracted negative responses from a range of lobby groups: on pro-life responses to the treatment of abortion in the series see http://www.anglicanmedia.com.au/old/socialissues/features/secretlifeofus.htm; in March 2002, the Australian Drug Foundation awarded the series its annual ‘Boozies Award’ for the most excessive, inappropriate or unconscionable marketing of alcohol'; see http://www.adf.org.au/news/press/pr20229.html Academic research on alcohol use in the series can be found at: http://www.adf.org.au/cyds/papers/secret.htm, which compares the representation with a range of empirical data on alcohol use generally in Australia.

23. See Lawson and Scott (2003), who comment: ‘last Monday's episode, which depicted several characters under the influence of ecstasy and eating hash muffins, has particularly disturbed anti-drug campaigners’.

24. See Moran (2001, 9) (‘Everyone has lovely spacious flats with lots of natural lighting and modern furniture; they all drink in bars with intriguing alcoves and wear lovely, expensive three-quarter length trousers from Maharishi’), and Sturges (2001, 47) (‘the script offers nothing that we haven't seen before’). Such responses typified the dismissal of the programme in the UK press and touched upon deeper anxieties about the Australianization of indigenous television drama.

25. See, for example, various sites accessed through CGS Success Systems TV Database: [email protected]

26. See Ogle (2001, 9), for whom the series is similarly caught between American and British intertexts (‘not as cloying as Friends, or as cynical as This Life’)

27. Such tendencies receive appreciative responses in much reviewing of series three, despite a broad consensus amongst commentators that the series has now lost touch with its roots: see Bennet's (2003) Internet review at: http://www.afterellen.com/archive/ellen/tv/thesecretlifeofus.html

28. Series two amplifies incidental tensions considerably: episode 26 dramatizes persistent strains of Australian homophobia, in storylines around Richie's fraught relationship with his father, following recognition and declaration of his gay sexuality; episode 31 nervously acknowledges Australian racism, in heated debates with Jason's new partner Caitlin, around the issues of immigration policy. Around episodes 36–38, the ongoing relationship between Kelly and Nathan, and tensions around their respective ethnic identities, tests the convictions of multiculturalist discourse to the limit, as ‘secret lives’ are asserted more publicly.

29. The striking visual ‘gloss’ of the series owes much to its technical origins in a fusion of traditional Super-16 film and an experimental use of new HD digital video systems being ‘road tested’ prior to their imminent standardization by Australian broadcast television.

30. O'Regan (1993, 98–120) discusses the preference for national programming demonstrated by the 1990s Australian television audience, in the contexts of globalization and increasingly international patterns of programme exchange. Such emphases are reiterated by Southern Star (1999, 6), which note that in 1999, for example, 8 of the top 10 programmes aired in Australia were Australian in ‘origin’. Since 2003, in particular, Nielsen ratings have recorded a steady shift in preference towards American drama.

31. For statistics see Flew and Cunningham (2001, 97–126, esp. 88–9).

32. Leading players for series one: Claudia Karvan (Alex), Deborah Mailman (Kelly), Samuel Johnson (Evan), Joel Edgerton (Will), Abi Tucker (Miranda), Spencer McLaren (Richie), Sibylla Budd (Gabrielle), Damien De Montemas (Jason), David Tredinnick (Simon), Tempany Deckert (Andrena), Andrew McKaige (Sean), Teague Rook (Miles), Terry Kenwick (Mr Loman), Jessica Gower (Sam), Tasma Walton (Leah), Neil Pigot (‘Mad Dog’ Martin), Ezra Bix (Evan's father), Callie Gray (Fiona), Stephanie Power (Sabrina), Catherine McClements (Carmen), Susie Porter (Pandora), Oscar Redding (Eric), Todd Macdonald (Nathan), James Miller (Miles), Steve Mouzakis (Paolo), Damien Walsh-Howling (Mac), Alice Garner (Caitlin), Tessa Humphries (Nerida), Ed Matheson (Vincent), Benjamin McNair (Joseph), Lucy Slattery (Marie), Bruce Hughes (Naris), Glenn Moriarty (Damien), Kenneth Ransom (Brad), Susan Williams (Sareah), Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell (Cyril), Shane Nicholson (Marcus), Colin James (David), Steph Song (Loretta), Mark Jenkins (director), Jane Marsh (Desiree).

33. Williams (2001, p. 21). The series CD lists the following tracks: 1. ‘Death Defy’ (Motor Ace), 2. ‘Karma Package Deal’ (78 Saab), 3. ‘More’ (Waikiki), 4. ‘Pace It’—(Magic Dirt), 5. ‘Each Time You Smile’ (Sounds Like Sunset), 6. ‘Sick Day’ (Daisycutters), 7. ‘Particular People’ (Pollyanna), 8. ‘You Only Hide’ (Something For Kate), 9. ‘Everybody (Idiot Free)’ (Abi Tucker), 10. ‘Know Who You Are’ (Pound System), 11. ‘Not Afraid Of Romance’ (Machine Gun Fellatio), 12. ‘Frisco Disco’ (Not From There), 13. ‘Size Does Matter’ (On Inc), 14. ‘Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun’ (Titanics), 15. ‘Tomorrow We Sing’ (Snout), 16. ‘Everything’ (Abi Tucker), 17. ‘I Don't Wanna Know’ (Wicked Beat Sound System), 18. ‘Drive’ (Chakradiva), 19. ‘Unsent Letter’ (Machine Gun Fellatio), 20. ‘Love Is …’ (Waikiki), 21. ‘Beestung’ (Pollyanna), 22. ‘Dreamship’ (Leonardo's Bride), 23. ‘Texas’ (Deadstar), 24. ‘Iris Ann’ (78 Saab), 25. ‘Melting’ (Paul Kelly With Monique Brumby), 26. ‘Beat Of Your Heart’ (Christine Anu), 27. ‘In Between Worlds’ (Suzie Higgie & Wicket Beat Sound System), 28. ‘Stay With You’ (Jackie Bristow), 29. ‘Goodnight’ (Butterfly Nine).

34. Series such as Fireflies (2004–), dealing with the work of the country fire service, The Surgeon (2005), a medical melodrama, and Dangerous (2007–), a hard-bitten crime series, develop in the wake of the cancellation of The Secret Life of Us.