Associate Professor Brett Hutchins

by  Brett Hutchins

Cricket Australia’s Supreme Court legal action against its host broadcaster of the past 36 years, Channel Nine, is the manifestation of an identifiable pattern. It continues a time-honoured practice in Australia of major sports and media organisations shovelling money into the gaping maw of the legal profession.

Examples here include the one-day cricket “revolution” of the 1970s, the Super League and rugby union “wars” of the 1990s, the C7 pay television court battle of the mid-2000s, and last year’s conflict over Optus’ TV Now service.

Together, these multi-million dollar disputes over the control of sports content reveal a mutually reinforcing configuration of sport, media and the law. This triumvirate hoovers up extraordinary amounts of time and money in the pursuit and maintenance of market power. 

The disagreement between Cricket Australia and Channel Nine appears to have arisen in the course of broadcast contract renewal negotiations, although the exact sequence of events is difficult to establish given that the legal file has been sealed. Playing a role in this case is a concerted bid by Channel Ten to take these cricket rights – valued somewhere between A$350-500 million over five years – from Channel Nine. Having just purchased the coverage rights for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi for A$20 million, Ten is pursuing sports rights aggressively in order to revive its flagging commercial performance.

The precise details of the dispute are arguably less significant than how it adds to a lengthy trajectory of legal disputes over sports rights. There are several lessons that can be drawn from over three decades of high profile legal cases, which also suggest these conflicts will intensify in the future.

No matter how much money or power they possess, no single organisation or media company can claim total control over popular sports content. Its popularity acts as an engine for a constant stream of ancillary services and emergent operators that attempt to “get in on the game”.

Operators may include new rival leagues, competing broadcasters, and start-up companies seeking to capitalise on new media platforms and services. This includes, for instance, pay television in the 1990s, the internet during the 2000s, and various forms of mobile media today, including apps, social networking, and location-based services.

Fans now pose challenges because they possess the ability to post their own videos online, run their own websites, access independent news and content providers, and watch “pirate” streams of live television broadcasts on the internet.

The more appealing a sport, the more likely it is that a rights seller or owner will feel the need to take legal action to protect against perceived or actual encroachment on its investment. The exercise of control over content and media platforms seeks to protect revenue streams, even as legal costs erode profits.

The market value of live sport is considerable, but also subject to unavoidable uncertainty in the digital age.  At present, alongside reality television, popular elite level sport is the most valuable form of content in the contemporary Australian media market, guaranteeing large and attentive audiences, especially when the result of a game is in the balance.

As Channel Ten’s dogged pursuit of the rights to broadcast cricket shows, broadcasters in particular continue to drive the value of coverage rights ever higher.

Other forms of programming, such as comedy, drama and movies, have not consistently maintained their value when confronted by proliferating viewer choice. The massive growth of online video, on-demand streaming services, and peer-to-peer file sharing has undercut a broadcast business model that has long tied media buyers and advertisers to particular programming genres.  The problem for many forms of television now is that viewers decide when they will watch and how, not the networks.

A combination of expensive media investments in live sport and decreasing revenue streams in other areas explains why a rights holder will protect their sports properties aggressively via the legal system.

Attempts to maximise value through the rigid enforcement of contract terms produces a cascading effect of endless legal advice and action. The terms of coverage rights contracts are also subject to constant reassessment when the broadcast of a cricket or football match can appear on a computer screen, tablet and mobile smartphone (with or without permission). As the Optus TV Now case shows, the race to innovate in a world of multi-screen viewing places legislative frameworks under significant strain. The reality of contemporary sport is that contract law, content packages, platform specific and neutral deals, intellectual property, territorial rights, parliamentary inquiries, and industry codes of practice have as much to do with what we watch as taste, culture and enjoyment.

If Australia is a sports-loving nation, then it is also a litigious one. The pressures generated by shifting audience behaviours, changeable advertising markets and new communications technologies mean that the legal profession will always win no matter what the judge decides.

Associate Professor Brett Hutchins works in the School of Communications and Media Studies at Monash University.

This article has appeared in The Conversation.

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“Peter Fraser makes performances based on the sensations of the body. The focus is not on psychology or choreography but on exploring the body as an internal environment inside a surrounding environment. He performers as an improviser, in choreographed performance, site specific performance and occasionally in video and theatre.

Peter’s work draws on a performance training called ‘Bodyweather’ developed by the legendary butoh dancer Min Tanaka, and used, in Australia, by De Quincey Co with whom Peter has often performed (http://dequinceyco.net/category/performances). Examples of Peter’s work can be seen at https://vimeo.com/user11525528 Peter is completing an MA in performance that will include the Darebin pop up shop window installation/performance based on having seen a lizard confined in a pet shop.

Filmmaker, Lolanthe Lezzi is a multi-disciplinary artist, film editor and graphic designer based in Melbourne. She has a Masters of Fine Arts, Monash. Her work commonly explores themes of Absurdism and the Outsider – often with humour. She has exhibited, film, photographs and installations in many group or individual exhibitions, including at Monash University, Seventh Gallery, Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Barcelona, Launceston and the Mornington Peninsula”.

For further information please contact Sarah Poole on 0407 813 776. The actual film will be posted when it has been edited – in a few weeks time.

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“Those are some of the issues raised by Australian company version 1.0 in this verbatim show that offers a collage of the experiences of Australians who have been left behind by the disappeared. Making its European premiere as part of the Brighton festival, the hour-long static show is delivered by two actors – Irving Gregory and Yana Taylor, both superb – who sit facing the audience. The piece displays a frozen quality, its form mirroring the emotional state of those talking about the people they love, there one day and gone the next.“ **** Lyn Gardener, The Guardian, UK. Read more here

“pungent, powerful and thought provoking” Mary Kalmus, The Brighton Argus, UK. Read more here

“the content of The Disappearances Project is indeed bleak and beautiful. Bleak in its steadfast commitment to illustrating the hardship of the people’s experiences and beautiful in its simple unadorned delivery by its two performers” **** Hannah Rowlands, The Public Reviews, UK. Read more here

“The stark, filmic backdrop of travel through deserted streets by night echoed the sense of constant search for someone who wasn’t there and the discordant soundtrack added to the feeling of despair and malaise. It was powerful and deeply moving.” ***** Jenni Davidson, The Latest, UK. Read more here.

“They speak verbatim-style, conveying a sense of both raw communication and heroic composure, over the fluctuating tensions of Paul Prestipino’s bleak industrial sound-track” ***** Bella Todd, The Stage, UK. Read more here.

The Monash University Prize for Poetry was established in 1963 and is an important part of the tradition of promoting literary creativity at Monash University.

The prize is awarded annually for the best poem by an undergraduate.

Previous winners include prominent Australian poets such as John A. Scott and Laurie Duggan.

• Previous winners
• How to apply

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From to October, he will spend six weeks as a Visiting Professor in the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii.  These residencies will enable Will to complete a manuscript for his forthcoming book, “Emplacing Happiness: Community, the Self, and Performance in the Philippines” in two of the most exciting research environments in the world for scholars in his field

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Workers in the cultural, media and creative industries are often required to inhabit or even ‘become’ their jobs.

Workers in the cultural, media and creative industries are often required to inhabit or even ‘become’ their jobs, to immerse themselves, without question according to a visiting UK sociologist.

In its more positive versions, there is a recurrent idea that captures that special moment of perfect creative synthesis between worker and the work– the moment of ‘being in the zone’ (BITZ). 

Dr Mark Banks from the The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK will examine BITZ from a sociological perspective at a free public lecture at Monash University.

Dr Banks said BITZ describes the epitomic, optimal fusion of the productive mind and the labouring body.

“The aim is to challenge affirmative (often psychologistic) readings of BITZ that seek to de-politicise the conditions of its emergence and gloss over its less progressive social effects,” Dr Banks said.

Dr Banks will also discuss whether BITZ simply represents another form of oppression, or does it retain some potential for informing and shaping understandings of better kinds of cultural work.

Dr Banks’ visit is being hosted by the Research Unit in Media Studies (RUMS), a collective of Monash researchers who practice and promote media-based scholarship in Australia and internationally. 

RUMS Co-Director, Associate Professor Brett Hutchins said we were lucky to have a visit from a scholar of Dr Banks’ standing. 

“This is an important lecture that connects with the lived experiences of the many students and professionals who we engage both through our research and teaching,” Associate Professor Hutchins said.

Dr Banks is reader in sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK. He is the author of The Politics of Cultural Work (2007) and co-editor (with Rosalind Gill and Stephanie Taylor) of Theorising Cultural Work (2013). He has written extensively on work in the cultural and creative industries, cultural policy and cultural value – most recently in relation to craft workers, artists and jazz musicians.

‘Being in the Zone’ of Cultural Work will take place on Thursday 2 May, 3-4.30pm in Building T, Room 2.26 at Monash University’s Caulfield campus. It is part of RUMS’ 2013 Seminar Series.

For more information contact Associate Professor Brett Hutchins on 03 9903 2098 or Brett.Hutchins@monash.edu.

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By David Holmes

The Climate Commission’s latest report, released recently, and some of the media that arose from it are excellent examples of science and journalists working together to talk about climate change and extreme weather. But examples like this are too rare: in Australia, we find that the mainstream news media is reluctant to mention climate change, talking about extreme weather events as freak accidents. And the situation isn’t helped by scientists who are reluctant to speak out on their research.

Curiously, when climate change first became an issue in the 1980s, almost all of the press was led by scientific sources. The role of human activity was not contested at all until climate change became politicised in the 1990s by interest groups, politicians and an adversarial “debate” between sceptics and an IPCC-led science of consensus. 

With the exception of radical climate scientists like the recently retired James Hansen, climate scientists became regressively cautious about their forecasts. Fear of being debunked by powerful interest groups took over. This actually led to an increase in visibility of activist and advocacy groups in the press.

The anxiety shown by the IPCC group editors over the leaking of the first draft of the fifth Assessment Report, not due out until September this year, is evidence of this. 

The Climate Commision is again placing the science on the front foot. The earlier pictorial Angry Summer report tapped into the media currents reporting on extreme weather as weather, and brought climate back in. The current report provides a fuller scientific context for the record-breaking events that just swept the nation. 

Early analysis from a study being conducted by researchers in Communications and Media, and Journalism Studies at Monash University, suggests that the electronic platforms of public and independent news outlets are leading the way in this. Newspapers are lagging well behind. Whether it is heatwaves, floods or firestorms; climate is marginal in the discourse of disaster reporting. 

For example, a spectacular oversight during the Queensland floods of 2011 was the fact that – unlike the cyclone-generated floods of 1893 and 1974 – there was no cyclone driving the floods at all. Instead, unprecedented evaporation and rain – enough to generate an inland tsunami and kill 36 people – drove the disaster. But of the 2,004 news articles published in the Australian press during the six peak days of the floods, none made this link. Only 25 suggested there might be a link to climate change. 

Extreme weather events only become newsworthy if they can be pressed into forms of story-telling that appeal to a sense of salvation from an immediate public crisis, rather than what these events say about climate change. Commercial television news in Australia has long excelled in inviting the disaster marathon right into its promotional advertising, with orchestral backing, close-ups of agonised faces, slow-motion helicopters and vox-pops of despair enticing audiences to switch over “in times of crisis”.

With the Climate Commission’s publication of Extreme Weather, an alternative frame for reporting severe weather events is now available. When the science is linked to new extremes seen in heatwaves, floods and fires, we could be spared from the “miracle escape” and “fury of nature” framing of news stories.

Where the reporting of catastrophe has long obscured the communication of the science, catastrophe might now become the pedagogy for its communication and a focus for mitigation.

It is time too that Australian climate scientists, who are well represented in the IPCC (with almost 5 per cent of the 802 authors of the fifth IPCC AR report), directly linked their work to upcoming extreme weather. Peak bodies like the Climate Commission, and the CSIRO are vital news sources, but US research shows that awareness of anthropogenic climate change increases with the amount of coverage not just the content.

Australian climate scientists seem to have much more trouble relating to the broader public than their counterparts overseas going by their under-representation as sources in news outlets.

A February report in Science Communication suggested that a majority of German scientists have had professional contact with news media and their representation exceeds that of other scientific fields. While the report suggests that more than half of the contact is made by journalists and PR departments of scientific organisations and universities, a surprise finding was that 82.3 per cent of these scientists made scientific decisions such as the choice of research topics with some consideration of likely media interest.

It would appear that climate change communication faces a different task in Australia than in Germany, where much of the debate is about how to combat climate change. The Monash study will investigate the impediments Australian Climate Scientists have in getting their research publicised, looking at both scientific institutions and newsroom cultures, to understand this difference.

Improved media adaptation of climate science is as important as climate adaptation of the media. The Climate Commission is leading the way in this regard. It represents a group who are possibly going to be the most important body of public intellectuals of the 21st century. 

Dr David Holmes works in the School of Communications and Media Studies in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.

A version of this article also appeared in The Conversation.

In a new book Youth and Media,Monash University’s Dr Andy Ruddock, from the School of Communications and Media Studies, explains why young people are at the centre of how we understand the media.

Dr Ruddock said the book explored key issues in politics, technology, celebrity, advertising, gender and globalisation and looked at how media define the identities and social imaginations of young people.

“The book is intended to be research in and of its self as I’m using it to kick start new initiatives for encouraging media students to DO research, rather than simply read other people’s work.

“It is a systematic guide to how the notions of media influence ‘works’ when daily life compels young people to act out their relationships through media content and technologies.”

Dr Ruddock said when he first came to Monash, he was asked to teach a class on Youth and Media. 

“As I started putting the unit together, I realised that all of the ‘big’ questions about how media affect society tend to be studied in relation to young people,” Dr Ruddock said.

“So, the topic is really a large canvas for exploring a range of issues of why media matter, and that’s what the book tries to show.”

Dr Ruddock said public interest in the media is arguably higher than it’s ever been, yet many of these debates are often quite confused, in terms of how media power is conceived.

“The book covers how to conceptualise and research this influence. I’m quite often asked to comment on media issues for the media. When I do, most of the time I draw on ideas from the book, so I hope it has a wider appeal,” Dr Ruddock said.

The book also contains helpful chapter guides, summaries and lively case studies drawn from a truly global context.

Dr Ruddock is currently working on a new book about media research in general, focusing largely on how people work with media; either as professionals working in industries or as media users.

‘Youth and Media‘ is available now through Sage Publications.

Dr Andy Ruddock

by Andy Ruddock

The resignation of senior British political figure David Miliband as non-executive director and vice-chairman of English soccer club Sunderland AFC – in protest at Paolo Di Canio’s appointment as the Premier League club’s new manager – has engulfed Di Canio in a controversy that he and his new employers are struggling to contain.

The storm surrounds events back in 2005. While playing for Rome’s Lazio club, Di Canio twice hailed the team’s fans with a Nazi salute. Then, he defended his actions by claiming to be a “fascist, not a racist”. To the puzzlement of Di Canio, and Sunderland, these events are the subject of renewed public scrutiny, despite the fact that he was disciplined for them eight years ago.

In a tetchy press conference stand-offwith reporters last night, Di Canio repeated that he is not a racist. He also insisted that he is not a political person. When reporters would not leave the fascism issue be, rattled PR staff ended proceedings. Two questions follow: why are people so upset now, and what would another renunciation achieve?

Folks are upset because – unlike Di Canio – many soccer supporters are political people. Yesterday, the Durham Miners Association asked for its banner to be removed from Sunderland’s stadium. Like Miliband, the organisation stated its love of the club is outweighed by its historic commitment to fight fascism wherever it arises.

Elsewhere, Di Canio stirs unease at a lack of progress on racism in soccer. Football Against Racism in Europe’s Piara Power has called on Di Canio to clarify his views. Power thinks Di Canio’s statements so far aren’t enough, given known affinities between fascism and racism: “fascist”, Power said, “is a political label that comes across with all sorts of dangerous ideas and ideals and that is the concern for us”.

Di Canio’s past matters because of an ominous present. Premier League stars Luiz Suarez and John Terry have been accused of racial vilification in recent seasons, while last week Rio Ferdinand was the subject of abusive chanting from England fans over the Terry case (which involved his brother, Anton). Ferdinand tweeted “racism is not banter, and from your own fans. WOW”. 

Ferdinand isn’t the only worried star. Last month, AC Milan’s Ghanaian-born Kevin-Prince Boatengaddressed the UN on the need to take a tougher stand on racial abuse in soccer. Boateng could talk the talk because he walked the walk: he left the pitch during a game in January in protest at racist chanting from the crowd.

Many supporters share these concerns. Last month, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies released results from a survey of 2500 British soccer fans on their experiences with racism. The survey, by Jamie Cleland and Ellis Cashmore, found that half of the sample still encountered it during matches.

The study also found disgruntlement at a lack of effective official action against racist incidents, and a fear that social media is exacerbating things: abuse can now be delivered right into players’ hands.

That’s why Di Canio is being asked about 2005 again. In light of recent events, letting his appointment proceed without querying past political statements attributed to him smacks of the indifference that has led the game to where it is.

But the operative word here is indifference. Di Canio’s actual beliefs might be less important than they first appear, because avowed, dyed-in-the-wool racists aren’t the only challenge.

Asked about his “Roman” salute, Di Canio cast the gesture as a tribute to fellow Lazio fans in whose ranks he once stood. Political overtones were incidental to the particular meaning of that act delivered by one player to a certain set of people at the stadium.

This sort of argument is typical of the “casual racism” defence that Cleland and Cashmore also found among their respondents. Condemnatory as fans were about racism in principle, many of the sample – especially those who were “white, male and under 29” – defended “occasional outbursts” as inevitable, given that racism is a societal issue. In other words, casual racism isn’t the real thing. By the same logic, an off-the-cuff Nazi salute doesn’t necessarily signify considered political convictions.

According to the survey, it’s the culture that tolerates casual racism that intimidates those minded to confront racists in action. Often, the idiot doing the “monkey chant” is less imposing than other fans and officials who just want to keep a lid on things, and regulatory bodies who’d rather have players carry on, regardless.

In the end, no-one really turns a hair until someone like Kevin-Prince Boateng says “enough” and leaves the pitch. Actions like that threaten to derail soccer’s status as a lucrative global media spectacle. That does more than another press conference.

Until racism substantially threatens soccer showbiz, change will be slow.

Dr Andy Ruddock is a senior lecturer for the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.

This article has also appeared on The Conversation.