The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s multiplatform projects: Industrial logics of children’s content provision in the digital television era

The Australian BroadcastingCorporation’s Multiplatform

Projects:

Industrial Logics of Children’s ContentProvision in the Digital Television Era

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Multiplatform Projects 1

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Multiplatform Projects:Industrial Logics of Children’s Content Provision in the Digital

Television Era

Abstract

This paper traces the development of children’s multiplatform

commissioning at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in

the context of the digitalisation of Australian television. Whilst

recent scholarship has focussed on ‘post-broadcast’ or ‘second-

shift’ industrial practices, designed to engage view(s)ers with

proprietary media brands, less attention has been focussed on

children’s and young adults’ television in a public service

context. Further, although multiplatform projects in the United

States and Britain have been the subject of considerable analysis,

less work has attempted to contextualise cultural production in

smaller media markets. The paper explores two recent multiplatform

projects through textual analysis, empirical research (consisting

of interviews with key industry personnel), and an investigation

of recent policy documents. The authors argue that a mixed diet of

programming, together with an educative or social developmental

agenda, features in the design of both program and participation

for the ABC, while at the same time the corporation seeks to

maintain the entertainment value of its brand.


KeywordsChildren’s television; digital television; multiplatforming; new media; public service broadcasting; Australian Broadcasting Corporation; participation; ABC3; Dance Academy; My Place.


Introduction

Children’s programming has long been considered one of the

pillars of public service broadcasting. In recent decades, public

service broadcasters (PSB) world-wide have been forced to adapt to

considerable transformations in economic, cultural and

technological contexts. In Australia, prior to the advent of Pay

TV in 1995, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) faced

little competition as an originator and broadcaster of distinctive

children’s programming. With changes brought about by the nation’s

transition to digital television broadcasting, together with

increasing competition and deregulation, a dedicated digital

terrestrial children’s channel—ABC3—has formed a significant

vanguard of the ABC’s participatory digital media strategy. This

article considers how content, in the form of rich multiplatform

texts, is crucial in providing value-added user experiences that

legitimate the ABC’s claims to provide a ‘quality’ alternative to

the (largely imported) schedules and digital offerings of its

commercial terrestrial and subscription (Pay TV) rivals.

Considering these developments in relation to recent scholarship

on ‘beyond-broadcast’ textualities, our paper investigates the way

in which digital content strategies cultivate a relationship with


child and early adolescent view(s)ers.i This participatory circuit

of consumption is constructed in institutional and policy

discourse as a developmental objective of public broadcasting. The

ABC’s Dance Academy and My Place children’s multiplatform projects

are examined as symptomatic case studies, contextualised by an

analysis of interviews with Australian broadcaster and industry

executives, together with government policy and institutional

documents.

Background: The Institutional Logics of Digital Textualities

Recent media scholarship has documented the upsurge of

investment in ‘quality’ transmedia narratives (Jenkins, 2006) by

media corporations in a period characterised by intense

competition for audience share. These cross-platform, textual

innovations are explained in terms of adaptive market strategies

in the eras of post-network television, and post-broadcast media.

In this debate, digital media aesthetics and industrial practices

are intrinsically related to the economic goals of media

institutions in an age of transition. Themes within the literature

include: branded environments across platforms and affiliates,

which ensure the prominence of franchised properties to

advertisers and audiences; the manipulation of user behaviours to


prompt maximum time engaged with proprietary content; repurposing

content and developed concepts to increase economic efficiencies

(Doyle, 2010); and strategies to engage fan-based participation

and labour, with the ultimate goal to capitalise on excessive

consumption behaviours (Gwenllian-Jones, 2003; Murray, 2004). With

a few notable exceptions (D’Arma et al., 2010; Bennett, 2008;

Bennett and Strange, 2008; Enli, 2008a, 2008b), most of this work

has concerned the prime-time ‘marquee’ or blockbuster properties

of transnational media conglomerates, dominated by US commercial

media culture.

In an influential chapter, Caldwell (2003) coins the term

‘second-shift aesthetics’ to describe a comprehensive integration

of design (aesthetics) and market practices in the new

digital/cultural economy of media conglomerates,

a growing and ubiquitous world of digital that employs traditional and modified “programming strategies” in the design of everything from interface and software design to merchandising and branding campaigns (Caldwell 2003: 132).

Caldwell argues that branding is a key strategy that aims to

promote not programs but ‘highly individuated and easily

recognized corporate personalities’ (2003: 138), thus creating


empathic relationships with consumers. However, key second-shift

promotional practices involve ‘herding’ the ‘grazing’ users

across hospitable sites, non-competing third-party brands, and

markets, thus mastering ‘textual dispersals and user navigations that

can and will inevitably migrate across brand boundaries (2003: 136,

author’s emphasis). Crucially, Caldwell argues that successful

synergies come not from the strength of a hegemonic delivery

platform, but from the ‘quality’ of programming across platforms.

Thus, success comes from ‘value-added’ digital user experiences

(2003: 142).

Elaborating on the concept ‘value-added’ interactive

experiences, Johnson (2007) analyses the ways in which fans are

‘invited in’ to participate in the world of the television text

and processes of its production in the new post-broadcast or TV-

III environment.ii This participation, he contends, is less a

construction of a (genuinely interactive) community than a

strategy to herd viewsers into more intensely engaged consumption

of the channels’ brands (Gwenllian-Jones, 2003: Murray, 2004).

Audience feedback in the digital era is thus a determinative node

in the production process (Johnson, 2007: 64). Moreover,

‘multiplatforming’ strategies have evolved to deploy television


content to be consumed serially across a range of media. Drawing

on key concepts such as world building (Sconce, 2004) and

hyperdiegesis—a rich and deep serial diegesis across media and

platforms—(Hills, 2007), Johnson suggests that the series

architecture and diegetic depth of the post-broadcast media

textualities create complex narrative universes that can ‘support

discussion, speculation and cultural production’ (Hills, 2002;

cited in Johnson, 2007: 66). Facilitating access to representation

through mechanisms for user-generated-content, a key strategy for

commercial and public service content providers alike is to direct

opportunities for micro-celebrity, cementing viewser loyalty and

creating an ongoing relationship with media brands.

Research studies documenting the more mainstream European public

broadcasting tradition have considered how contemporary

convergence strategies on the part of broadcasters have developed

new and compelling types of content to ‘more successfully propel

multi-platform consumption’ (Bennett and Strange, 2008: 66-67) in

an industrial and policy context framed by public service values.

As Enli (2008a) observes, European PSB in the digital era have

progressively redefined the traditional Reithian trinity of public

service values (to inform, educate and entertain) to include a


drive for popular reach through the feedback mechanisms of digital

participation.

In their analysis of a selection of the BBC’s iTV and

multiplatform projects, Bennett and Strange (2008) locate the BBC

initiatives as symptomatic of a public service remit to experiment

with and innovate in the development of on-demand content. These

developments, read in the context of the BBC’s Charter renewal

inquiries and impending digital switchover, are linked to a brief

to place Britain at the forefront of the digital economy, and a

social policy to remediate digital exclusion. They situate the

BBC’s 360° commissioning strategy in the context of its unique

funding model, traditionally justified in terms of its obligation

to provide a universal service, now redefined to include post-

broadcast content provision. Similarly, Georgina Born (2004)

emphasizes the BBC’s Charter obligations—mirrored in the Charter

of the ABC—as a universal provider. The BBC’s portfolio of digital

channels continue, to a significant degree, its traditional PSB

obligations from the analogue era: to broadcast the best across

the full range of genres from sitcom, soaps, variety and game

shows, to experimental documentaries, extending, by implication,

to new media innovation. (Bennett, 2008; Born, 2004: 29, 486-89).


Bennett and Strange extend the discussion of non-commercial

obligations, invoking the notion of citizenship as a remit of

public service media, an obligation to engage in educative and

progressive relationships outside purely media-centric circuits of

consumption. Hence they contend that a public service oriented

management of user flows, through the creation of public

partnerships, ‘herds’ users out into the world as ‘part of a

mobile citizenry, informed and educated by screen media but

collaborating and congregating’ offline, and thus creating ‘“real-

world” public value beyond the screen’ (2008: 116). The concept of

educative relationships derived from real-world partnerships is

also pertinent to the Australian case studies discussed below.

The ABC’s Digital Children’s Channel and Australia’s Transition toDTT

The early stages of the transition to digital terrestrial

television (DTT) in Australia were not characterised by a strong

policy and budgetary commitment to public service values (Given,

2003; Inglis, 2006). DTT broadcasting in Australia commenced in

2001, but a raft of media policy settings designed to inhibit

competition between the incumbent free-to-air commercial

broadcasters, Pay TV operators, and new entrants into the digital


market, resulted in a skewing of the digital media ecology.

Restrictions on the genres permitted on new digital licenses

(particularly on news, drama, and film) until 2010, in effect,

drove commercial players from the bidding process, and allowed

PSBs to pioneer multichannel broadcasting for niche audiences.

This opportunity was not, however, matched by commitment for new

content. As Given’s analysis demonstrates, governments worldwide

had been forced to reverse their neoliberal withdrawal from the

funding of broadcasting and ‘bankroll public broadcasters’ digital

transformation’ (2003: 222). However, for some nations the timing

was more fortuitous than for others. ‘New’ Labour governments in

the UK and New Zealand in the late 1990s brought some redress for

PSB at precisely the moment demanded by the pressures of digital

renewal. In Australia, in comparison,

where government had long been secondary to advertisers as a source of broadcast revenues, the onslaught on public broadcasting didn’t begin in earnest until the second half of the 1990s (Given, 2003: 223).

While the federal government did meet approximately one-third of

the costs the ABC required to upgrade its technological

infrastructure for digital television broadcasting, the ABC did

not receive additional funding for content origination. The ABC’s


early digital children’s channel (ABC Kids/Fly) launched in 2001,

only to close 2 years later, primarily due to funding constraints.

However, after Labor assumed power, its 2009 budget allocated $67

million (AUD) to the ABC to introduce a digital children’s

television channel (ABC3), thus making the children’s content area

the vanguard of Australian terrestrial broadcasting’s transition

to a digital ecology.

Trans-media ‘user navigations’ (Caldwell, 2003) were central to

the ABC’s concept of the digital children’s channel. Future-

oriented discourses within the corporation and The Australian

Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF)—the institution that

instigated the children’s channel campaign—envisioned the drive

for on-demand digital services from the youth demographic (ACTF,

2005; Buckland and Dalton, 2008). Thus ABC3, from its

developmental phases onward, was conceptualised as a mulitplatform

‘channel’. In February 2007, Mark Scott, the Australian

Broadcasting Corporation’s then recently appointed Managing

Director, announced a radical organizational restructure, which

was designed to bring digital media to the centre of the

organization’s content and distribution strategy. Leveraging the

ABC’s prominence in digital development, through the market


position of ABC Online, and its cross-platform reach in radio,

broadband, and its nascent digital multichannel innovations, Scott

foreshadowed a vision to capitalise on the increased ‘mobile

privatisation’ (Williams, 1990) facilitated by social media and

widespread uptake of mobile devices. Foreshadowing what would

become a major branding exercise, Scott heralded a new

responsiveness to projected viewser demand: ‘a world where our

audiences increasingly want ABC content on demand—when they want

it, not just when we want to schedule it’ (ABC Media Room, 2007).

In line with this digital content strategy, Kim Dalton, Director

of ABC Television, presided over a restructure of ABC Children’s,

which was enlarged to include its own dedicated Children’s

Mulitplatform team (Brooke-Hunt, 2010; Dalton, 2010).

With a much more modest commitment of government revenue than

that enjoyed by some PSBs internationally, the ABC outsources most

of its program and rich interactive content origination to the

independent production sector.iii However, the corporation’s

Television Multiplatform department is responsible for deployment

of interactive online textualities and the management of the

online relationship between its young constituents and ABC

Children’s TV programs. In the remainder of our paper, we analyse


two multiplatform projects commissioned by the ABC in 2009, the

first year of operations for its new digital children’s channel.

We argue that, for ABC Children’s, the exploitation of TV-web-

mobile synergies facilitates multichannel exploitation of TV

properties as well as the more traditional public service value of

providing developmental benefits to children. A pursuit of

audience share and reach to legitimize its recurrent funding

engenders a strategy that prioritises the entertainment values of

the ABC’s children’s offerings. Nevertheless, these hyperdiegetic

mulitplatform texts evidence a continuing commitment to a youth-

focussed, public service remit, reflecting the ABC’s Charter

obligations to foster innovation, creativity, participation,

citizenship, and the values of social inclusiveness.

In its 2008 inquiry into the ‘digital future’ of the ABC and the

Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), the Department of Broadband

Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) leveraged the

concept of public service media as a ‘virtual village square’.

This social democratic construction had been given prominence in

the Creative Australia stream of the Rudd government’s 2020 Summit

think tank (2020 Summit, 2008). Re-articulating and extending the


ABC’s existing Charter obligations, the DBCDE Discussion Paper

(DBCDE, 2008) set out a list of ‘Objectives of national

broadcasting’.iv In additional to traditional Charter values, such

as reflecting Australia’s multicultural identity, promoting

diversity and understanding, and ‘ensuring an informed public

debate about key issues affecting Australian society’, key tenets

of this remit that have traction for the ABC’s relationship with

young people in the creative applications examined here include

‘enhancing the intellectual and creative capacity of Australian

society and supporting the development of Australia’s human

capital’; ‘providing informative and thought-provoking content

that enriches society’; and ‘encouraging creative endeavour and

the development of new talent’ (DCBDE 2008). The vision of human

capital-building articulated in this policy document suggests that

public service digital content, ‘free from commercial or other

interests’, is potentially more than popular entertainment; it may

be generative.

Dance Academy’s Circuits of Consumption: ‘Pushing Back’ to the ABC3Portal

A focus on situated identity and contemporary adolescent issues

by ABC Children’s executives, suggests an interest in ‘moral


realism’ (Creeber, 2009: Hallam and Marshment, 2000): narratives

showcasing diverse individual psychologies and stories

illustrating young people’s resilience with an underlying, but

subtle, progressive politics. Australian adolescent identity-work

is framed by a discourse of social and intellectual development.

Carla de Jong, Head of Commissioning and Development at ABC

Children’s, explains the difference between Fox’s Glee and Dance

Academy as, on the one hand, a ‘heightened comedy’, a ‘fantastical,

prime-time, big-budget show that is absolutely not real life’, and,

on the other, one that reflects the ‘real issues and real life of

Australian kids at an elite ballet school’ (De Jong, 2011). The

program in its first 26-part series (2010) dramatises the progress

of Tara Webster in her first year at the prestigious National Academy

of Dance. A country girl, and a ‘natural’ dancer, Tara has ambitions

to be a principal ballerina, a drive she shares with her chief

rival, Abigail Armstrong. Other peer characters include, Kat

Karamakov, Tara’s best friend, Sammy Lieberman, who wants to be a

dancer despite strong objections from his doctor father, Christian

Reed, a street kid with limited commitment to the academy, and

Ethan Karamakov, Kat’s brother, and, alongside Christian, an

object of romantic interest for Tara. Narrative impetus is shared


between romantic and peer tensions, the drive for excellence, and

the choices facing teens as they negotiate potential futures. Our

analysis of Dance Academy and the ABC’s ‘second-shift’ aesthetics

reveals that the representation of adolescent life in this project

is not just about aspirational lifestyle and romantic peer

relationships, but also ‘living’ with issues common to adolescent

experience. Viewsers are narratively positioned alongside

characters in the process of forming, in developmental terms,

‘executive functioning’, agency and responsibility in wider social

networks.

Terranova’s account of digital media economies contends that

monetary value is created out of knowledge and affect of viewsers

(2000). As Murray (2004) explains, this affect is usually

channelled into promotional strategies, to create grassroots buzz

around television properties. In a similar vein, Johnson (2007:

67) contends that cross-platform deployment of television

properties provide viewsers with new means of engagement, ‘driving

large circuits of consumption’. A key strategy in creating value

around the ABC Children’s brand in the transition to multichannel

broadcasting consisted of shoring-up rights through more generous

licensing agreements with producers. The new government funding


allowed the ABC to commission new Australian drama content and

offer exclusivity deals to prevent Pay TV channels, such as

Nickelodeon, from acquiring the secondary rights.v The advent of ABC3

introduced real competition into the children’s content market for

the first time in Australia, thus enhancing profits for producers

as well as the ABC’s ability to compete. The ABC paid Joanne

Werner (Werner Productions), the independent producer of Dance

Academy, substantially above the standard license fee to retain

exclusivity rights for the show for up to five years (Brooke-Hunt,

2010; Dalton, 2010). The ABC screened the series on both its main

channel, ABC1 (broadcasting both analogue and digital, thus able

to reach all households with television receivers), and the

digital-only ABC3. The corporation heavily cross-promoted the

series using its multi-channels and online social media platforms,

Facebook and Twitter, thus value-adding to the producer’s brand and

spin-off merchandising. ABC Managing Director, Mark Scott, in a

number of public speeches, locates the strategy to build

viewsership across channels and platforms in terms of the ABC’s

remit to provide a universal service—one having, by implication, a

broad reach—thus delivering maximum returns (wide delivery of a

public good) on the investment by the Australian public:


The Charter asks that we provide content of wide appeal and contentthat is specialist in nature. Consequently, we look to engage not only with small communities of interest but to also bring the nation together around content that will generate critical mass […] Only the ABC—as an established trusted brand in Australian children’s television—could have so quickly generated such a return on that public investment. And delivered it to 10 out of 10 Australian households, rather than the 3 out of 10 that Pay-TV could (Scott, 2010).

Under Scott’s leadership institutional strategies, ABC-wide,

were developed, creating a range of on-demand services leveraged

from its existing divisions—Television, Radio, News, and

Innovation (New Media). These services included the ABC’s

internally developed catch-up application (iView), podcasts,

vodcasts , and hybrid music-video ‘vodbytes.’ The last of these

initiatives comprise brief daily segments consisting of both radio

(showcasing in particular its Triple J youth network) and

television content, which can be downloaded to computers or

various kinds of portable media devices. According to the ABC’s

2008-09 Annual Report (ABC, 2009), these multiplatform

developments aim to ‘create content that is easily forwarded to

online friends and communities’, building reach through engaging

with the ‘new manner in which younger audiences consume

television’, and distribute content through social media.


While ABC News and Radio divisions have leveraged social media

and content-repurposing extensively, the multiplatform strategy

for ABC Children’s remains primarily centred on the digital

television platform (ABC3, its stand-alone channel for the 5-12

demographic, together with ABC 4/Kids, the dedicated preschool

block sharing spectrum with the digital-only ABC2) and online (De

Jong, 2011). The development of cross-platform projects reflects

and contributes to strategic discourses around user behaviour. ABC

TV Children’s Head of Commissioning and Development, Carla De

Jong, projected three distinct types of users of the Dance Academy

content:

There’s the very casual user who will jump online because they’ve seen … the promo for the website and have a look around,have a bit of a play on the games, and … drop in … once a week or so or less, and then there are people that really love the show and they are going to get on there and they are going to playmore intensely. And then there are completely obsessed fans, that, as will be on everything [sic], they’ll be on the Twitter feed, they’ll be on Facebook looking for Dance Academy, they’re all over the shop and they really are über-users … who … just want Dance Academy any way that they can get it. (De Jong 2011)

The literature on post-network and post-broadcast television in

a commercial context discusses industrial practices, such as

cross-market ‘stunting’ (Caldwell, 2003) to exploit teen

properties: for example, using young stars as a link between


products and platforms (Brooker, 2001). Conversely, the ABC’s

social and mobile media strategy (from its content generating

divisions) seems largely designed to conscript users as

distributors of proprietary content that remains subject to ABC

editorial control. However, the marketing and brand management

executives of the corporation retain an obligation to

commercialise its properties more widely. The Twitter feed for Dance

Academy (@DanceAcademyABC)—provides ‘insider’ production activity

updates, notification of awards for the series and its team,

screening dates, and general ‘buzz’ around the series. During

periods the property was not currently screening on any of the ABC

channels, the feed ensured maintenance of viewser relationship

with the series, by a series of orchestrated ‘flashback’ tweets,

reminding viewers of particular lines of dialogue, often focussed

on moments of romantic tension. In addition, followers of

@DanceAcademyABC are periodically alerted to publicity outings by

cast members, including an Australia-wide promotional blitz during

the first screenings of the show. Recent tweets also focus on

connecting fan networks and facilitating their engagement with

viewing, publicity and merchandising opportunities:

8 Mar 2011


Got friends who don’t understand your #DanceAcademy obsession? Now’s the timeto get them hooked, encores airing at 7:35pm weekdays on ABC3!23 Jan 2011Looking for #DanceAcademy merchandise? Head over to @abcshoponline! Download season 1, grab the DA complete box set,water bottle or journal!14 Jan 2011-03-17#DanceAcademy reels in a famous fan with Kevin McHale from @GLEEonFOX tweeting his support for the show! Thanks @druidDUDE!!!

However, public service editorial guidelines on child protection

inflect ABC Children’s management of their ‘user flows’. The

Dance Academy Facebook group and the Twitter feed do not encourage

intimacy with individual fans or stars, and, though they offer

some scope for comments about characters, their other function is

as information channels about the series. For interpersonal and

parasocial interaction, viewsers are ‘herded’ back to the main ABC

portal. ABC Children’s executives explain the challenges of

guiding user dispersals in terms of age appropriateness (De Jong,

2011; Glen, 2010), content suitability (Uecker, 2010), and

engaging affect through rich and distinctive content streams:

As far as Facebook and Twitter goes, they are difficult and moveable beasts, I think, for ABC Children’s … Our audience capsout at 15, so really it’s a very thin band of our audience who actually should have access to Facebook … because it’s not suitable for them … so we are always, in any platform that is outside of the ABC3 portal, we are pushing back to the portal … andso one of the challenges … in commissioning and finding multiplatform aspects is to actually see about what can we put on our portal that no one can get anywhere else, we can push back so that kids will come back to us and know that … the most


http://twitter.com/druidDUDE

http://twitter.com/GLEEonFOX

http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23DanceAcademy

rich [sic] content that they will get for this program is going to be on the ABC3 portal. (De Jong, 2011)

Inviting Audiences In

In a textual and reception study of the Warner Bros. teen

romance project, Dawson’s Creek, Brooker (2001) contends that viewsers

are invited to ‘live’ in the hyperdiegetic world of the text. He

contends that the multiplatform content has a gendered address,

positioning viewsers through textual strategies to assume a

reading position as ‘girlfriends’ of the central male leads. Many

of the ‘second-shift’ web applications detailed by Brooker are

mirrored in the multimedia content commissioned by the ABC for

Dance Academy, although important challenges to the patriarchal

ideology of Dawson’s Creek can also be discerned. In line with the

ABC’s Charter obligations to reflect diversity of identity

positions, Dance Academy’s self-conscious and, arguably, subversive

approach to gender expectations is developed through the program’s

episodes and characters, and in the project’s online applications.

Through the interactive facets of the online text(s), viewsers

are, in Brooker’s words, ‘drawn into the simulation of

participating in the characters’ lives and interacting with them

as friends’ (2001: 460). Viewser engagement through the Dance


Academy project has been updated to embrace ‘mashup’ culture and

the very recent ubiquity of mobile media devices.

Figure 1: Dance Academy Application: First Menu Screen (www.abc.net.au/abc3/danceacademy.html/)

The top menu screen of the Dance Academy application (Figure 1)

loads behind a video loop in which a pirouetting dancer,

reminiscent of a music-box figurine, circles to the series’ theme

music. The initial greyscale background features a brocade-like


fabric, with a scrapbooking ambience, suggesting a feminine

decorative space. Lyric vignettes of Sydney Harbour vistas imply a

tourist gaze. The application has a section—‘Backstage’—that is

very similar to promotional sites for commercial US network shows

or DVD features (Hills, 2007); it contains actor profiles and

‘behind the scenes’ glimpses of production culture. However, some

of the content is nuanced to focus more on literary and creative

practice. Instead of episode summaries, it offers ‘script’ pages,

with links to video clips that show the same scenes realised in

the television production.

The focus on creativity is continued in the ‘Dance Maker’

choreography application. Users are able to select a stylistic

repertoire (classical or hip-hop), together with a pair of

dancers, and to choreograph a routine using the project’s assets,

which they are then able to publish to the site. David Glen,

Executive Producer Children’s Television Multiplatform, describes

the ABC3 online portal in its entirety as a ‘meta-play experience’

(Glen, 2010). In the public service discourse surrounding the

notion of a participatory relationship, the child is constructed

as ‘creator’ rather than merely a consumer:


And this is sort of us dipping the toe into the water of UGC [user-generated content] and inviting the audience to come and make things and play. … [W]e’ve read … that in our core audienceof nine to twelve, half of the audience are active media creators compared to, say, five percent in the wider YouTube. So there’s definitely a skew in this particular age group of wanting to [use] media creation as a form of self-expression butalso as a social connector as well. (Glen, 2010)

The structure and rule sets of the ABC3 metasite are designed such

that the child user’s achievements are trackable. The Dance Academy

application has a few customisable elements: a diary to allow

users to track their progress through the site, a ‘bag’ to

aggregate favourite assets. Deploying the trope of the virtual

tour, viewsers may enter the hyperdiegetic narrative world,

inhabiting the virtual space of the characters—Tara, Abigail, Kat,

Petra, Sammy and Christian—and exploring their rooms, their bags,

and other personal items. The multiplatform design facilitates

viewsers’ extended relationship with the program’s characters (De

Jong, 2011).

The application links the television and multimedia narratives

hyperserially. The virtual rooms contain personal items—image-

links that load a video sequence commenting on a character, or the

social issues raised by the project. In ‘Kat’s Room’, Kat’s camera

loads photos of the dancer’s blistered feet, as well as more


traditional images of her friends. These images are also displayed

as a gallery on her wall. The bedroom wall has been analysed as a

site of identity creation in the literature on adolescence

(Bloustien, 2003; Buckingham et al., 2005). Kat’s wall indicates

not only creativity, or immersion in a world of digital

technologies, but also a reflective agency. Her ‘deformed’ feet

images reinterpret the TV series’ deployment of a body-image

theme, and reflect on the sacrifice entailed by the passionate

commitment of the elite dancer.

The issue of body image is elaborated on in ‘Tara & Abigail’s

Room’, where a ‘video-star’ icon loads a clip from the TV series

showing Abigail crying about her developing breasts. Abigail’s

developing body threatens her projected identity as the perfect

ethereal ballerina. The viewser can interact with Abigail’s

laptop, which archives a response to her inquiry about breast

reduction surgery. The surgeon’s age-appropriate advice refers the

character to The Butterfly Foundation

(http://www.thebutterflyfoundation.org.au/), a real-world

institute dealing with young women’s body-image issues. Abigail’s

video-messages also foreground her body-image disorder. The first

message, to her mother, denigrates Tara, Abigail’s principal


rival, discounting Tara’s untrained abilities, but coveting her

‘perfect ballet body’. The second and third messages are to Adam,

the psychologist appointed by the Academy, tracking the progress

of Abigail’s therapy to deal with her problematic eating

behaviour.

A second set of hyperserial narratives deals with the issue of

cyber-bullying, arising from an episode in which Abigail

disseminates an embarrassing document written by Tara, which

rationalises the ‘pros and cons’ of her romantic interest in a

more senior dance student. In the online application, Tara’s music

box loads a ‘video star’ clip reinterpreting the moment in which

the entire school is instantaneously informed of Tara’s private

‘list’ via their mobile phones. The clip foregrounds the social

effects of this peer humiliation. Tara’s ‘sent’ messages on her

laptop archive this act of cruelty, and her internet bookmarks

consist of a ‘Dance Forum’ message board, where a Thread entitled

‘girls who are total hypocrites’ records additional bullying via

social networks as a result of this incident. Significant adult

intervention—a message from ballet teacher, Ms Raine, polices and

ends this thread. Another example of bullying, this time non-

virtual, in the girls’ change-room, appears in one of the script


pages and its linked video (Ep. 2, sc. 40) in the ‘Backstage’

segment of the application.

The Dance Academy project’s exploration of significant social

problems particularly relevant to children and adolescents, such

as body image and bullying, reveals a potentially effective

intersection between the desire to ‘educate’ and the need to

entertain; nonetheless, the form of the message(s) might in some

ways be seen to contradict the educational function(s).

Significantly, the implied audience position invites a form of

surveillance, as viewsers can access characters’ notebooks,

cameras and laptops. Child participants can read characters’

emails, listen to or view phone and video messages, and follow

webcam links to short video diaries (character journaling) from

within the story world. While surveillance of this kind is not

inherently negative, a considerable literature (along with much

debate in the mass media) has posited a strong nexus between

increased social networking usage and cyber-victimisation (Rogers,

2010; Kowalski, Limber and Agatston, 2008; Roberts, 2008; Shariff,

2008). There is thus some irony in that the viewsers’ access to

various characters’ innermost thoughts and correspondences, which

implicitly critique cyberbullying and destructive ideas about body


image, is made possible only through what may be termed a

‘voyeuristic gaze’. Indeed, this would seem in some ways to

conflict with the ABC’s strong emphasis on an ethical approach to

the use of social media, such as its strict moderation of the ABC3

community and associated forums. While these aspects of the

project exemplify the ever-present tension between entertainment

and education, Dance Academy’s construction of gender reveals a

sophisticated and nuanced approach to adolescent development.

Brooker’s (2001) analysis of the Dawson’s Creek project finds that

viewsers are positioned as girlfriends and shoppers by being

offered click-throughs to ‘get the look’ of their favourite

characters. On the other hand, while the Twitter feed might

foreground climactic romantic moments in the Dance Academy series,

and provide celebrity information about the cast, these

promotional circuits do not offer the ‘meta-play’ of the official

ABC3 portal. Unlike the marketing participation, such as the ‘Who

should Bella pick?’ competitions of the Twilight Saga publisher’s

site (Rutherford, 2009), the rich interactive content for Dance

Academy offers socially diverse identification positions, rather

than a unitary gendered role as ‘girlfriend’. The multimedia

narrative invites viewsers to invest in the aspirations of both


the female and the male leads, and to empathise with their issues

of identity formation and their negotiations of expectations of,

and relationships with, family, teachers and peer networks. Tara’s

‘webcam’ journal documents the ‘reality’ of children’s aspiration

to participation and elite creative endeavour; the ‘camera’,

‘email’ and ‘phone’ content show her embedded in wider familial,

academic and social groups. Abigail’s, Kat’s, and Sammy’s often

rocky family experiences are elaborated in their correspondence

and webcam videos. Though peer and romantic relationships are

represented as central and compelling, ‘video star’ links to clips

showing Sammy instructing a ballroom dance class for older adult

couples, and Kat instructing a ‘hip hop’ class at the Academy,

offer identity positions that do not only include empty

rebelliousness and conventional teenage solipsism, but also young

people’s participation as responsible agents within broader public

spheres. Similar processes of child participation and gender

representation are at work in ABC3’s other keystone project, My

Place.

Technological Innovation and Participatory Citizenship in My Place

The ABC’s My Place multiplatform project is adapted from the

historian Nadia Wheatley and Indigenous artist Donna Rawlins’


award-winning picture book of the same name (1988). Produced by

Penny Chapman, the series depicts the experiences of Australian

children of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds at different

points in history, with each consecutive episode set in the

preceding decade. This structure allows the characters—and hence

the viewsers—to interact with a number of significant events in

the country’s history, introducing child audiences to, and

implicating them in, deeply politicised issues. Such issues

include religious difference and immigration, wartime conscription

and trauma, class conflict and the experiences of Aboriginal

Australians. The TV-series, along with extensive online content,

effectively—and often subversively—promotes an inclusive and

socially responsible form of multicultural citizenship ([Author],

2011).

Like the Dance Academy project, the intricate My Place website—also

accessible through the ABC3 metasite—extends the diegesis of the

televised texts (http://www.abc.net.au/abc3/myplace/).

Complemented by an additional site designed for teachers (to be

discussed further), the primary My Place application serves as a

hypertextual reference point to many of the series’ characters and

settings, while furthering the program’s thematic concerns. As the


home page loads, a panning shot of the large oak tree, which

serves as a focal point and framing device of the program’s

narratives, is accompanied by playful theme music, children’s

laughter, and portraits of each episode’s protagonists fading in

and out of view. Image links, which enlarge when the cursor passes

over them, encourage the child viewser to ‘visit’ places, ‘meet’

the child characters, and ‘explore’ their homes. From the

application’s home page, a hyperlinked timeline leads to sections

allocated to each episode or time period, providing access to

virtual representations of the My Place ‘world’.

Viewsers can peruse various bedrooms, kitchens, living areas

and/or backyards of the characters’ homes and ‘discover’ a number

of objects that can be interacted with. These clickable objects

generally bear some form of cultural or historical significance

that directly or indirectly relates to an episode’s narrative.

Several short puzzle-style games or multiple-choice quizzes also

appear throughout the available rooms and outdoor environments to

be explored, positioning the viewser as a ‘participant’ in the

project’s exploration of Australia’s past. Nonetheless, while the

project’s online texts are designed with apparently abundant

options, the potential meanings that might be generated from these


are heavily regulated by the frequent use of expository captions

and other strategies, forming what have been termed ‘didactic

regimes of display’ (Bennett and Strange, 2008: 109). Thus, the

gestures to creative endeavour evident in applications such as the

Dance Academy project’s ‘Dance Maker’ application are more

restricted here. Often, the interactive objects within the My Place

site serve to bolster the educational messages the project seeks

to put forward, revealing that the construct of child

‘participation’, which seeks to attract and entertain the viewser,

also serves important ideological or pedagogical functions.

The Pedagogical Imperative: Balancing Social Development and Entertainment?

In contrast to the more entertainment-driven Dance Academy, the

ABC’s exploitation of TV-web-mobile synergies through My Place

reveals a more overt educative agenda. While both projects share

similar ideological concerns, the My Place content lacks the fan-

based circuits of consumption and extensive social media

deployment beyond its website(s), and is more explicitly targeted

at the enhancement of child viewser knowledge and learning. This

key difference has significant implications for the ways in which

the public broadcaster engages with its child audience,


complicating the issue of whether the interactive material enables

genuine ‘participation’ or facilitates an overwhelmingly

expository representation masked by the implicit appeals to

viewser agency.

Significantly, Tim Brooke-Hunt (2010), Controller of Children’s

Content, characterises success for ABC3 as comprising three

factors: audience engagement, establishment of a destination and

reputation. Brooke-Hunt states that ‘whilst we are not ratings-

driven, we do look very carefully at how our audience engages’,

revealing the tension between a need to extend share and the

desire to offer a quality experience for young viewers. However,

Brooke-Hunt also locates the value of the project in its critical

acclaim and distinction from purely commercial logics: ‘I don’t

expect My Place to bring me a huge audience, but I expect [it] to

give ABC3 an aspect that you wouldn’t get on Disney and Cartoon

Network. It’s important to me to have shows that are not worthy,

but are standout, that are real sort of landmark in their own

way’. The My Place project, despite its record budget, is not

designed to leverage the same commercial (and merchandising)

opportunities as more populist properties; nonetheless, it has a

legimitising value for the ABC. It demonstrates a particularly


strong pedagogical imperative and explicitly targets teachers as a

secondary viewsership (Brooke-Hunt, 2010). This dual address

provides an additional logic for its often highly expository

multiplatform content.

The forms of play present in My Place contrast strongly with the

more commercialised offerings available to child viewsers

elsewhere, such as Nickelodeon’s Nicktropolis and Cartoon Network’s

Big Fat Awesome House Party, where subtle forms of product placement are

the primary driving force of viewser engagement (Grimes, 2008).

The completion of the various online ‘games’ associated with

different My Place episodes involves the attainment of knowledge,

ranging from the origins of Australian cuisine to the significance

of the nation’s 1988 Bicentennial celebrations. The more didactic

approach of My Place is even clearer in the project’s often self-

conscious engagement with key issues also prominent in Dance

Academy, such as bullying and gender identity.

The episode ‘1998’ focuses primarily on the struggles of a young

Muslim boy, Mohammed, to be accepted by his peers and join the

school cricket team. Met with prejudice that is directly linked to

his family’s Muslim faith, Mohammed is met with repeated jeers in

the schoolyard, with a chant of ‘More-hammered’ echoing the


schoolyard as he tries out for the team (My Place 2008, episode 2).

In the online application, the viewser is positioned to sympathise

with Mohammad, whose profile entry notes that his family ‘moved

here a little while ago and I don’t know many kids’. The ‘virtual

tour’ aspect of the application, sites each child character in

‘their house’, the same house in each historical era. However,

unlike the voyeuristic observer role offered by Dance Academy, the

My Place application constructs the viewser’s role as more of a

‘visitor’ to the child him- or herself. Similarly, clicking on a

‘cricket ball’ icon on the 1988 page, deploys game perspective to

construct viewser identification with Mohammad, as in first-

person-shooter applications. Here, a game that requires the player

to master cricketing ball skills, bouncing a ball off the flat

face of the bat 100 times to ‘win’, orients the player to

Mohammed’s implied role. Thus the viewser vicariously collaborates

with Mohammad’s quest to ‘prove’ himself as a skilled athlete,

against the schoolyard bullies who deride his cricketing ability.

The expository regimes of My Place locate discriminatory

discourses in historical perspectives, thus critiquing both

monoculturist and patriarchal attitudes as they developed through

various eras in Australian cultural life. A significant subplot of


the ‘1998’ episode examines the discrimination confronting a group

of girls who wish to play cricket. As Danielle informs Mohammed

when they first get to know each other, ‘tryouts for the boys’

team are tomorrow and I can’t try out, even though I’m the only

genuine all-rounder the schools has!’ (My Place 2008, episode 2). A

confident Danielle even accuses the coach directly of being

‘sexist’, and the narrative’s resolution sees the girls’ team

victorious over the boys’ side. In the multiplatform content

associated with this episode, the viewser can explore an image of

several boys playing cricket on the school oval, with interactive

objects leading to information on the sport’s history and

equipment (Figure 2). A lone girl stands to the left of screen,

her ambivalent posture making it difficult to determine whether

she is being included in the game or relegated as an observer of

the proceedings. Clicking on this image generates another caption

entitled ‘Girls’ Cricket’. The explanatory passage, accompanied by

a still image of the female players from the corresponding

episode, informs the viewser that ‘cricket isn’t just a boy’s

game, but until very recently it was much harder for girls to get

involved ... some schools as late as the 1980s still wouldn’t let

girls play on their grounds!’ The adoption of informal language


and exclamation, combined with the use of dates and statistics

regarding women cricketers’ current participation levels in

Australia, communicate social justice values.

Figure 2: My Place Application: Pop-up Screen for ‘1998’ episode (http://www.abc.net.au/abc3/myplace/)

The more overtly educational nature of the My Place project is

further revealed in the extensive curriculum materials provided on

the ‘My Place for Teachers’ website developed by the ACTF and


Educational Services Australia. The politicising function of this

application is encoded in the various summaries of each decade’s

historical, political, social, cultural and technological

highlights, along with detailed, indexed ‘Teaching Activities’

documents, often associated with the TV plot lines. For example,

Danielle’s ambition for cricket recognition, prompts teachers to

involve their students in a discussion of gender equality in

sports played at their own school and to extrapolate the My Place

scenario to other contexts

(http://www.myplace.edu.au/teaching_activities/1998/2/discriminati

on.html). Hyperlinks are also provided to a ‘Women and sport in

Australia’ film clip downloadable from the National Film and Sound

Archive, further details through the Australian Women’s Register,

and other supplementary material, such as a photograph and summary

of the famous Indigenous Australian athlete Cathy Freeman. The

intersection of a number of social issues in the multiplatform

content arising from one episode alone—from women’s participation

in sport and schoolyard bullying, to the acceptance of religious

difference and the empowerment of Aboriginal people—reveals the

concerted efforts in the My Place project to reinforce social values

which cohere with the ABC’s Charter objectives.


Conclusion

In the early phases of transition to a more converged media

ecology, Blumler et al. (1992: 206-7) explained the position of

European public broadcasters in an increasingly commercial setting

as requiring an approach that encapsulates both ‘competitiveness’

in terms of product quality and ‘complementarity’— the need to

offer a ‘truly different mix of programming’. The transition from

PSBs to public service media companies in the intervening decades

has been seen as producing a similar balancing act, between

commerce and culture, necessitating a partnership with audiences

as ‘active agents’ (Bardoel & Lowe, 2007: 10). This analysis of

the role of PSB is also pertinent to Australia in the era of

digital television. While new media innovation poses new

challenges to public service broadcasters through the more

abundant multichannel offerings of free-to-air networks, recent

developments have also brought about significant opportunities.

The rejuvenation of children’s content at the ABC is a case in

point. ABC3 has not only formed a distinct and appealing identity

as the ‘place’ for Australia children and early teens; it has also

effectively negotiated the need to balance entertainment values


with the socio-cultural development of youth through multiplatform

participation.

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i We employ Dan Harries (2002: 171-82) coinage—‘viewser’—to highlight the tension between watching and interacting, and the increased sense of agency on the part of audiences.ii Johnson’s article uses the terms TV-I to refer to the US networkera and TV-II (or ‘post-network’ TV to refer to the period following the introduction of cable into the US in the 1980s). TV-II is defined by a new, ‘post-Fordist, niche marketing logic’, which ‘reconceptualised fans’, or ultra engaged audiences, as a means of ‘generating overconsumption’ (Reeves, et al., 1996; citedin Johnson, 2007: 62). It was characterised by genre hybridization, serialized narrative forms, and ancillary product marketing. While still capitalising on an economics of fandom, TV-III is defined as escaping the purely television-centric domain.iii A 1999 study by management consultants McKinsey and Co reported that the BBC received 33 cents (AUD) per day per capita, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation received 14 cents, while the ABCreceived only 9 cents per day per person (Lawson, 2005). A MacquarieBank report placed Australia 17th in a table of 18 international public broadcasters in terms of total revenues per capita, below Spain, Canada and Portugal (ABC, 2003). Independent production of Australian content, on the other hand, is able to attract subsidies and underwriting from a number of federal and state-based screen media agencies, and through tax concessions and offset mechanisms.iv Australia’s Broadcasting Services Act 1992 uses the term ‘national broadcasters’ (rather than public broadcasters) to classify the ABC and SBS.v Pay TV rights were formerly available at licensee fees as low as $5, 000 (AUD) per episode. The first-release terrestrial broadcastlicensee fee, by comparison, must be at least $95, 000 (AUD) per episode in order for a production to qualify for government investment through Screen Australia).

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s multiplatform projects: Industrial logics of children’s content provision in the digital television era

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