The Convergence Review and the future of Australian content regulation

This article examines the place of Australian and local content regulation in the new media policy framework proposed by the Convergence Review. It outlines the history of Australian content regulation and the existing policy framework, before going on to detail some of the debates around Australian content during the Review. The final section analyses the relevant recommendations in the Convergence Review Final Report, and highlights some issues and problems that may arise in the new framework

Convergence and Australian content: The importance of access

In the light of new and complex challenges to media policy and regulation, the Austrlaian government commissioned the Convergence Review in late 2010 to assess the continuing applicability and utility of the principles and objectives that have shaped the policy framework to this point. It proposed a range of options for policy change and identified three enduring priorities for continued media regulation: media ownership and control; content standards; and Australian content production and distribution. The purpose of this article is to highlight an area where we feel there are opportunities for further discussion and research: the question of how the accessibility and visibility of Australian and local content may be assured in the future media policy framework via a combination of regulation and incentives to encourage innovation in content distribution

Fifield faces a hard road to bring Australia's media regulations into the 21st century

With his feet barely under the desk, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has flagged a renewed attempt to change Australia’s media laws. Given his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull’s long-standing interest in the field – dating all the way back to his work with Kerry Packer in the 1980s – Fifield can expect the new prime minister’s backing. Fifield is set to meet with media bosses as early as next week

Rating the Audience

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Knowing, measuring and understanding media audiences have become a multi-billion dollar business. But the convention that underpins that business, audience ratings, is in crisis. Rating the Audience is the first book to show why and how audience ratings research became a convention, an agreement, and the first to interrogate the ways that agreement is now under threat. Taking a historical approach, the book looks at the evolution of audience ratings and the survey industry. It goes on to analyse today's media environment, looking at the role of the internet and the increased difficulties it presents for measuring audiences. The book covers all the major players and controversies, such as Facebook's privacy rulings and Google's alliance with Nielsen. Offering the first real comparative study, it will be critical for media students and professionals

Better Half-Dead than Read? The Mezzomorto Cases and their Implications for Literary Culture in the 1930s

An examination of the two libel cases against Brian Penton's review of Vivian Crockett's novel Mezzomorto and the feud between Penton and the publisher, P.R. Stephensen

Rating the Audience

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Knowing, measuring and understanding media audiences have become a multi-billion dollar business. But the convention that underpins that business, audience ratings, is in crisis. Rating the Audience is the first book to show why and how audience ratings research became a convention, an agreement, and the first to interrogate the ways that agreement is now under threat. Taking a historical approach, the book looks at the evolution of audience ratings and the survey industry. It goes on to analyse today's media environment, looking at the role of the internet and the increased difficulties it presents for measuring audiences. The book covers all the major players and controversies, such as Facebook's privacy rulings and Google's alliance with Nielsen. Offering the first real comparative study, it will be critical for media students and professionals

Embedded creative workers and creative work in education

This article is concerned with the many connections between creative work and workers, and education work and industries. Employment in the education sector has long been recognised as a significant element in creative workers’portfolio careers. Much has been written, for exam- ple, about the positive contribution of ‘artists in schools’ initiatives. Australian census analyses reveal that education is the most common industry sector into which creative workers are ‘embedded’, outside of the core creative industries. However, beyond case studies and some survey research into arts instruction and instructors, we know remarkably little about in which education roles and sectors creative workers are embedded, and the types of value that they add in those roles and sectors. This article reviews the extant literature on creative work and workers in education, and presents the findings of a survey of 916 graduates from creative undergraduate degrees in Australia. The findings suggest that education work is very common among creative graduates indeed, while there are a range of motivating factors for education work among creative graduates, on average they are satisfied with their careers, and that creative graduates add significant creative-cultural and creative-generic value add through their work

Returning to Australian horror film and Ozploitation cinema debate

The three articles in this subsection return to scholarly debates at the core of research into Australian horror movies and Ozploitation cinema. In terms of the former, the horror film remains under-researched in Australian film studies. This is not surprising. On the one hand, since the mid-2000s the Australian film industry has produced a handful of popular, and internationally influential horror movies such as The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014), Daybreakers (Michael and Peter Spierig, 2009), and Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005). On the other hand, the majority of Australian horror films rarely receive critical acclaim, nor are they widely discussed in mainstream film criticism; and for every Wolf Creek, there is a long list of movies such as Red Billabong (Luke Sparke, 2016), The Pack (Nick Robertson, 2015), Me and My Mates vs. The Zombie Apocalypse (Declan Shrubb, 2015), and There's Something in the Pilliga (Dane Millerd, 2014) that disappear into the long-tail of the market. Few local horror movies released each year secure cinema release and the average title circulates in home video markets, and/or subscription and pay-per-download services. As a conceptual category, Australian horror movies emerge at the intersection of cult cinema; Australia-international cinema that can be difficult to evaluate on the basis of cultural value (the setting of Triangle [2009, Christopher Smith] for instance is never specified although Australian actors play characters who speak with American accents); and genre filmmaking long associated with Hollywood-inspired filmmaking. As a consequence, until quite recently the subject has rarely been central to dominant discourses in Australian film studies concerned with distinguishing Australian cinema as a national cinema..

Reviewing Australian screen history

This special issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema features a selection of papers presented at the 17th Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand (FHAANZ) conference, held at Queensland University of Technology between 1 and 3 July 2015. This was the first FHAANZ conference to be hosted in Queensland since 1998. Informed by historical and archival research, the articles examine overlooked or underdeveloped aspects of screen history, offer new historical perspectives, or consider key contemporary issues regarding the preservation of Australian screen history

Creative graduate pathways within and beyond the creative industries

This special issue explores the nuances of graduate creative work, the kinds of value that creative graduates add through work of various types, graduate employability issues for creative graduates, emerging and developing creative career identities and the implications for educators who are tasked with developing a capable creative workforce. Extent literature tends to characterise creative careers as either ‘precarious’ and insecure, or as the engine room of the creative economy. However, in actuality, the creative workforce is far more heterogeneous than either of these positions suggest, and creative careers are far more complex and diverse than previously thought. The task of creative educators is also much more challenging than previously supposed. In this introductory article, we commence by providing a brief overview of the creative labour debates, and the evidence for each position. We present the latest literature in this area that starts to speak to how diverse and complex the landscape of creative work actually is. We then introduce each of the articles in this special issue and indicate how they contribute to a more multi-faceted picture of creative activity, and the lives and career trajectories of graduates from creative degrees