Link is here dated 10 July 1965 in the Bulletin.
There seems to be only one thing wrong, basically, with the Aus tralian Broadcasting Commission’s television drama presentations and this is that the ABC still lives in a radio world. It believes in radio and looks upon it with the kindly reassurance one might give an elderly relative who is not long for this w’orld. It believes in it to the extent of main taining six orchestras and a vast concert organisation, both almost useless for television.
There is no reason why the ABC should abandon its role of entrepreneur, undertaken in the much less complex Australia of the ’thirties, and little chance, with concerts now installed in comfort in the new ABC headquarters in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, that it will. The ABC has admittedly slowly come to understand that you can’t fill a screen for an hour with the flautist’s earhole. The orchestras now mostly only provide background music for opera presentations on television. Radio is still useful for services and music, but no matter how often the ABC says so, it has almost nothing to do with entertainment, such as drama and variety, these days. How could it? Yet the ABC still does tw’o full-length radio plays a w 7 eek and only one tele vision play a fortnight. But television, they say, costs 10 times as much as radio. One can only assume, then, that they do so much radio because it is cheap, rather than so little television because it is expensive.
As any dust-covered copy of the Senate Report on Television show’s, the ABC spends six times as much on music as on drama. Figures are not the hole story, and it is senseless to make direct comparisons between music and drama. Heaven forfend that the ABC should establish six dramatic companies! How ever, as an example, the adaptation of George Johnston’s novel, “My Brother Jack”, begins on August 1. Ten half hour episodes cost, according to the ABC drama department, about £16,000. This is the major single expenditure on tele vision drama for 1965. It must be some thing like the ABC’s weekly salary bill for orchestra players and others in the music department.
How long will it take the sleepy giant to turn over? The defaults of the commercial stations in local drama have been well-publicised, but when—and one can only say when — the commercial stations produce more local programmes, they are unlikely to differ greatly from the “Barley Charlies” or “Homicides”. The ABC leaving aside the “taxpayers’ money” jibe —is intended to, and must, fulfil a different role. It might be unrealistic to expect the ABC to do the “forced feeding” job for drama which it did a generation ago for music. But there is little doubt that it could.
Robert Helpmann said that productions of Ibsen on British television had created stage audiences for Ibsen and successful revivals of his plays had followed. Television is, of course, the final answer to those who say that drama has no following in this country. It not only has a following on television. It becomes an addiction. But taking television drama in its own field, in spite of a starved policy, the ABC drama department by trial and error—some trials, many errors—seems to have reached a reasonable standard of individual presentation, at least a standard at which a benevolent critic might begin to talk about the play and not about technical mishaps. It has found some intelligent producers, some of whom, with few opportunities, have begun to develop that elusive thing, a style of their own. The ABC,- according to a list supplied, last year did 12 plays in Sydney and the disastrous serial, “The Purple Jaca randa”. In Melbourne it did 13 plays. There was also notably the children's serial “The Stranger”. It is at the moment looking for half-hour plays. Otherwise, there seems to be no pro gramme of expansion.
Except, of course, in the matter of staff. The arrival of David Goddard and Eric Taylor from Britain to join Alan Burke, Storry Walton, Ken Hannam, Henri Safran, James Upshaw and chief producer Colin Dean in Sydney was well publicised. I recently talked to the acting director of drama and features, Mr James Pratt, to Mr Goddard, who is the assistant director of drama and features (tele vision) and Mr Phillip Mann, the Federal play editor. All were polite, helpful and, at times, baffling. Whether they, or any one else in the ABC, get up each morn ing and campaign for more money for television drama, no one could tell. ABC people hide the scars of old battles well. Mr Pratt explained that many of the producers were in a pool and could be assigned to features or education as well as drama. This, of course, makes the tele vision drama operation more economical, although it may not make it more effective.
Mr Pratt said that it was hoped Mr Goddard could inject more “professionalism” into the ABC’s television drama. Mr Goddard said that every thing he had produced for the BBC in the past several years had been bought by the ABC. (It is not true, although sometimes it may appear so, that every thing the BBC produces is automatically off-loaded on the ABC.) The ABC would be able to put on more plays, Mr Pratt said, when “Australia needed fewer battleships”. How ever, lest this should imply that he believes the whole burden of Australia’s defence rests on the shoulders of the ABC drama department, Mr Pratt said that production was limited by studio facilities. Until capital expenditure was undertaken on studios, rehearsal rooms and equipment, they would be hard put to it to manage more than one long play every four weeks. Actors’ fees, he said, were “only a small part of it”. One play a month from Sydney, one from Melbourne and occasionally some thing from Baph (Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart) means that the ABC has not even remotely begun to differentiate with its television drama, except now by looking for half - hour plays —in length.
The ABC still does differentiate with radio drama, particularly between the Sunday and Monday night plays. The first restriction, on the ABC’s choice of television plays is simply avail ability. The drama people do not regard any current plays as “too expensive”. They simply cannot be bought at any price. The first danger is local options. “In the old days,” Mr Pratt said, “J. C. Williamson’s took an option on simply everything. Now it’s not so bad.” Mr Mann gave two instances of dav by-day scrounging for TV rights. The ABC got the rights to John Osborne’s “Luther” simply because Mr Mann and Mr Osborne share a London agent and Mr Mann had persuaded the agent. Mr Mann said he had his eye on a half-hour play by American William Inge, “Say it with Flowers”, but even this trifle had not escaped the attention of Hollywood. Modern Americans of the stature of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams are almost entirely ruled out. Mr Mann said he was still trying for “The Crucible”, which is 12 years old. And yet the ABC may sigh in relief rather than exasperation because some modern, controversial plays are not avail able. In a discussion following mention of “The Representative”, the words “snobs” and “academics” were hurled, though, fortunately, not at me.
The ABC is conscientious, almost, one might say, dogged in its search for Australian plays. Sometimes the careful sieving of possibles may encourage people with no hope of reaching pro fessional levels. At the other end, the drama department has not yet evolved any intensive collaboration between pro ducer and writer. The ABC does not look for local plays just as a vague good thing. Mr Mann said that plays written for television consistently get better audiences than adaptations and Australian plays do better than overseas or local productions of plays written in another country. What the ABC looks for and what it finds may be two different things. Local plays on the ABC are mostly strong on plot but unsubtle in characterisation. Ken Hannam at one time said that he became interested in Noel Robinson’s “Split Level” because, he thought, the emotional development of the characters broke new ground here. Of course, then the critics complained about the thinness of the plot. There seems to be a preference for plays about people like us, and very dull we are, too. The realism of, say, the Niland-Park type of play has been re jected for plays which seem to be hewn out of them thar “Blue Hills”. But what is fine in Gwen Meredith’s skilfully judged, mild, repeated doses at midday is very insipid fare at night. Searching through manuscripts with a fine-tooth comb may sometimes make the ABC forget to do the obvious thing.
Mr Pratt and Mr Mann said no approach had ever been made to Mr Patrick White, the most interesting and prolific local playwright of the past few years. Mr White may not want his plays on tele vision, but he has never been asked. “I believe he won’t have as much as a comma altered,” Mr Pratt said. “And, of course, that would never do for tele vision.”
One of the recurring themes of the Vincent report which seems to awake no echo in the hearts of the ABC drama department is co-operation between the ABC and theatre companies, such as the Elizabethan. Mr Pratt said it was impossible to transfer a stage production to television. There would be no advantage in having actors who already knew their parts - “They learn them in their own time, anyway; besides, the script would be different and the voices might be wrong.” The ABC had used the Elizabethan’s costumes for “A Man For All Seasons” “And believe me, we didn’t get them for nothing,” Mr Pratt added. The ABC did transfer “Macbeth in Camera” by Harold Lang and some English actors to the screen, but they have not done the same for any local production.
The ABC does a closed-circuit production once a year for students at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. This is the only training it provides for actors. Mr Pratt seemed indignant that the ABC should do anything for actors. “We want-fully trained professional actors,” he said. “You don’t expect the viewers to watch amateurs, do you?” (I assumed at this point he meant fully trained professional television actors, because an actor may be highly skilled in other fields, yet flounder on television.) Mr Pratt, even in the face of mention of the National Youth Orchestra and con certo and vocal competitions, maintained that the ABC gave engagements only to fully-trained musicians. Certainly, inexperienced actors should not be inflicted on viewers, but it seems pointless to talk of added professionalism for producers and workshops for writers when their raw material—the actors — remains rather raw.
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