How Us Might Short Changes The Rest

The Age

Thursday December 18, 2008

daniel ziffer

WHETHER you live in Mordialloc, Milan or Montenegro, there's a good chance that when you turn on your television it is to watch CSI, House or Desperate Housewives.

In an era in which American supremacy in areas such as manufacturing is yielding to competitors, US television still dominates screens across the world because it is one industry that continues to evolve and invest.

"People watch CSI and Grey's Anatomy because they're fun to watch," says Rick Feldman of the US National Association of Television Program Executives. "They're well produced, well shot, well acted ... they're really good TV. An episode of Lost is like watching a motion picture every week."

It's also as expensive. US dramas can cost almost $US6 million ($A10million) an hour and the pilot of Lost reportedly cost $US10 million to 14 million.

Australian Film Commission research showed that the average per-hour cost of local mini-series was $780,000 in the 2006-07 financial year, with series and serials costing $300,000 an hour.

The disparity often leads to despair for Australian producers, who feel they can't compete with big-budget productions sold to local networks for a fraction of their cost.

Screen Producers Association of Australia executive director Geoff Brown says that because international sales are secondary to US networks, shows costing millions could be bundled by studios, and sold for as little as $50,000 to $100,000 an hour.

"It's effectively dumping," he says, the trade term for pricing below a product's cost.

"In prime time, (local) networks will each show up to a maximum of 120 hours of first-run Australian drama," he adds. "From the whole year's schedule, you're talking about it being no more than 10per cent, if you're lucky."

A renewed focus by Seven and Nine has paid dividends, with dramas such as City Homicide and Underbelly winning ratings and acclaim, he says, but networks still only produce the minimum amount required by legislation.

Like many Americans, Feldman rejects the purely cash-driven argument, pointing to the strong development process and good stories as the reason for their global dominance.

"I suspect that nobody is going to want to run an Australian channel with all US content," he said. "And nobody can afford to run a network with all local content ... that appetite for American product continues to be significant."

US shows hit their market ready. The development portion of a new TV show's budget can be as high as 10per cent, dwarfing the 3per cent generally spent on Australian productions.

But the real reason for the continued success of US content is more emotional, according to Professor Howard Suber, of the Film and Television School at the University of California, Los Angeles.

It speaks to what he calls the "unstated state religion" of the US, the notion that the most important power in the world lies within each person.

"It's the belief that you can be anything you want, if you have enough willingness to sacrifice and work," he said. Even if you're not afflicted by poverty, war or conflicts, the desire for autonomy remains.

"Whether we're stuck on an LA freeway or forced to listen to some arsehole boss, many millions of people don't have the luxury of feeling that we are in control of our own lives."

The evidence is in the money, he adds. The companies that control the majority of TV production would move out of America "in the blink of an eye" if programs from other countries started drawing global audiences in the tens of millions.

The US has always been open to the world's ideas, but the TV industry's evolution now runs deeper. Australia's Thank God You're Here and Kath & Kim were remade, although neither became as popular in the US as the originals were at home. The remake of Britain's The Office is a hit and remade shows such as The Ex-List (Israel) and Life on Mars (UK) are US prime-time fare.

Foreign production methods are being incorporated into the US machine, with fewer expensive pilots being made.

Networks are also paying to play overseas.

CBS' The Bold and the Beautiful was the world's most popular soap last year, with an average of 26.2million viewers. But the bronze medallist was Mexico's Marina, produced by a company in the same ownership as US network NBC.

© 2008 The Age

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