Does Reality Really Bite? Between Academia and ‘The Real World’: An Interview with Jane Roscoe

by Henk Huijser 

Dr Jane Roscoe is currently Programme Executive at SBS Television in Australia. She started her career as an academic in London with a fondness for theory. During her time at The University of Waikato in Aotearoa, she became drawn to empirical research, and in particular audience research, in combination with an ongoing interest in documentary. She published numerous journal articles and authored two books on documentary: Documentary in New Zealand: An Immigrant Nation (1999) and (with Craig Hight) Faking It: Mock-Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality (2001). She moved to Griffith University in 2000, and quickly became an influential intellectual presence in the field of Media and Cultural Studies in Australia. Her article 'Big Brother Australia: Performing the Real Twenty Four Seven' in The International Journal of Cultural Studies is still the most cited article of that journal five years on. However, it is not only her academic work that gives her presence importance, but also her tireless commitment to move her ideas beyond the academic context. She frequently appears on both radio and television, and in 2001 she was the first media academic to appear on Big Brother Australia. In short, she is the embodiment of 'the public intellectual'. After two years at Griffith, Jane moved out of the academy to become Head of the Centre for Screen Studies and Research at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. She has been a programmer at SBS since 2005.

Given Jane's eclectic background, this interview will explore a number of main themes. Firstly, it will provide a rare insight into the decision making processes about television content and scheduling at the unique public broadcaster that is SBS. Secondly, Jane discusses her ideas and theoretical reflections on documentary as a genre and the influences of reality television. She is a passionate defender of both popular culture and innovation in television, with a particular focus on mock documentary and reality television. Related to her role as a public intellectual is the strong belief that Australia needs a 'television culture' because only then can television be taken seriously as an art form and an important part of the public sphere. The overarching theme is the often challenging but potentially highly productive blending of theory and practice, as the title of this interview suggests.

This interview was conducted in May 2006 in Brisbane. Jane was in town to deliver the annual Henry Mayer Lecture at The University of Queensland, entitled Making Great Television: When Theory Met Practice.

HH: Can you describe your role at SBS?

JR: I'm the programming executive, which sounds fancy, but means basically that I manage the creative side of the schedule on a day-to-day basis. So I co-ordinate the creative activities of the team that views everything we intend to purchase. We make recommendations on what we should buy, and then I make decisions about where those programs are going to go in the schedule. So that's the basic part of the job. More broadly I'm involved in developing strategies for the schedule, and for the network.

HH: So do you have a lot of creative freedom to do what you want to do with the schedule?

JR: Yeah…

HH: Are there lots of people involved in this, or…?

JR: Quite a lot of freedom. It's a smallish department. When we're talking about buying programs and deciding what to do with the schedule, I'm working with small teams of 3-4 people depending on whether we are looking at documentaries, features or short films for example. In terms of creative freedom, yes and no. We are restrained by a number of things. One is money: what we can actually afford to buy. Second, not so much a constraint, but a guide: we have a charter, in our case a multicultural charter which instructs us to deliver on diversity and programming for all Australians. Our charter also instructs us to make sure that we buy enough programming that's in languages other than English. We aim to broadcast at least fifty percent of our material in Languages other than English (LOTE) and that is across the schedule as a whole.

HH: Right…

JR: So that's something that guides those creative choices. Also, you know, the schedule has a shape, and some things are harder to move than others. News and current affairs, obviously they're key building blocks of the schedule, so we work around our news, although, having a news break at 9:30 does mean you're constrained in a certain way about what you can play in the second part of the evening and how the evening is broken up. So, there are structural issues that guide us too.

HH: Because the news is half an hour isn't it?

JR: Yes, we have two half hour news bulletins; 6.30pm and 9.30pm. Having the second bulletin in the middle of prime time does have an impact on the schedule. I mean, it's a great building block, it's an important part of the schedule, but what you can do before and after is shaped by that. So…yeah, a lot of freedom, but you constantly work with limitations and constraints and guidelines, and trying to satisfy all those different agendas. So it's never easy when you say "hey, I've got this idea for a new slot". It might be a fantastic idea; you may have done all the research; yes, the audience will like this; it's not being done by anyone else; it's going to fulfil our charter requirements; and so on, but then you are left with the question 'where do we put it?' What are we willing to move for this new thing? So…lots of freedom, but it is a constant struggle to actually realise your ambitions for the schedule, within the constraints of the schedule.

HH: As part of that, how do you imagine your audience when you take those kinds of decisions? Does that depend on the time in the schedule, or do you have a kind of overall idea about the audience?

JR: A bit of both. One of the most important things that I do in my job is talk to the audience research department. And that's very easy for me, having been an audience researcher. I'm already focused on the audience and already interested in what they're doing. So, looking at the ratings, thinking about the feedback we get from viewers, and talking to the audience research department, you know I'm getting ideas about who comes to SBS, and how they watch and where they watch. And a big shock to me was finding out that in fact our core audience, the people who are most likely to come to our programs (smiles)…are men over 65.

HH: (laughs)

JR: And it wasn't quite what I thought SBS was: I had this image of us as this young, funky kind of station. But we have an older and very male-skewed demographic. Now, that's not to say other people don't watch, because they obviously do, at different times in the schedule we'll get different groups. For example Monday night is much younger; again it's male skewed, but younger males. Thursday night for Inspector Rex: much more heavily skewed towards the 50+ women.

HH: (laughs) I wonder why?

JR: (laughs) Yet Saturday night we tend to get a slightly more general audience around our entertainment programming. So it's very much about the days and the slots. And for me the challenge is thinking: am I delivering to our different audiences; am I giving them a good SBS experience, what they expect from us? But am I also working in the right ways to build that audience? Because we do want more women, we do want more young people; (grins) that core audience is very important to us, but we want to grow from there. So a big part of my job is constantly thinking: what am I doing with these young guys who come in on Monday night? It's great that they come on Monday, but can I get them anywhere else in the schedule, so they become more regular viewers of SBS? And how do I get more women? You know, I need to develop slots for female viewers, which is what I've been trying to work on. So, you know, finding out who actually watches and what they're watching is really important. And then thinking: how do we grow that, how do we develop it, and how do we move them away from the slots they may go to automatically? How do we get them to think more broadly: "SBS is my channel". And it's really hard! (laughs)

HH: South Park brought in a younger audience?

JR: Oh yes, and , Myth Busters, South Park, Pizza, Drawn Together…we've got a whole raft of programming that has introduced new audiences to SBS…

HH: And there's the soccer as well.

JR: Yeah, although not on Monday nights anymore.

HH: No…

JR: Soccer is more episodic; we play key matches. And we've got the World Cup, but we haven't got soccer on the Monday night as we used to. And that's just because we can't afford it anymore, not that we don't want it. Foxtel are spending up big on football. But where we do get a broader audience, or a younger audience, my job is to think: how do we keep them?