Challenges of Sustainable Broadcasting in Contemporary Pacific

Robert A. Hooper, KPBS-TV, San Diego USA

While the impacts of first world media on the cultures and institutions of developing nations have been well documented, the efforts of indigenous peoples to adapt the technologies and methods of television production to the development of an independent voice for local and regional broadcasting have received little attention. This paper will address issues faced in the transfer of television production methods and infrastructure, with examples drawn from the author's work in Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Western Samoa, American Samoa, Vanuatu and Fiji. Issues to be addressed include: the need to develop sustainable local program production which can compete with the massive onslaught of imported television programming; the mechanisms by which development aid dollars serve to undermine local and indigenous broadcast development; barriers to the development of indigenous television production; conflicts between Western concepts and techniques of television production and traditional cultural values; and the dominance of developed countries in determining television broadcast standards and technologies and the implications of these decisions for traditional cultures. The need for new paradigms of media education and development which recognize the interrelationships between culture, program production and broadcasting will be addressed.

Television broadcasting in the Pacific islands began at KVZK-TV, American Samoa, on October 4, 1964 (Schramm, et al 1981). Originally designed as a crash program to dramatically expand and modernize the territory's educational system, broadcast television gradually evolved into a more conventional non-commercial system affiliated with the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) of the United States. By 1992, the station's original six channels of educational material were reduced to two operating channels, one of which carried the non-commercial PBS program schedule shipped in by videocassette along with a local newscast in both Samoan and English, while the other carried a schedule of commercial programming, live CNN news, and material from the (U.S.) Armed Forces Television Network. Today, KVZK continues to operate as a department of the American Samoa Government, bolstered by substantial subsidies from the US government.

Throughout the Pacific, small nations are joining the television revolution begun by KVZK. Vanuatu, Independent (Western) Samoa and Fiji are three of the most recent to launch television services, while the Solomon Islands plans to initiate broadcast television in 1999. This paper is a collection of observations drawn from my work in several emerging Pacific island nations, where I have been invited to conduct hands-on production training for local broadcasters attempting to increase the quality, and quantity, of indigenous programming.

Inadequate Training Programs
When I was first invited to American Samoa in 1992 to conduct a series of television training courses for KVZK-TV, little formal training had occurred since the 1960's and 70's. In the early 1970's, when KVZK was in the process of converting from an educational broadcast for local schools into a public broadcasting service, it was still operated almost entirely by expatriate broadcast professionals from the United States. These papalagi (literally "sky bursters", as Caucasians are labeled in the Samoan language) began a crash program to convert station production from the simple recording of classroom lectures to a broad schedule of news and public affairs, sports, and, eventually, political coverage of the territory's legislature, the Amerika Samoa Fono. According to one staff member, KVZK's expatriate production manager closely supervised the production staff of expatriates and local Samoans. The production manager's micro-management of all phases of program production and editing, combined with on-the-job training for resident and expatriate staff alike, achieved the goal of a broad based schedule of local program production and broadcasting. But this was not without problems.

The training which took place in the 1970's failed to take into account the local culture and values of American Samoa. The insensitivity of the outside trainers greatly affected the local staff of the station, and they recall several incidents to this day. One problem involved television coverage of the emerging political process in the territory.

About the time KVZK was converting to a public broadcasting service, the territorial government of American Samoa was evolving into an electoral system modeled after that of the United States. By 1976, when residents voted to change the office of governor from an appointed position to an elected one, political issues were routinely covered for broadcast. KVZK's expatriate production manager assigned a local producer, Sivia Sivia, to cover the opening of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Fono, or legislature) by the House Speaker. In the editing room, the production manager demanded that Sivia Sivia remove all material that was not relevant to the opening ceremonies.