3. Imparja part 1 – winning the AUSSAT license

Immediately, when we announced we were going to go for the license, we got an enormous amount of support from the Aboriginal communities in Northern Territory and Southern Australia – because most at that point felt that unrestricted commercial TV going into Aboriginal communities would have a detrimental effect on language, culture and all that.

The Broadcasting Tribunal felt we had a very, very good case for programming. They said that both applicants – Channel 8 and CAAMA – qualified for the license, but on balance and with particular regard to CAAMA’s proposals for Aboriginal programming, we won the license.

Anyway, yeah, we got on with the business of setting up the station, and it was set up in less than 12 months, it was on air.

The idea was at that time, and the conditions for Imparj[a], was that it would have a large Aboriginal input into it.

What I have seen was very much anything that you see on commercial networks you see anywhere in Australia

Sale of The Century and Neighbours…that’s European, you know.

Perhaps we could have gone another way, but I mean, as I say, you can’t always get what you want.

Because it can’t deliver in the context of what Kellogg’s wants to see as a cost per thousand

At least what we’ve done is we’ve got ABC to do Aboriginal programming.

CAAMA and Imparj[a] have set the agenda a bit, and have set I think a pretty challenging example for all of us.