ABSTRACT
Responsibility for that must be shared by financial deregulation and Australia's entrepreneurial business culture of the 1980s. Sophisticated national advertising placement strategies evolved in ad agencies to get around the then relatively disconnected Australian television system. The stability and profitability of the Australian commercial television industry was itself a product of cost monitoring and managed competition. The Australian clients, to whom they had so assiduously extended generous credit lines and encouragement, were retrospectively labelled corporate cowboys. In 1990, Australian television managements was being hit on at least three fronts: continuing high levels of debt, high interest rates, and a dramatic slowdown in the rate of increase of advertising revenues. The Australian television system was so well poised in the international market, well able to produce a commodity capable of export into English language and European markets, capable of producing not simply more, but better quality television.
