ABSTRACT
Managers balance programming costs of each to competitive advantage. Australian programming negotiates a local presence in the context of imported programming; imported programming needs to be 'naturalised'. Australian regulation, from inception, ensured local ownership of television services. Canada and Australia represent the best that Hollywood can expect from television exports. The relationships between imported and local programming have changed over Australian television history. Stations in the major capital cities began as stand-alone entities with their own management structures, scheduling priorities and television personalities. The availability of imported programming underwrote station independence, the quick expansion of television opening hours and the extension of television services into daytime and the periods immediately before and after prime time. In television's middle period, 1965-86, imported and local content entered into a different relationship. Changing the regulatory structures would readjust relations between imported and local content in television.
