All together now

IF community television is all about niche programming, Yianni Zinonos has surely found his calling.

Yianni Zinonos

IF community television is all about niche programming, Yianni Zinonos has surely found his calling.

"I am kind of like the gay, Greek Kerri-Anne," he tells Review with the enthusiasm you might expect from a self-described camp presenter from "no-budget television".

Zinonos researches, produces and presents Yianni's City Life, a weekly cooking, fashion and lifestyle show broadcast by Sydney-based community station TVS and syndicated to community stations in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. And in its modest, no-frills way, it has just made a little bit of TV history.

Yianni's City Life is in the running for a Logie; this year community TV stations have for the first time been able to put forward programs for the popular entertainment awards. (Community station managers decide which of their shows and personalities should be in the running. If these contenders attract enough viewer votes, they will become official nominees.)

The Logies' official nominees, or finalists, will be announced next month, and the winners on May 1. Television's "night of nights" is usually top heavy with spray-tanned soap stars rather than middle-aged, amateur TV hosts such as Zinonos, who films his cooking segments in a poky suburban kitchen with last night's washing up stacked neatly on the sink.

Zinonos is up against 23 contenders in the most popular lifestyle program category and doesn't expect to make the final cut, but he says: "Just being selected has put me over the moon. It is recognition beyond my wildest dreams." He pauses for effect. "I can't wait to tell my therapist because my therapist will say, 'Why are you still doing that program?' " Here Zinonos confesses he struggles with the fact he doesn't make money out of hosting his own show, as community television is largely volunteer-run. He's philosophical about this one minute, mad as hell the next.

He has been working at TVS for six years but it's his day job as a fashion designer and pattern maker that pays the bills. "I complain about not making any money out of this, but the nature of community TV is that you don't make any money out of it," he says. "For years, this is what I have had to get through my thick head." On the other hand, working in community TV, or CTV as it is called by insiders, gives him a freedom he knows he wouldn't have in the ratings-conscious commercial sector.

CTV's Logies debut follows another big breakthrough for community TV. Last year the sector went digital after the federal government gave it free access to the digital spectrum. Now, four community networks -- Brisbane's 31 Digital, Sydney's TVS, South Australia's 44 Adelaide and Melbourne's Channel 31 -- simulcast in analog and digital, while Perth's West Television broadcasts on the digital spectrum only.

Among the other CTV Logie aspirants is another Greek, Vasili Kanidiadis, who presents Vasili's Garden on several networks. Kanidiadis is an amiable, accordion-playing gardener whose recent guests have included an IT specialist who discovers his inner eco-warrior, and an expert on the medicinal qualities of weeds. Kanidiadis is competing in two categories: most popular presenter and most popular lifestyle program.

Comedians Stefan and Craig's Slightly Live show is broadcast on Melbourne's Channel 31 and Brisbane's 31 Digital. It features pranks in the boys-behaving-badly tradition of The Chaser. Last year the duo gatecrashed the Logies' red carpet, telling organisers they were "from Channel 31 in Ukraine". This year they may end up walking the red carpet themselves, as they are among CTV's inaugural crop of Logies' contenders.

The present series of Yianni's City Life reflects the raison d'etre of community TV: to give exposure to individuals and groups that would otherwise be denied this. Zinonos's guest line-up for the present season includes a member of the Atheist Society, an indigenous artist and psychic, a facial acupuncturist, a Persian chef and representatives from Midnight Basketball, a program aimed at getting youth off the streets. "We do get scoops," the host says. (Among his better known guests have been Barry Humphries and the rock group Justice Crew.)

Zinonos says his program attracts a peak audience of 65,000, which is minuscule by commercial standards but pretty good by community TV standards. "I think what attracts people to the show is that it's very homely and it's sincere and it is not corporatised," he muses. "It's very ad lib and it has got a bit of a reality feel to it."

Gaining access to the digital spectrum has not only raised the five community networks' profile, it has saved them from oblivion. Brian Dutton, general manager of 44 Adelaide and secretary of the Australian Community Television Alliance, says: "There is no doubt that all of us would have disappeared off the face of the earth without going digital."

In mid-2008, when consumers started buying digital televisions and community stations could not access the new spectrum, 44 Adelaide's monthly cumulative views plummeted. Dutton found that "you can't sell sponsorship if people aren't watching you". The station went digital last November and within three weeks its monthly views shot up by 50 per cent to more than 300,000, Dutton says, adding: "Now we have got sponsors wanting to talk to us."

Melbourne's Channel 31 has enjoyed an even more startling boost. Station general manager Richard McClelland says Oztam figures show Channel 31 attracted about 1.4 million cumulative views in January, a rise of 68 per cent since April last year, just before the station went digital. McClelland describes this increase as "quite phenomenal".

It will surprise many to learn that the community networks, which are barred from airing commercials but can accept limited forms of sponsorship, are the biggest producers of local TV content. Channel 31, for example, broadcasts 80 to 90 episodes of original content a week.

Moreover, as the mainstream networks have become increasingly centralised, some community stations are filling the breach and have become an important source of local information. On Brisbane's 31 Digital, the Logies-nominated 360 bills itself (somewhat self-importantly) as "Brisbane's only current affairs program".

Dutton says community TV networks play a key role in program-making in cities such as Adelaide where, apart from current affairs and news broadcasts, hardly any TV programs are made. "It's nearly all done on the eastern seaboard," he says. Going digital "is going to mean a huge fillip for us," he adds. "Everybody has noticed a huge difference." He says the sector's looming challenge is to raise its profile. By 2013 it needs to convince the federal government it is relevant enough to continue to be carried on the digital spectrum. CTV has been guaranteed free access only until then.

Community TV stations can be a valuable training ground for future professionals, even the odd superstar: Rove McManus started out in CTV, as did comedian Corinne Grant. Today, 44 Adelaide runs an internship program in tandem with local universities, while TVS has a state-of-the-art studio at the University of Western Sydney.

The sector's content ranges from the raggedly amateurish to the sleekly professional. An anime hour is syndicated across several community stations, while TVS carries news broadcasts from al-Jazeera, a service designed to appeal to the large Middle Eastern population in Sydney's west. At the other extreme, a significant minority of community groups pay to put their shows on air. On a Sunday morning last month, 31 Digital broadcast no fewer than 11 religious programs, ranging from shows about Islam and meditation to a program called Awesome Church. "They're the ones with the money," one network executive says about religious groups.

McClelland explains that the key role of CTV is to offer "open community access. Our remit is to provide open access to all sectors of the community to a television broadcast service." Reflecting this, Channel 31 offers foreign-language programs for established and emerging migrant groups, from Italians to Congolese.

According to McClelland, the switch to digital has translated into a 20 per cent increase in sponsorship at the Melbourne-based broadcaster, to more than $2 million a year. About 12 per cent of income comes from people buying slots for their programs. He doesn't try to oversell the sector. "The content is not as slick or polished [as mainstream fare], but some of it is of a reasonable standard," he says. His channel's most popular programs -- some of which are syndicated nationally -- are fishing, cooking and car shows. The blokey 4WD TV, a small-screen paean to four-wheel driving, claims to have a weekly audience of 500,000 across several community and commercial networks in Australia and New Zealand. It, too, is in the running for a Logie.

McClelland says that apart from one-off federal and state grants to help Channel 31 convert to digital, "we generate all our income". Most comes from sponsorship sales. "I'd like a small relaxation of the rules to allow the program-makers to be able to tap into some funding and recognise the support from sponsors in their programs," McClelland says. Under existing rules, CTV channels could not show a Getaway-style travel show featuring commercial endorsements, nor announce up-front that a particular program has a particular sponsor.

Rachel Bentley, chief executive of Sydney's TVS, agrees with McClelland that the sponsorship rules are a "little bit unrealistic in this day and age" and need to be liberalised. This, she believes, would attract more sponsorship funds for program-making. Bentley says community networks' participation in the Logies is highly significant: "I think it's recognition for the community sector and it also acknowledges that since going digital, the audiences for community TV have grown dramatically."

She also points out that in the digital era, "the most dramatic change is that people's viewing habits have become more fragmented". She believes there is less viewer loyalty to the established free-to-air networks: a boon for community stations.

Meanwhile Zinonos, who knows he is "a small fish swimming in a big pond", dreams of "making it to the [Logies] finals and walking the red carpet". He says he is often recognised at the supermarket, and is clearly chuffed. Sounding a little like a Ricky Gervais character, he says: "I'd like to think I've got mass appeal. I'm not too old, not too young, not too dark, not too white, not too heavy, not too light -- I'm pretty camp, by the way . . . This is the era of campness; everyone knows I'm gay." Er, yes, we'd noticed.

Yianni's City Life, TVS, Monday, 8pm, and various times on other community networks.

Graeme Blundell is on leave.