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television drama industry had emerged and grown stronger since 1965 (as will soon be discussed, at the start of Period III in this book). More and more top-rating programmes were produced by the Australian media industry. Overall, for the period 1957–1975, nearly half of the top-rating television programmes were produced by the United States. Other figures were 11% by the United Kingdom, 8% by the United States and United Kingdom together, and 28% by Australia. Comparatively speaking, the documentary films produced in Australia by local agencies were involved in more efforts to introduce Australian knowledge and to construct the identity of Australianness.
Three stages in the post-war era are distinguished in this book, based on consideration of time sequences, stages of Australian national identity, television industry development, agencies in Australian film production, and the relatively equal numbers of films reviewed in this study. Table I.2 shows the three stages of migration documentary films and their relations to each of these considerations. Period I spans 1946–1955, the first decade of post-war production with the identity stage of ‘British
