Terry McCrann on media rules: Changes kick in right direction
TV stations were once licences to print money. Today they’re licences to shred money. The changes proposed will bring the rules partly into the 21st century, writes Terry McCrann.
Terry McCrann
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IT’S a long time since TV stations were licences to print money — back when James Packer was a boy and his late father Kerry could, and did, lecture ministers and, indeed, prime ministers.
The media rules we have today are essentially the same ones we had back then. Back then they protected the money-printing. Now, in today’s world of smartphones, fast internet, Netflix, YouTube and all, they’ve turned them into licences to shred money.
The changes proposed will bring the rules partly into the 21st century. And while this would help the free-to- air TV networks, more importantly it would also improve your media choices.
They are a critical first step to the long-term survival of FTA TV. By shrinking what sports have to be shown on FTA TV, you make more likely the AFL Grand Final and the Melbourne Cup will stay on FTA into the future.
But they quite simply don’t go far enough. At the same time they are still “catching up with the past” — seriously, would Nine really want to now merge with The Age?
Even so, any regulatory boundaries in media now — not just the ludicrously obsolete ones between print and FTA TV — have been rendered ineffective and punishing by the relentless changes with tech. And depressingly, even these relatively modest changes will have a hard time getting through the Senate, which more than any other institution in the country seems locked in the world of about 1990.
The proposed changes are mostly the same ones the government has previously proposed and shelved.
The government should also be talking about reforming the ABC and SBS, which are the two media organisations absolutely shielded from the forces that are ravaging all other media businesses.
They get nearly $1.5 billion of your money upfront. Everyone else has to chase eyeballs and revenue dollars in what has become a global media shark pool.
Indeed, with five radio and four TV stations in every major city, plus free internet content, the ABC and its taxpayer money is adding to the pain of those media businesses that have to pay their way.
Fairfax journalists are on strike because management wants to slash one in every four jobs.
They should be picketing ABC offices, not their own, because it’s the ABC and its “free” content that is destroying their papers and their jobs.
How the NBN has delivered just in time
The NBN has delivered, and it has done so in what can only be described as the ultimate — the hit-the-ground running immediate — stress test, rites Terry McCrann.
Sydney airport the wrong place at the wrong time
Sydney Airport has some of the sweetest acreage in Australia but when passengers numbers have dwindled from 9 million in the March quarter to 400,000 in the June quarter, that doesn’t count for much, writes Terry McCrann.