An absence of local news in the regions is denying a voice to the people whose lives are affected

Important regional issues are these days covered from the cities, denying a voice to the people whose lives and businesses are affected.

The owner of the Seven franchise in Darwin, Southern Cross Austereo, doesn’t employ a single journalist in the NT. Picture: AAP

If Darwin TV viewers want the latest news from Victoria, they can tune in to Seven Nightly

News, beamed into the Territory from Seven’s Docklands studio in Melbourne.

If they’re looking for news from the Northern Territory, however, they’re out of luck. The owner of the Seven franchise in Darwin, Southern Cross Austereo, doesn’t employ a single journalist in the NT.

SCA mocks its obligations to broadcast local content by screening what is known internally as a ‘compliance’ local news service, produced and presented in Tasmania. It doesn’t appear on the TV schedule because it’s played during commercial breaks of networked services and runs no longer than two minutes.

It frequently includes community service announcements, which SCA counts as news.

To call this a local bulletin is an insult to viewers in Darwin, which is closer to Singapore than it is to Tasmania.

Territory viewers are not alone. Ten Network viewers in ­regional Queensland, southern regional NSW, and all of regional Victoria get the same shoddy deal since SCA also owns their local stations.

SCA screens all three commercial channels’ metro news bulletins across vast regions of ­regional South Australia and ­Central Australia, treating viewers with similar contempt.

SCA’s last genuine regional TV service, Spencer Gulf Nightly News, which broadcast to viewers in the mid-north and Eyre Peninsula regions of South Australia and Broken Hill, was shut down in April last year.

As a result, 93 towns and ­regions no longer have a genuinely local free-to-air news service. That impacts some 2.7 million Australians a week.

SCA’s decision to sell all of its TV licences this calendar year ­offers a glimmer of hope for ­regional viewers.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority must step in when a licence changes hands to assess local news content obligations, and there is precedence for this. Last November, ACMA placed an enforceable undertaking on Seven West Media when it took control of Prime7 regional TV.

Should ACMA fail to do so, however, the future looks bleak. SCA is understood to have plans afoot to close its studios in ­Launceston, a move that threatens 26 jobs.

The slim pickings of news produced in Tasmania for viewers up to 3800km away will be further depleted and possibly axed ­altogether.

SCA’s scornful attitude to ­regional viewers has had serious consequences. Its station cannot react to local unfolding emergencies, like floods, bushfires, missing persons, or police-issued ‘amber alerts’ for missing children.

It means that Territory and local governments are less accountable. Their press releases go to air unchallenged, if they go to air at all.

In the long term, the quality of journalism across the country will suffer from removing what has been an important training ground for young reporters and broadcasters.

Important regional issues, like live sheep and cattle exports, mining developments or the industrialisation of regional Australia by wind turbines and solar panels, are covered from the cities, denying a voice to the people whose lives and businesses are affected.

The pressures on commercial television are real. Owning a TV station is no longer a licence to print money. Yet the leaps in technology make it far cheaper and easier to produce content for broadcasters willing to adapt.

Gone are the days when a crew lugging tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment would have to travel vast distances to capture pictures.

Today, there’s a video camera in almost everyone’s pocket.

The investment in the ­National Broadband Network and the development of cheap, low-orbit satellites means there is hardly a corner of Australia that is out of reach.

ACMA must insist that SCA’s new owners fulfil their duty legislated by parliament to produce local news locally for local people.

Allowing regional TV to be further swallowed up by city-based networks is not the answer.

Gerard Holland is executive director of Page Research Centre