The viewing public might get a few crumbs when Prime Minister John Howard announces the Governments decision on digital broadcasting.
Howard said this week that he expected to do so before Christmas.
You might be forgiven for thinking that the Government had already made its decision on digital television. Last July, Labor and the Coalition did a deal which enabled legislation to introduce digital television on January 1, 2001, to pass the Senate.
And before that, in March last year, Communications Minister Richard Alston made a policy statement on digital television.
On both occasions it looked like the existing networks had won everything they wanted.
The new digital technology has enabled much more to go out in the available bandwidth. Digital allows more signals in the same bandwidth. The big question was how would the extra capacity be used.
There were several possibilities. First, was to continue with the present five main signals, but for each of them to move to super high definition television which would consume all the new space created by digital.
This is the same all crap but beautifully presented in super high-definition 5×3 format.
Another option would be to use the extra capacity for different signals. Where there is now one analogue signal, there would be six new digital signals of slightly better than analogue quality.
The other option was a combination of these options with some better quality and some more channels, some of which (very importantly) could be devoted to interactive datacasting, education and community broadcasting.
Last year it looked like the first option was going to happen. The existing networks (including Kerry Packer’s powerful Nine Network) would have got all the extra capacity for nothing. They argued that because the transition to digital would be very costly, they should get this lucky break.
No other industry gets this sort of government freebie and help just because some new technology arrives. If someone invents a new fridge or method of fishing, the existing industry just has to cop it. But television is different. Governments are beholden to television owners because they can sway public opinion and therefore votes.
Further the television networks confused the public. They misrepresented the options. They led the public to believe there was only one sort of high-definition television and that was the super high definition sort that would consume all the extra capacity generated by digital technology. They played down the fact that super high definition sets are very expensive.
They played down the fact even with existing sets and a cheap signal-conversion box digital technology would eliminate ghosting and improve reception dramatically — as much as most people would want given the high cost of new sets.
So the same old crap but with high definition looked like the go.
Enter Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan and their company News Ltd.
News Ltd did not like the same-old-crap policy. It thought some of the extra capacity should go to companies, like News, that could provide interactive datacasting.
Suddenly last year’s decision was not a decision at all, but a starting point to a decision. Now, six months later, the super-high-definition-same-old-crap policy is going to be changed.
And a good thing, too. But it will be the right deed for the wrong reason. It will be right thing because the same-old-crap policy is bad in every respect.
It favours existing players. It gives them an unjustified windfall. It denies the Australian people an enormous resource for education and interactive services. It would enable the existing networks to continue fairly cheap provision of one set of advertisements for a huge return, rather than have to deal with several signals for each existing channel. It handed a public resource (airwave spectrum) to existing players without open competitive tender.
But the change in this policy, likely to be announced next week, will not come because the Government has seen the light and suddenly decided that the public interest demands that the public get interactive services.
No. The light on the road to Damascus was caused by News Ltd applying the blowtorch to the Government.
The blowtorch came with Lachlan Murdoch’s speech in Washington last September praising Treasurer Peter Costello and casting Howard the monarchist as yesterday’s man and was followed by a direct marketing campaign in marginal Liberal seats.
It was enough for Howard to fall off his camel and see who was lord.
It is not the first time the Murdoch organisation has applied the blowtorch to get media policy changed.
In April, 1997, the brave, new, deregulating, market-oriented Government suggested it would scrap the cross-media-ownership rules. This would allow television owner Kerry Packer to buy the Fairfax newspaper company.
This would be a poor outcome for Murdoch. Out came the blowtorch. A series of headlines in the Daily Telegraph (the paper of the battlers that Howard had won over in the election the previous year) linked Howard with failure. An editorial in The Australian said, “”PM fails media challenge” and a news headline said, “”Anxiety highlights Howard’s failure”. Murdoch’s Telegraph had headline “”Leadership — John Howard’s crucial failing”. And so it went on.
The cross-media-ownership laws remain in place despite four years of deregulatory government.
When the Government changes its mind in the face of the Murdoch muscle flexing with a policy statement next week, it will still have to appease Packer.
It will not be surprising so see the existing networks get a large amount of spectrum from nothing without an auction or a tender. So much for the philosophy of open competition.
It will not be surprising if the public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, do not get the resources and the opportunity to put out all of the high-quality educational and interactive data that they would be so capable of doing — particularly to the bush where datacasting is so desperately needed because poor phonelines make internet reception very difficult. So much for helping the bush.
But Murdoch’s News Ltd will get a slice of the action, you bet.
The crumbs for the public will be at least some ABC-SBS datacasting and some opening for Fairfax and other newspapers to engage in datacasting.
This government is no better than its predecessors, both Labor and Coalition on media policy.
From the day television began in Australia in 1956 and the broadcasting licences were handed to existing newspaper groups, not government has put the public interest first. Instead, governments, ever frightened of what media groups might do in shaping public opinion against them, have cowered.
It is pathetic really because public opinion gets shaped irrespective of their pandering to the media moguls.
When will a government stop playing favourites. The broadcast spectrum is a public asset which should be allocated in the public interest, not handed out by fear and favour.