Media ownership is on the agenda again. Communications Minister Senator what Richard Alston makes some sensible and of these points are about why a the present laws should be relaxed. Alston will try to put the Democrats and the Labour Party on the spot by presenting proposals to remove the two great pillars of ownership restriction: that no-one can own both a broadcasting licence and a daily newspaper in the one city and that foreign ownership is limited to 15 per cent of a broadcasting licence.
These laws were first created by Labor in the mid-1980s when Paul Keating said media moguls could be queens of screen or princes of print, but not both. The theory was that diversity of opinion required diverse ownership.
Since then, the big media owners have been sniffing around government and opposition leaders desperate for favours in the form of replacing the restrictions. US citizen Rupert Murdoch, who owns the highest circulating daily newspaper in all but two capitals, would nearly like to get into some Australian television action. Kerry Packer, owner of the Nine network, would dearly love to get his hands on the Fairfax newspaper chain.
Alston points out that diversity of opinion no longer depends on these rules. The growth of the internet enables huge diversity of opinion. Also, there is plenty of diversity within media organs.
All this would be fairly compelling but for the fact that it is coming from a man who has presided over the introduction of one of the most highly regulated digital television and internet regimes in the Western world.
When you compare the laudably deregulatory spirit of removing the restrictions on cross-media and foreign ownership with highly regulated television broadcasting and internet regimes, you sense that philosophic purity is not the driving force behind the latest push for reform.
Rather, it seems, the same irresistible force is driving media law in Australia – sucking up to media moguls out of fear or for favour.
Of all of those Murdoch capital city newspapers, every one supported the Coalition in editorials before the election, except the Courier Mail, which was neutral. Compare that to two years ago when Prime Minister John Howard looked as if he would relax cross-media ownership rules but not foreign-ownership rules. The Murdoch press was merciless, even disgracefully and unnecessarily highlighting the fact that the Prime Minister’s son happened to be one of scores of guests at a party where someone had overdosed.
Packer has also smiled on Howard, saying that he preferred him to Kim Beazley in an off-hand comment mid-term.
It is true the ownership rules are too restrictive. They serve no useful purpose. In fact, they prevent useful economies of scale. And they have been superceded by technology.
The three networks in fact have newspapers in every capital. They are just not printed on paper. Rather they go out over the internet. On that score, the ABC has one of the most comprehensive newspapers in the country.
And the newspapers broadcast their wares on the internet, almost like television except for the fact that Senator Alston’s legislation prevent video streaming of anything that smacks of drama or a lengthy news service.
In Canberra, we have seen the collapse of Prime and Capital’s local news service. Well, The Canberra Times has reasonably sized newsroom. We could get a few television cameras and video stream on the internet or even provide a television news service if it were not for the fact that Alston’s restrictive television regime has consumed all the available television spectrum and his restrictive internet regime prevents datacasting.
On the national scale, the digital television regime restricts the three commercial and two public networks to pumping out just one high-definition signal (with some minor exceptions). There is enough spectrum to pump out five standard digital signals (which is very high quality for loungeroom purposes – no ghosting or snow), but the law prevents it. It also prevents any new player from entering the market under 2006. This is very handy for Packer, Kerry Stokes’s Seven Network and the Ten Network because one stream is cheaper than five and it compresses the advertising-watching audience into one captive stream. It is appalling for diversity, competition, consumer services and all those high-minded things that Alston holds so dear when talking about the media ownership restrictions that the moguls do not like.
The networks argue they need the oligopoly and some government subsidy to pay for the high cost of going digital. It is twaddle. In what other field does the government subsidise and create statutory monopolies to help companies with technological change? None. Look at the closest related industry – video hiring. It is having to restock entirely because of the technological change to digital. No government subsidy is contemplated. And, incidentally, the video industry employs 11,000 people in 1100 separate businesses with an annual turnover of $560 million serving 152 million rental transactions a year – a very model of a competitive, high-employing, high-service industry. It is no coincidence that it has virtually no government regulation (bar classifications) because of constitutional restrictions.
So the Democrats and Labor should talk turkey, but not humbug, with the Government on media ownership. If we are serious about freeing the airwaves, internet and printing presses, let’s first get rid of the restrictions that came in with digital television. Let’s face it, the government made a complete hash of digital television. It has had virtually no take up (despite Australia propensity to take up new technology) because the sets that pick up the high definition the government insists upon are too expensive and are not used extensively elsewhere in the world. Let’s free up the spectrum which will give us 15 or more standard definition digital signals. And let’s get rid of the internet video streaming restrictions. So that if Packer can go for Murdoch, Fairfax and others should be able to go for his television audience on a level playing field.