Australia has the technology and the wealth to provide all the major sport on television. There should be no need for 5am telecasts of the AFL match of the day as slotted for this morning. There should be no need for Wednesday night’s cramming of rugby league, soccer and tennis with the truncation of opening and closing moments.
Federal Opposition sports spokeswoman Senator Kate Lundy has blamed Communications Minister Senator Richard Alston. Senator Alston has passed the buck top the sports organisations and the television channels.
Fundamentally, though, the buck should stop at Senator Alston and the government. They have laid the policy and legislative groundwork that creates the current fiasco.
Labor’s communications spokesman, Lindsay Tanner, accused Channel Nine of hogging the ball. But the blame must lie with the Government which drafted the rules that allowed Channel Nine to take possession of the ball in the first place.
Incidentally, Labor was no better in Government with television policy, but the Howard Government has been in power six and a half years and it was in that time that the technology advanced to the stage where it was technically possible to satisfy consumer demand. But no, Government is too interested in satisfying television proprietors rather than viewers.
There are two critical pieces of legislation: the Trade Practices Act and the Broadcasting Services Act.
These are the laws that ration the air waves and ensure there is competition between those who broadcast. They are either not being applied or need to be amended to do an effective job.
For a start, after a decade and a half of economic rationalism, enforced competition, deregulation and all the rest of the mantra that is supposed to be good for consumers, it is bizarre that a sporting body like the AFL or NRL can make a cosy, exclusive arrangement for millions of dollars with one television station. Physically and technically, there is no reason why all five television networks cannot televise from a single ground. At present trade-practices law seems to treat the spectacle of a sport performance as a single item of property – like a piece of land or a car – and allows its sale to the highest bidder. It is an artificial way of looking at things. The sporting spectacle is more like thousands of single items of property (the view from every seat in the ground) or a service, like electricity or water. Indeed it is sold like that as individual tickets to spectators. Competition law simply should not permit an exclusive arrangement to supply the goods and services to only one corporation – Channel Nine.
The sporting providers should be forced to provide the property and services – at a reasonable price – to all comers.
If The Canberra Times refused to sell the paper to some newsagents or if a milk or eggs producer refused to supply certain supermarkets, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission boss Allan Fels would zoom in. What is the difference between that and the provision of television rights?
The first step to getting sport on the box at times suitable to viewers is to bust open the cosy, exclusive arrangements for television rights.
The second step is to change the Broadcasting Act so the best use can be made of the technology available.
The Government has imposed a regime on the five broadcasting networks which suits the biggest – Kerry Packer’s nine Network – but is probably not in the interest of viewers overall. That regime dictates that broadcasters must broadcast at least 20 hours of high definition digital television. That requirement takes up a lot of bandwidth and makes it impossible to split the signal into four of five standard digital signals. Moreover, the regime specifically prohibits the splitting of the signal with the exception of the ABC kids program.
No high-definition might be fine. But it is a bit like the Government demanding that everyone drive a Mercedes. People are voting with their feet and not buying set-top boxes and digital television because they see little in it.
If the Government changed the regime to allow the five networks to do what they wanted with their bandwidth, some might stay with high definition, others might split the signal and have four or five different standard-definition programs. Or they might do a bit of each at different times.
With those changes, it would be possible for the fans of every major sport to watch their sport live with room over for other programs.
The Government is the referee here. It is a bit rich for Senator Alston to have a restrictive regime and blow the whistle so often that play cannot flow and then blame the players and the viewers if the game is not living up to expectations.