A UE1 JUDGMENT in the Federal Court on Thursday has shown serious weaknesses in the Government’s pay-television policy. The judgment itself was confined to a narrow point of statutory interpretation. It did not canvass the broader issues and the court was not invited to do so. None the less, the judgment ruled that the Minister for Communications, Senator Bob Collins, had acted beyond power in making a decision about the issuing of multi-point distribution system (MDS) licences.
Until very recently it was thought that MDS technology had only limited application to domestic television. When it was realised that MDS could be used for city-wide domestic pay TV, the Government attempted to stop a tender process under way for the issuance of further MDS licences.
The Government’s action put a spoke in the wheels of two businesses which had intended to use the technology. One was Steve Cosser’s Australis which wanted to launch a domestic pay-TV service in Sydney and Melbourne. The other was Kerry Stokes’s Australian Capital Equity which wanted to use the technology for other purposes, probably text and high-quality radio transmission. ACE successfully sought to have the Minister’s action declared invalid. As a result the Government must serious rethink its pay-TV direction.
It must be said that Kerry Stokes, through a family company, owns The Canberra Times, but he has not had any input in the preparation of editorial matter on the subject. In any event, his aims were not specifically directed at pay TV. He was caught up in a wider web. The broad question is not and never has been the delivery of text and still graphics through MDS which is Mr Stokes’s interest. The broad question is pay TV.
Continue reading “1993_03_march_leader20”