Audience Reach, Ownership Control and Local Content

Today could be the day that the Media Reform Bill will be debated in the Senate.

More: https://mumbrella.com.au/media-reform-bill-hit-senate-monday-433392

It Has to Happen, Two out of Three Rule is History as of Today.

Looks like the reach rule is the most likely one out of the two to be repealed if Labor and the Coalition can come to an agreement; sad that Labor says it won’t budge al all on the two-out-of-three rule (though I can understand). The Australian media landscape has to evolve.

I hope that we can avoid the parties not coming to a compromise and the bill bouncing between the House and the Senate. It’s about time for change…

can’t the Coalition, bundle up the media laws by having significant reduce license fees in exchange for a lower anti-siphoning laws. Like removing FA Cup and international golf events like US Masters off the list.

Because they should remove crap like that from the list without needing to give the networks money?

They are using public airways, they should pay for the privilege or give their licenses to someone who will.

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Remove the licence fees but substantially up the local broadcast requirements and remove NZ from being local drama.

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2 out of 3 is stopping it. They don’t want to pass the reach rule abolition on its own, which would pass by all accounts.

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The other thing that has impacted on this is that it now seems that Nine who had been a big proponent aren’t interested in a merger/takeover and Seven and Ten have already said they don’t want to buy their regional affiliates. So it almost seems like a pointless exercise.

Unexpected mergers are happening in the US media and telcos. I think anything is possible if the laws change.

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They’re hardly going to admit it if they want to though. Given SCA and Prime are both public companies their prices will skyrocket if there’s any indication the networks want to buy them out.

On the other hand, Bruce would be very keen on increasing his stake in Ten.

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2/3 should stay, but wow it was just funny reading this bit:

Andrew Lancaster, CEO of WIN Corporation, said: “We have been telling parliamentarians for years that the ‘75% reach rule’ makes no sense when news, information and entertainment services are being delivered via a diverse range of technologies and from a plethora of sources…

That from a company that is well and truly stuck in the past, doesn’t do much online itself, sued to (try &) block streaming, doesn’t even bother to respond to online complaints, etc.

Exactly; Ten wouldn’t buy WIN, they’d be bought by WIN, and it wouldn’t shock me if the rest of the country would experience what Northern NSW viewers are about to suffer (mappy, etc.). :wink:

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New media laws package proposed by the government launched today. Looks good. Let’s hope they pass the god damn thing and they get on with it.

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Am I the only one who feels that the commercial stations should pay something to use the airwaves. It is public resource after all…

Oh wait, they still need to pay a $40m/year spectrum charge.

I still think the 2 out of 3 rule should remain but the rest of what’s proposed sounds great.

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if they don’t. I know who I will be blaming.

There was something earlier on Triple J about the reforms hopefully helping Network Ten survive. Problem is cutting the fees by approximately $90m still means Ten are losing around a hundred million dollars a year.

The networks which are profitable (Nine, Seven) will just pocket the money. Yay.

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One would also like to hope that the ABC, SBS and other independent media outlets will not have to suffer because the commercial networks want more money.

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Ten aren’t losing $200 million a year - that was only after balance sheet write downs. The cash loss was something like $2.5 million.