Foxtel can halve Australian drama production under new broadcasting bill
LNP gotta look after their old mate Murdoch 
This is probably the best place for it.
In Sydney in 1960 Fairfax owned The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sun, The Sun-Herald, had majority ownership of ATN7, a substantial interest in 2GB, and owned a number of magazines including Woman’s Day.
Australian Consolidated Press owned The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, had majority ownership of TCN9, and published various magazines including The Australian Women’s Weekly.
The Daily Mirror and The Sunday Mirror were owned by News Limited, who also owned the suburban Cumberland Newspapers.
Fairfax, ACP and News also had interests in radio and television stations around Australia, as did AWA who operated (but didn’t own) 2CH.
Some people go on as if concentration of media ownership is a recent development.
True, but that was Sydney, not the entire country (not saying that it was OK either), whereas now the reach of each of these companies is significantly larger, and the number of voices across the country has reduced.
Media concentration is so obvious in this country. If my MP can’t work this out for themself, they should resign.
Cross-media ownership
In 2019–20, the following entities controlled 2 types of media assets in the same market:
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Southern Cross Media Group Limited controlled a combination of radio and television broadcasting licences in 21 radio licence areas.
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Nine Entertainment controlled 2 radio licences and a newspaper in Melbourne, and 2 radio licences and a newspaper in Sydney.
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Seven Group Holdings Limited controlled a television licence and a newspaper in Perth.
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WIN Corporation controlled a radio and television licence in Wollongong.
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Lachlan Murdoch, through his position as Co-Chairman of News Corporation and interests in Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd, controlled 2 radio licences and an associated newspaper in each of the Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Melbourne metropolitan licence areas.
During the reporting period, the ACMA received notifications relating to 9 events affecting the control of media operations, involving:
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5 commercial television broadcasting licences
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31 commercial radio broadcasting licences
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1 associated newspaper.
There were also several ownership and control changes of media entities. Some were the result of takeovers and mergers while others were a result of company restructures. They included:
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John Singleton and associated entities ceased to hold shares in Macquarie Media Limited following an off-market takeover bid by Nine Entertainment. As a result, they relinquished control of 7 commercial radio broadcasting licences (15 October 2019).
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Southern Cross Media Group Ltd and associated entities acquired 9 Redwave Media commercial radio broadcasting licences in Western Australia from Seven West Media Limited (the Redwave licences) (31 December 2019).
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Southern Cross Media Group Ltd acquired 2 commercial radio broadcasting licences in the Carnarvon RA1 licence area from Hits Radio Pty Ltd (1 March 2020).
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Crocmedia Pty Ltd (renamed to Sports Entertainment Network Pty Ltd) (SEN) acquired commercial radio licence 6EL Bunbury RA1 from Southern Cross Media Group Ltd (1 May 2020).
During 2019–20, the ACMA gave 2 formal warnings for late notifications of changes in control.
Foreign owners of media assets
The ACMA must maintain a Register of Foreign Owners of Media Assets. The register must include the information provided by foreign stakeholders and their interests in Australian media assets. The register commenced on 1 March 2019.
At 30 June 2020, there were 92 registered foreign stakeholders in 138 Australian media companies. During the reporting period, the ACMA received 222 foreign stakeholder notifications.
View the Register of Foreign Owners of Media Assets.
Appendix A – Ownership and control of commercial television services in Australia 2019–20
Note: Does not include licences for services provided by satellite allocated under section 38C and other licences allocated under subsection 40(1) of the BSA. The number of licences does not add up to the total number of commercial television broadcasting licences (69) due to double counting of joint ventures.
Source: ACMA, Register of Controlled Media Groups and the Media Control Database.71
… and 1 television licence in Melbourne and Sydney. And 1 television licence and 1 radio licence in Perth.
Does ACMA proof read and fact check what they publish?
Why doesn’t Imparja get its own entry? The SCA remote licences are mentioned.
They talk a big game, but I can’t see them handing back the money, can you?
Just axe the licenses. Take the metros with you.
“maintain existing levels of journalism production and distribution during the grant period”, which has Nine failed to do. They definitely should be handing the money back. WIN still has time to reverse their decision at least until the end of their grant period, otherwise they should be handing the money back too.
They’ve been less than clear - is there a list of what services the funds are supposed to be allocated for? E.g. Nine gets $X for NBN, $X for NTD, $X for WIN Victoria, etc?
No. Though the Grants website lists the states and territories for each grant. Nine’s was for NSW, VIC, QLD and NT.
Quite frankly if you want to own a tv broadcast license- metro or regional you should be forced as a condition of the license to broadcast at least 30mins per day of local news presented live from the market at the very least.
… even back in the day when regulation was much stronger than it is today there was no such condition … and nor should there be … a licence was granted based on undertakings provided by the applicant and, as long as those undertakings are adhered to, there isn’t a problem … the metro station I started at in 1967 (SAS10) didn’t have a news, the regional station I worked for from 1975-1981 (SEQ8) didn’t have a news … the result was that both of those stations were able to present a wide range of other programming types … these days everyone gets obsessed with “news” and genuine “localism” gets tossed out the window …
I agree with this with one difference.
I would personally love to see this as a rule, but implemented for one channel per market only.
Take QLD for example, SCA, WIN, and 7 would be forced to produce live, local news across the state, but each market would have news from only one channel. Each network would then give preferences for which markets they wish to produce for. 7 might choose to cover Sunshine Coast and Rockhampton, SCA might choose Townsville and Toowoomba, etc.
Obviously this will never happen, but I can dream
yep, that’s what was proposed in the form of multichannel services (MCS), but was blown out of the water when Hawke made aggregation the priority to keep Kerry Packer happy and rich … indeed we can dream, but grubby politicians turn it into a nightmare …