MEDIA WATCH

A crazy sroty i saw this week on one of my favorite ABC programs 'Media Watch'.... interviews with Margaret Simons and mark Scott-

It's no secret that the coming of the internet has imperilled the old media business models - especially commercial free to air television and newspapers. Journalism lecturer and media blogger Margaret Simons says that a revolution is under way:

Margaret Simons: I think over time it's going to be at least the equivalent of the invention of the printing press, and if you think about it, that changed just about everything, from religion to democratic forms to the way in which societies organise themselves. Now I'm not saying all of that is going to happen tomorrow but I think we're right in the middle of that scale of change.—


Mark Scott: And for newspapers, the last great hope now seems to be something called Waiting for Rupert.— Murdoch has made it clear that in his view, it's time for newspapers - still by far the most important originators of serious news on the planet - to make a stand. Two weeks ago he told a conference in Beijing:Rupert Murdoch: The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over. The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content.— Rupert Murdoch address at the World Media Summit, Beijing, 9th October, 2009

The Philistines, in Mr Murdoch's view, are the bloggers and aggregators, from Crikey to the Huffington Post, who, he claims, survive by commenting on the stories that newspaper journalists dig up. And they're also the search engines, the Googles and Yahoos, who Mr Murdoch says reap a fortune by making news available without creating it - and feed none of that money back to the content creators.But Rupert Murdoch and his son James, the heir presumptive to the News Corporation empire, believe the public must be made to wake up too. The free ride is over:James Murdoch: Yet it is essential for the future of independent digital journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it. —

News Corporation is determined, somehow, to start charging for at least some of the content on its global websites. It's an ambition which Mark Scott treated with some disdain.

Mark Scott: It strikes me as a classic play of old empire, of empire in decline. Believing that because you once controlled the world you can continue to do so, because you once set the rules, you can do so again. Acting on the assumption that you still have the power that befits the Emperor.—

I put it to Mark Scott that that sounded like a declaration of war by the ABC on News Ltd.Mark Scott: No, it's certainly not that. But it's an attempt to state, I suppose, the reality of the circumstance that we all find ourselves in as media organisations: the audience has the power now. And in a sense you have to engage with those audiences on the audiences' terms. Now for 15 years people have got their content online free of charge. You have younger people who have never paid for anything online. And you can't just say snap your fingers and expect that they will pay - particularly if there's going to be so much content out there that is available free of charge.

Richard Freudenstein, responded today:Shielded as he is from this commercial reality, Scott does not understand that advertising alone can't support the growth of online journalism. Every single commercial news publisher in the world is facing this reality, and as such something has to change.—

Unfortunately, neither Mr Freudenstein, nor any one else at News Ltd, was prepared to talk to Media Watch about just what it has in mind. For some reason, it's convinced itself that it wouldn't get a fair hearing on this program. So we'll have to be as fair as we can anyway.Richard Freudenstein told a recent newspaper conference that News Corp has done intensive market research here and in the US: Richard Freudenstein: There's a pretty positive response coming out of this research. The general public do recognize the value of journalism and are willing to pay for it if it's relevant, if it's delivered in ways that they want.— Richard Freudenstein (CEO, New Digital Media) address to PANPA Future Forum, 10th September, 2009

Margaret Simons contributes to Crikey, whose email newsletter has some fifteen thousand paying subscribers. She agrees that charging for content online isn't a hopeless proposition:Margaret Simons: I think it will work for some things and if you look at what Scott has said carefully he thinks so too. There will be some brands and some kinds of content that people are prepared to pay for... but I don't think it's going to be possible to force people to pay for general news coverage in countries that have strong traditions of public broadcasting which is basically Australia and the United Kingdom.— Media Watch interview with Margaret Simons, 14th October, 2009And there's the rub. In the eyes of James Murdoch, at least, the BBC's dominant position as a news provider in Britain is a huge obstacle to the survival of its commercial rivals.James Murdoch: Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet.— Edinburgh International Television Festival MacTaggart Lecture delivered by James Murdoch, 28th August, 2009Neither the BBC, nor the ABC, are just broadcasters any more. And newspapers aren't just newspapers. James Murdoch: What were once separate forms of communication, or separate media, are now increasingly interconnected and exchangeable. So we no longer have a TV market, a newspaper market, a publishing market. We have, indisputably, an all-media market.— Edinburgh International Television Festival MacTaggart Lecture delivered by James Murdoch, 28th August, 2009In cyberspace, those markets merge. And if commercial providers need to charge users for content, argued James Murdoch, they shouldn't have to face a competitor who provides it free, courtesy of the taxpayer.James Murdoch: If we are to have that state sponsorship at all, then it is fundamental to the health of the creative industries, independent production, and professional journalism that it exists on a far, far smaller scale.— Edinburgh International Television Festival MacTaggart Lecture delivered by James Murdoch, 28th August, 2009Or, as News Corporation's Sunday Times in Britain put it recently:The BBC should stick to broadcasting and leave the written word to newspapers and their online commercial rivals.— The Sunday Times online, 2nd August, 2009That editorial was pungently headlined:The BBC should get its tanks off our lawn— The Sunday Times online, 2nd August, 2009

The ABC may not have the BBC's firepower, but it's determined that its comparatively modest armoured cars will stay parked on the cyberspace lawn.

Mark Scott: The public pays for the ABC to deliver distinctive content to them - and if it is content we are creating and packaging for them now, they are entitled to view that content free of charge.—

Mark Scott: A.N. Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism, 14th October, 2009Free to the user, but not of course free to society. And News Ltd argues that much though Mark Scott may talk about the audience having the power, the ABC doesn't live or die in the marketplace, as its commercial rivals do. Guaranteed his annual $800m-plus taxpayer income, he can operate with little concern to what his audience actually wants...For those of us who actually have to earn our keep, we have to make a compelling enough case to the public that what we have to offer is worth paying for.— The Australian, 19th October, 2009

So what will News Corporation be offering online that the public might pay for? To listen to James Murdoch, you'd assume it wants to charge readers to access its general online news. But according to The Australian's media columnist, Mark Day, the online sites that News Ltd charges for won't look like the current free ones. Instead, they'll be......more akin to social networks, a hybrid of news, services, commerce, information and entertainment designed for like-minded people.— The Australian, 19th October, 2009All the signs are that we won't be asked to pay for what we're getting now for free. We'll be asked to pay for what we're not getting.

Meanwhile, the ABC will no doubt keep asking the government to pay more for what it's not able to provide out of current funding.As Mark Scott sees it, the crisis in the old business models makes the ABC more necessary than ever. Commercial television current affairs, for example, isn't what it was a few years ago...Mark Scott: ...and if you look in regional and rural Australia, similarly the business model there isn't working at all. Now, the response to that is not to weaken the ABC - to take funding away from the ABC... And I think too to hurt the ABC, to cut its funding, to cripple it, just to make wealthy commercial operations wealthier, because it's in their interests, not in the taxpayers' interests, I think that would be very unfortunate, and I don't think there's the political sentiment for that.— Media Watch interview with Mark Scott (Managing Director, ABC), 14th October, 2009In fact, the funds are flowing the ABC's way. In the last budget, it received 15 million dollars to create whiz-bang multi-media websites serving regional Australia. But media company APN, which owns fourteen regional daily newspapers in New South Wales and Queensland, argues that it's risked a lot of its shareholders' money already, trying to do the same thing. Brendan Hopkins: Of course we're looking to monetise those sites going forward but we've taken, I think, a very brave decision on behalf of our board and behalf of our shareholders that we want to invest ahead of that curve.

Jonathan Holmes: So when you see the government giving the ABC tens of millions of dollars...

Brendan Hopkins: I think it's got to be questioned... I can't believe that the government itself wants to pursue a business model for the ABC, or a model - there's no business involved - a model for the ABC where the cost of the ABC goes up and up and up and up, with all of the public outcry that that will bring, when bona fide commercial operators like ourselves have been investing ahead of the curve in those centres... and if we feel the ABC are competing or trying to compete with us unfairly then we'll go and talk to Mr Samuels at the ACCC and we'll maybe hold them to account. Jonathan Holmes: In this world of media plenty, that's so different from what it was seventy years ago, is there really a reason for the ABC to exist at all?

Brendan Hopkins: I think now is a good time to have that debate.— Media Watch interview with Brendan Hopkins (CEO, APN), 16th October,

For now, in Australia, News Ltd isn't proposing any such debate. Indeed, Richard Freudenstein specifically wrote this morning:I am not attacking the ABC's content or its right to exist, simply advocating a plurality of independent voices...— The Australian, 19th October, 2009

But Margaret Simons argues that, for the first time since their foundation, public broadcasters are directly menacing the commercial media providers' emerging business model. We haven't heard the last of these arguments, by a long way.

Margaret Simons: Yes I think that one of the big battles of the early part of this century will be between all of those who try to make us pay for content which includes pay television and apparently Rupert Murdoch, and public broadcasting. In the United Kingdom and Australia I think that's going to be a hugely significant battle and it's one of the things that will make our media future different from that in the United States.— Media Watch interview with Margaret Simons, 14th October, 2009

source
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s2718294.htm