The New Media and the (Same) Old Media

Quadrant Magazine ^ | July 2006

[Lorianne]

THE MEDIA SCENE continues to develop in fascinating ways. The newspapers, especially the broadsheets, are having a great deal of difficulty in adapting to the development of the internet. Those, like the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, who depend for the bulk of their revenue on classified advertising, are finding the competition from advertising online a growing threat to their “rivers of gold”, upon which they have depended for so many years to support large, top-heavy, editorial departments. Also, the pressure from competing online news sources is forcing them to make more and more of their content available in electronic form, not just as mainly happens at present effectively competing with their own news-stand sales, but increasingly tailored to the twenty-four-hour pattern of news in electronic form.

The relative strength of the opinion and features pages of the broadsheets which used to be a selling point is also suffering, from on the one hand the proliferation of blogs written by more and more sophisticated and knowledgeable writers which are freely available, and on the other the simple fact of the superior knowledge and intelligence, compared to the journalists, of such writers. Who wants ignorant opinionating from, for example, the Age when far better written, better informed and analytical comment can be found just as easily elsewhere?

Not that this is so common in Australia, thanks to the tedious obsessions of most of our university and professional intellectuals, to whom we owe the continuing abysmally low standard of political commentary and lack of real reporting of policy, but it is certainly easily to be found on other internet sources. The Australian internet newsletters have for the most part been a failure so far—the online journals are full of the same kind of rubbish as is spouted in the universities. For a time Crikey was a refreshing, larrikinish, exception; now that it has been taken over by one of the mini-empires of publishing it has become boring and predictable. So for the most part our allegedly intellectual life in online publishing is a matter of rounding up the usual suspects. The newspapers are slightly better in this respect since they at least realise that there is a wider audience than those connected with the intellectual kaffeeklatsches.

The decline of the print media is now being followed by that of the traditional broadcast media—if the word traditional can appropriately be applied to a phenomenon with origins in the twentieth century. Radio has been surprisingly vigorous, perhaps because while monopolies and licensing have existed from the beginning they have nevertheless allowed a proliferation of, first, small local stations and, since, fiercely competitive commercial outlets. The dead hand of bureaucracy was partially thrown off with the invention of FM broadcasting, and this remains essentially local.

Television with its origins in Australia only fifty years ago still remains essentially an oligopoly. But again this is beginning to be challenged by new technologies. The first step towards this was cable subscription television. But even this, as well as mass audience cinema release, has been challenged by the growth first of all of VHS tapes and now most of all by DVD releases of films, both backlist and new—more and more films are being seen only momentarily on cinema screen and then go into DVD release, while some are even bypassing the cinemas and going straight to DVD. This has clearly affected both cinema audiences and television audiences for film. So increasingly the free-to-air television stations are abandoning the traditional repeats of old films in favour of alternatives. That is, with the exception of the “national” broadcaster, the ABC, which devotes hours of overnight time to interminable repeats of old British rubbish.

At the same time DVD releases themselves are under threat from direct downloads of current and archival films. Telstra Bigpond Movies has been offering an excellent library of DVDs by an efficient postal distribution system (we must be thankful that some aspects of Australia Post are still functioning in a reasonable manner). Moreover there are superb backlists of old films on DVD growing on sites like Amazon, such that once-rare jewels of cinematic history can now be added to one’s own library. But Telstra is now offering direct downloads by broadband over the internet, so that for a fee considerably less than the normal cinema seat price one can have many films downloaded to one’s own computer for viewing at leisure. Clearly with the spread of suitable facilities this could begin to compete with traditional first cinema release. Some traditionalists prefer sitting in uncomfortable seats in a cinema amongst other people to enjoy a film. But these are, literally, dying out. More sensible people see the advantages of sitting in one’s own home, alone or with friends, with the ability to take breaks at will.

THE NEW MEDIA are also threatening the advertising base of the commercial television stations, which are fighting back by aiming primarily for lowest common denominator audience appeal material like game shows, “reality” shows, and interminable repeats of (mostly) old American rubbish, and by trying to come to grips with cost increases. The relatively serious news and current affairs programs are the main sufferers here, being both expensive and commanding diminishing audiences. While many people now take their news from television rather than newspapers, a short bulletin is quite enough for them. They are in general not interested in more than the occasional extended treatment, still less in the kind of phony investigative journalism which is the legacy of Watergate and in particular its popularised film version, All the President’s Men (1976).

But of course all this is beloved of contemporary journalist culture, and it is for this kind of thing that journalists make awards to each other. And it has to be remembered that virtually all media criticism of the trend in television programming is self-interested, that is, posited on the notion that the primary purpose of television is information packaged by journalists, not entertainment. This is very much the nature of all journalistic criticism of media policy. That, and in the case especially of ABC journalism, the desire to prescribe the kind of material which the media should carry.

The ABC is of course the source of much of the criticism of current and any possible changes in media policy, along with other interests, such as those of actors and all others involved in the film and television industries professionally. These, together with the educated elites of the country, firmly believe that they have the right to employment in their industries, and to have the product provided at public expense or as a kind of tax on the commercial stations (as with prescribed local content rules). The supposed right to public entertainment by free-to-air television is deeply ingrained across the community, which is used to enjoying the fruits of advertising—tolerating which is the price we have to pay, more or less unwillingly (some people enjoy advertising in itself, as well as appreciating the opportunities for comfort breaks).

There is also a firm belief that there is a kind of natural right to the free-to-air broadcasting of sporting events, popular ones at least (others have to struggle, unless they are promoted for ideological reasons, such as some women’s sporting events on the ABC)—thus the incomes of those actively involved in these sports are artificially depressed. This is certainly an injustice to the top performers who are, at least, allowed some compensation through advertising sponsorships. For sports haters the injustice is compounded by the insistence of the ABC as well as the commercials on covering as much of this kind of thing as they can at the expense of other free-to-air viewers. When sport is on every commercial channel, why must it be given to ABC audiences free even from the indirect payment through advertising? (Free, that is, from advertising other than that devoted to the ABC itself, its own commercial marketing activities, and to its friends.)

We certainly have an excellent example of the utility of some free-to-air sporting coverage in the remarkably successful promotion of the game of soccer by SBS television. That has helped make popular a sport in the past greatly neglected—though it is of all the codes of football probably the healthiest in that there is less violence and therefore greater participation by girls as well as boys, while kicking a ball around is an easily available recreation for everybody.

But it also raises the question of advertising—not just in the form currently carried by SBS, but in the extended form which is proposed. For if there is sufficient support for sport such as soccer on SBS to carry advertising we have to ask why the case for public funding is not thereby weakened—why should the taxpayers pay twice over for that channel? In any case the original point of SBS television has been largely lost. When it took to running good quality foreign films these had a point, but not now with the ready availability of such film in DVDs and other media; in any case they were mainly enjoyed by well-educated Anglo middle-class viewers, not the kind of people SBS was established to serve. Even more so with the frequent late night broadcasts of soft-core porn films, which have given SBS its alternative name: Sex Before Soccer. There is a strong case for, if not withdrawing public funding from SBS immediately, at least allowing it to taper off over time, forcing the channel to earn its own living.