|
December 08, 2006
It is well known that, for all the rhetoric of market solutions, the Australian media market is a protected cartel where existing players profits are buttressed through government regulation.
Allan Moir
Emma Dawson & Miriam Lyons argue in New Matilda that this protected cartel:
is a particularly pressing problem in the ‘new media age’, when traditional news sources, such as newspapers and television, are being supplanted by new media technologies. While, at present, the majority of the news and journalism we consume still comes from the daily paper or the nightly news, the future is digital, and the community is beginning to move decisively in that direction (despite government coddling of free to air TV). Australians are increasingly getting their news and information online or on-demand: the audience that turned the television on at the end of the working day and rarely touched the dial before bed time is largely gone.
The old ‘static’ audience of yesterday is rapidly being replaced by troops of highly mobile, technologically savvy consumers, whose loyalty is to themselves and their own tastes, rather than to any monolithic media ‘voice’. As such, they cannot be relied upon to provide the kind of mass audiences that have driven commercial media for more than 50 years.
So why protect the old media?
|
So why protect the old media?
I agree. new media has to compete in the ultimate of commodification, be nice to see old media have to do the same.