It's time for a new TV deal

The Bills now before the Senate propose changes. Some will help—removing restrictions on the programs the ABC and SBS can carry on their extra channels; allowing commercial networks to run separate programs in high definition and standard definition from the beginning of next year, and to introduce another channel from 2009.

More changes, to be included in further legislation, are designed to get to air two wholly new services. One will offer ‘datacasting and narrowcasting’ services to households, although we still don’t know exactly what these will include. The other will transmit mobile TV to people, though new handsets will be required to receive both the video content already available on 3G phones, and the new mobile TV services, which will use different technology.

There is still not enough in this that allows the potential of digital TV to be fully explored. No more broadcast TV to households, just datacast and narrowcast. No major live sport on the new multi-channels. The government is still trying to micro-manage the use of uncertain technology.

But it is not nearly so careful about who gets to use it. It is allowing the powerful players who are already well-positioned in the multi-channel future, including Foxtel and its shareholders, Telstra, News Limited and PBL (owners of the Nine Network), to acquire more spectrum. At the same time, it is proposing liberalisation of ownership rules, whose impact is certain—more consolidated power in an already concentrated media landscape.

The Government is being too radical on ownership but too cautious on digital TV. It is time to stop tip-toeing around TV’s future, crafting complex new deals between media players, the logic and impact of which will be lost on anyone with a lazy few dollars to spend at Harvey Norman or Clive Peeters.