Lecture 05/09/2011- Dr Bruce Redman "Commercial Media"

What is Commercial Media?

• Profit driven
• Not Government funded (for example Sweden) or licence funded (for example England)

Examples of Commercial Media:

• TV Channels except for ABC & SBS which are Public Media.
• Digital TV Channels
• Fox & Austar (Pay TV)
• News Limited (News Corp)
• Fairfax Media
• ARN
• Austereo

Commercial Media's main purpose is to be the "EYEBALLS & EARS" to advertisers and to generate audiences in turn generating profit.

The Main Players and Their Assets (including website links)

• News Limited- News Corp
  20 Century Fox, Fox Sports, Foxtel, National Geographic, Sky News, Harper Collins, The Australian, The Courier Mail, Quest, affiliated with the NRL.
• Fairfax Media
  Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Times, The Age, Financial Review, Domain, RSVP, My Career.
• Nine Entertainment Co (Previously PBL owned by CVC Asia Pacific)
  Channel 9, GO, Gem, Ninemsn, Ticketek, Acer Arena, ACP Magazines, Australian News Channel.
• Southern Cross Media Group & Southern Cross Austereo
  Southern Cross Ten, Southern Cross Television, Austereo, B105, Triple M.
• Seven West Media
  Channel 7, 7Two, 7Mate, The West Australian, Pacific Magazines, Yahoo 7, The West Australian.
• Ten Corp
  Channel Ten, One HD, Eleven.
• WIN
  WIN Television, Ten Mildura, i98 Radio, C913fm Radio, TPG, Affiliated with St George Illawara NRL Team.

Commercial Media Form

• Subscription (Foxtel etc)
• Sponsored (Chanel 9 etc)
• Subsidised (for example Stephen Conroy's Government digital TV boost)

Commercial Media Function

• Propaganda
• Social
• Profit

We look at the "Hutchins Commissions" findings and compared these to current commercial media.
Furthermore we discussed the ethical wall which divides Commercial (Advertising/Sales) & Social (Editorial) types of Commercial Media.

Commercial Media Controls

• Government Regulatory Bodies
• Internet Censorship- Chinese Government has banned Facebook.
  - Egypt tried to close down the Internet as it was fueling the riots.
• Journalist Licencing - East Timor and Indonesia require journalists to be licenced to practice.

As media becomes more commercial we see the following happen.

• Dumbing down
• Tabloidisation
• The 'desire to please'
• "Mickey Mouse" third rate news

Challenges for Commercial Media

• Advertising revenue for broadcasters is down and sliding as the advertising dollar is now spread far more widely across different media entities.
• Loss of revenue= Less investment= Less money for quality productions.

Modernisation of Commercial Media

For a long time media outlets had very little way to tell which parts of their publications/broadcast etc where actually being accessed and used. With the onset of Commercial Media on the Internet these corporations now have the ability to see what sells. By monitoring what people look at online they have learned that tabloid beats genuine news no matter how important.

Business Solutions for Commercial Media

• Quality
• Greater competition
• Move existing customers to digital
• Paywalls

Alternatively we may see a shift from large corporate media dominance to media in the public sphere online for example wikepedia, crikey, perez hilton etc, all of which are largely focused on citizen journalism.