Reforming our media to keep Rupert out

They've been sitting in the pipeline for nigh on a decade now, so it was with a furrowed brow and some sense of relief that the Aussie press finally reported the preliminary details of the government's proposed media reforms earlier today. There would be no more guessing-games about what the reforms would entail, where some hack's reporting on a tip from someone whose housekeeper has a friend who cleans John Howard's house; no more arguments based on hearsay and scuttlebutt; and, most important of all, no more lobbying dressed up as journalism from our media outlets. And for that last point, I am thankful - The Australian's Mark Day has been really shitting me with all his talk about healthy competition within the Australian media marketplace, and the cornucopia of media outlets available to consumers in a digital age. Just shut-up will you Mark, please.

Yes, thanks to all the chit-chat that's come from the press in the last few years, Helen Coonan didn't surprise anyone when she announced the government will finally move to scrap the foreign ownership restrictions. The Communications Minister also announced the government's plan to do away with the current cross media ownership restrictions, making any media company able to own as many media outlets as they like just so long as there are five "independent voices" - TV, radio and print - in any metro market, and four in any rural market. This, too, was expected. On top of these major reforms, there are two more datacasting licenses, some more muscle for the Australian Communication and Media Authority to police content restrictions (civil fines, public apologies etc), and a number of other negligible initiatives to encourage the country to switch over to digital broadcasting. On the whole, nothing really revolutionary, and nothing really unexpected.

But not all were happy, for poor Rupert didn't quite get the complete overhaul he was looking for. Probably the biggest sticking point for Murdoch, whose company today issued a statement describing Coonan's reforms as a "policy failure on a number of fronts that will short-change consumers", was the announcement that there will be no new free-to-air television licenses issued until the switch to digital television is made, which is expected sometime between 2010 and 2012. Murdoch's long been aching to get his hands on an Australian free-to-air television ever since he was forced to sell HSV-7 in 1987. In late 86, Murdoch had purchased the Herald and Weekly Times Group, which gave him ownership of Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper, as well as Melbourne's HSV-7 television station. In the end Murdoch was forced to choose between the television station and the newspaper; he chose to keep the Herald Sun. To this day neither Rupert, or any of his affiliate companies, have a commercial stake in Australian free-to-air television (although News Limited does have a 25% stake in pay tv station Foxtel).

It's often said that owning an Australian commercial television station is virtually a license to print money. And although Eddie McGuire, James Packer and John Alexander may not agree right now - what with all the strife going on at Channel Nine at present - Rupert is in a league of his own when it comes to creating cheap, addictive television that'll sell to the lowest common denominator. With Fox in the US and BSkyB in the UK, not to mention acess to hundreds of other content streams the world over, there's no doubt Murdoch would turn a healthy profit if handed an Aussie license. There may not be a lot of praise for the government's media changes coming from the blogosphere in the coming days, but denying Rupert a free-to-air license is one of the things the government got right in its media overhaul.