Tim Blair

The media is not just a corporate business in the market.

It is also an integral part of liberal democracy and a contributor to the public conversation in civil society.

Which is exactly why it should not be constrained by any ownership rules.

How about this?

There should be rules and regulations to ensure new entrants to the media marketplace are protected from the predatory behaviour by the Murdochs and the Packers.

There should also be a tough regulator of the media marketplace to ensure competition in a market dominnated by 2 oligopolies

There should be laws to protect public broadcasting in difderent forms.

There should be laws to protect Australian culture through fostering Australian content

Get rid of media ownership laws and new entrants would be better able to participate in the media marketplace. If they produce a better product than Murdoch or Packer, they will survive.

Regulation doesn't ensure competition. A free market does.

What does public broadcasting need to be protected from, exactly?

"Australian culture" is a flexible and evolving thing. Why limit it by enforcing content rules when, free of those, it might evolve in more interesting and diverse ways? How do you define content as "Australian" - must the performers be residents or have citizenship? Are immigrants banned?

Tim
you seem to be saying that the media oligopoly is a minor problem in the economy, and that anti-trust and anti-oligopoly policies are unnecessary because the powers of large media companies will be constrained by competition.

So there is no need for a tough and strong regulator to ensure comeptition and the flowering of dynamic entrepreneurial media players.

You also seem to imply that the dependency of journalists as employees of the big media companies is okay and has nothing to do with the moral basis of the market order. They cannot become entrepreneurs.

But dependent journalists cannot acquire the virtues that are need to sustain your free market culture. They canmot become independent sovereign individuals.

Does not this undermine the basis for your free society?

So there is obviously a role for regulation of the Internet - to ensure competition, as you put it. What do you propose?

Three things I don't understand about the media ownership debate:

1. why is it that the normal competition/antitrust rules aren't sufficient to ensure the necessary level of competition in media, even though we are happy to rely on them in other equally/more vital parts of the economy.

2. why aren't opponents of media concentration focusing their energies on removing the artificial barriers to entry in TV - is there any reason why there should not be more free-to-air licenses available other than the fact that the existing players don't want there to be? (Is the silence of the handwringers on this score as simple as the fact that lower barriers to entry would mean more commercial media, and commercial media is bad?)

3. Assuming the absence of artificial barriers to entry, what is wrong with letting the preferences of the population decide which outlets succeed and which do not? Isn't it axiomatic that a media landsacpe that disgruntles a large section of the population is a market opportunity waiting to happen?

Actually the biggest scandal in media regulation in Australia is that there are so few commercial television licences. There are three in each city, whereas there has always been spectrum for many more. Essentially, the government has refused to issue more licences in order to keep Kerry Packer happy. Even with digital television, the licences prevent commercial channels from providing new television services. (The effect of digital in the UK has been to increase the number of free channels from five to about 30, but this is explicitely illegal in Australia).

I didn't read what Mork said before posting, so I said many of the same things. Well said, Mork.

A scandal equal to the ridiculous number of television licences: the tiny number of radio licences. Sydney has fewer than Auckland. When a new licence was auctioned a few years ago, it sold for ridiculous multi-millions, leading one commentator to describe the market as "very healthy".

Bullshit. If only one driver's licence was sold every year, it would fetch much the same grossly inflated price. This is the opposite of healthy.

The tiny number of radio stations in Sydney, by the way, also explains the disproportionate influence of Alan Jones and John Laws.

Exactly. Thanks to the regulators, my drunken ramblings are kept from the ears of my 'potentially' adoring public.

Tim: absolutely. The restricted number of taxi licences in Sydney is also a scandal. As is the finite number of pub and bottle shop licences. And the (now slightly weakened) newsagent monopoly on newspaper sales. And the ban on any corporate ownership of pharmacies. And the list goes on..

Tim: absolutely. The restricted number of taxi licences in Sydney is also a scandal. As is the finite number of pub and bottle shop licences. And the (now slightly weakened) newsagent monopoly on newspaper sales. And the ban on any corporate ownership of pharmacies. And the list goes on..

Tim,
you say in response to my argument for media regulation:

"So there is obviously a role for regulation of the Internet - to ensure competition, as you put it. What do you propose?"

How about regulation to stop spam? That is freedom that has become destructive as it will block the Internet from working.

Licenses are a scam which has multiplied costs and by that deliberate corruption of the market prevents comeptition.
The excuse is, it will undermine revenues of the majors. In the first instance, nonsense, since the capital required to operate,in particular major T.V. networks is greater than would be available to a small network.It certainly forces out however, those with the muscle to set up an alternative.

It hammers innovation since the market is basically handed over to current operators in each market. In the case of the ABC , compounded by the fact it does'nt earn its revenues; it is a mere consumer, quite parasitical.

Competition and concentration are two separate matters. NCP owns a large stable of publications, each operated on content independently of each other.Concentration, in otherwords, is a straw man.
The problem is freedom of entry, which doesn't exist.Licenses and regulation is a scam which has stuffed the market right up..