Idle polemic Alert.
Peter wrote:
>The practice of selling pay TV programs in packages is called "bundling" and
>has so far been approved by the ACCC.
>The pitch from the pay TV operators was that unless they received a minimum
>amount per sub per month, $39.95 on Foxtel and $49.95 on Galaxy, then it was
>not viable to provide the programming at all and the consumer would miss out
>ie public interest.
And if this bundling - which operates at two levels: both what might (very
loosely) be called genre-specificity, and across channels that have nothing
to do with each other at all (and across the whole of which few of us
evince interest) - gives rise to the perfectly predictable high cost/low
utility mix we have now?
Why then we invest irreversible policy strategies (public: adoption of a
subscription pay TV model on the basis of the very different US evolution
of TV; public/private: outrageous Telstra/Murdoch deal; private: the whole
Galaxy/Australis saga and the further entrenchment of resident magnates)
and significant resources (duplication of infrastructure; foreign exchange
for initial capital investment and ongoing programming costs) in something
we hadn't asked for, couldn't work by any promulgated policy standard, and
which threatened the ecology of Australian broadcasting fundamentally
(aiding and abetting in weakening the public service broadcasting tradition
- whence comes our system's real diversity of content and ownership
virtues, demonstrable siphoning dynamics and foreclosure of other hitherto
'free-to-air' options).
*Is this not also a public interest argument?*
All these arguments, and more, were around long in advance of our final
determinations, and our policy community stands condemned, in my view, even
on the 'public interest' count.
>Further they do not have the top live sport that drives subs in the UK.
>And the pay TV operators wonder why they have such low take up rates despite
>their claims to the contrary.
I'm sure they well know. Surely pay TV does not figure as prominently in
their projections as it did up to 1995 (when it was way over-emphasised in
a system with public/commercial duopoly, high VCR penetration, already prey
to hype about internet's rich menu of potential offerings, and peopled by
those who either work too long or don't earn enough)?
Cheers,
Rob.
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Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.
Phone: 02-6201 2194 (BH)
Fax: 02-6201 5119
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'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.' (John Stuart Mill)
"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital." (Karl Marx)
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