Revamp for Australian media laws

Digital TV has been slow to catch on in Australia so far

CANBERRA, Australia (CNN) -- Australia's often-maligned media laws are set for another revamp this month, but few, if any of major players are likely to be entirely happy with the outcome.

Creating a cohesive, forward-looking approach to telecommunications and media policy in Australia is no easy task, given a legacy of decades of government intervention and pandering to vested interests.

A rapidly changing and uncertain technological environment, combined with a global slump in media revenues, only compounds the difficulties for Australia's Communications Minister Richard Alston.

Key to the proposed government reforms -- which are expected to be introduced to parliament this month -- is a loosening up Australia's restrictive cross-media ownership and foreign ownership laws.

Also high on the agenda is a revamp of the government's contentious policy on digital television broadcasting.

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As the laws currently stand, metropolitan newspaper proprietors cannot own television stations in the same city and vice versa.

In addition, non-Australian media proprietors cannot own a controlling interest in major Australian media properties.

These rules, put in place around 15 years ago, have been superceded by the marketplace -- particularly by the advent of the Internet, digital technologies and the convergence of communications media.

But the development of these new media in Australia has been hampered by a lack of domestic and offshore investors who have been deterred by restrictive and sometimes arcane rules.

For example, Australian free-to-air TV broadcasters are currently banned from using digital technology to broadcast multiple channels.

Early-adopters

The interests of media proprietors such as the Murdochs are not easily ignored

This rule, which was introduced to protect Australia's fledgling pay-TV cable and satellite operators, is likely to be one of the first to be scrapped by the government.

Similarly, restrictions placed on media companies seeking digital datacasting licenses were so tight -- to protect the interests of free-to-air television operators -- that no media companies bothered applying.

TV companies, for their part, have been required to broadcast a 20 hour- per-week quota of the spectrum-hungry High Definition TV signals, despite a decided lack of interest in this technology by the Australian public.

While Australians are renowned for being aggressive early-adopters of new technologies, the take-up of digital TV and broadband communication options has been sluggish compared with comparable countries.

The government, despite its poor record so far on the digital TV front, is now making the right noises.

And an extensive review of the nation's datacasting arrangements is expected to be presented to parliament shortly.

Broadband

"Internationally, broadcasting will inevitably become digitized and Australia will have to go with the flow if it wants to maintain its capacity to export and import content," Alston said in a speech earlier this week.

"Digital technology has the potential to utterly revolutionize the communications market," he said.

Alston also maintains that Australians are now poised to emphatically embrace broadband communications for business and pleasure, as long as they are provided with "real competition in the services delivered".

This would include more service providers having access to the broadband cable currently operated by the two major pay-TV players, Foxtel and Optus -- both of whom are seeking government approval to merge their operations in a bid to provide a single, expanded and hopefully profitable service.

While Alston acknowledges that the take-off of Digital TV in Australia has been slow, he says its eventual adoption here is inevitable.

Vested interests

The government is now keen to push for a more open communications environment

And an industry survey released this week by the Interactive Television Research Institute, based at Murdoch University in Western Australia, forecasts almost half the Australian population will have access to the technology within six years.

Whether the public is offered sufficiently attractive and competitively priced products to entice them to use this access, is another matter.

So far, the recent history of broadcasting in Australia would suggest too much optimism would be ill-founded.

The vested interests of the powerful existing media proprietors -- Channel 9's Kerry Packer, News Corp's Rupert Murdoch and Fairfax newspaper empire -- have tended to prevail over a free and open media marketplace.

The government is now saying that for digital TV and broadband communications to flourish, this open marketplace is just what Australia needs.

Whether the Government's latest regulatory regime can deliver that, remains to be seen.