Anti-siphoning stuck in Victorian times
New anti-siphoning plans may be held over until after the Victorian State election, due on Saturday November 27th.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
Senator Conroy’s new anti-siphoning plans may be held over until after the Victorian State election, due on Saturday November 27th.
If Labor is planning on sending more games to Pay TV, and there is no guarantee that’s a certainty, then the Brumby Government may find it loses some votes.
Federal Cabinet was due to consider an overhaul to the anti-siphoning regime yesterday but the discussion has been deferred, pushing the issue into the final sitting week of Parliament for 2010.
Greens leader, Bob Brown, is insisting that it be tabled before both houses rise for the year at the end of next week, before the November 27 Victorian election.
Last week The Age tipped that four big games could go to Pay TV.
Conroy has denied the speculation, saying the Friday and Saturday night games won’t be moving off Free to Air.
He is expected to ensure four games of AFL and three games of NRL each round will stay put.
“I don’t anticipate there will be any change between that balance,” he has said.
But there could be changes if Foxtel is allowed to bid directly for its current matches instead of buying them in a network on-sell. That’s exactly what the AFL would like to see realised, because it would boost the asking price.
However if Nine doesn’t weigh into the AFL bidding, the league may not get the price it is seeking.
A Nine spokesperson told independent sports website BackPageLead, “We haven’t decided if we’re interested in bidding or not. The Nine network would not pay a silly amount of money for the rights. We’ll have a look at things and if we’re not in the ballpark, we won’t get involved.
“No-one should get too excited about the idea we’re absolutely dying to get the AFL rights, because that’s not necessarily right.
“I’m not saying we’re not interested – but we need to find out what the terms are, and what the ballpark figure is. We’re not going to get involved in a silly bidding war.’’
The current list expires in December.
Source: The Age, The Australian, smh.com.au, Back Page Lead
12 Responses
I don’t think the fact the current list expires in December will guarantee we get a new one then. Conroy still has all his Xmas shopping to get done post the Vic election. Let’s say a couple weeks in the new year cruising the Whitsundays, not to mention plenty of time on the golf course teeing up those final ‘sweetheart’ deals…how does February sound?
It is absurd that football is not on the anti-siphoning list. More Australians kick a ball around than run around with one, yet the media has so much money tied up with the handball codes that they want soccer marginalised to the 35% of Aussies who have foxtel – and then cut then in about half again for the actual number of subscribers who get the sports package. I want to watch and support the socceroos every single game, not just the world cup!
I am in favor of scraping the Anti-Siphoning list. This is because the sports which are not on the list always get disadvantaged, sports such as football, (soccer), Basketball, Tennis ( excluding the Aust Open Series) and so on. Anyway FTA Networks have been stuffing around and they have been cushioned by the Anti-Siphoning list so they have never had to answer to anyone. Like any Australian who is not rich i do not want PAY TV to steal all of the sports but i also want the networks to stop treating certain sporting events and leagues like crap, and the viewers like crap. As far as hording is concerned PAY TV hordes as much as FTA.
Can I try summing up anti-exclusivity again? By it I mean that Pay TV can’t interfere and exclude anything from free-to-air. Plus vice versa. So both can have whichever sport or TV shows they like and they can’t deny the other the right to air it at all. They are separate from each other. Unless they make their own scripted show and even then they can make a deal to air it on the other if they want to. Just a thought.
….and so here we have modern politics in action – despite some clear arguements as to what would benefit the consumers/voters, we have successive governments failing to act and delaying the decision because they are worried about 3 or 4 wealthy industry players.
Conroy has no conviction and as a result no credibility.
Great heading, David!
whats the bet that the use it or lose it, and requirement to show things live will not be uniform across the country….
Get the damn thing done already. We have been waiting for over 12 months. Its time for some damn action!!!
Well they should lose votes for holding over now as well!
Johnson, the unpopularity of the current NSW and Qld state governments shouldn’t have had an effect on the federal election, but clearly it did. Some people obviously feel the reverse may apply too, that the Vic government could suffer backlash from an unpopular federal decision.
Why can’t they have an anti-exclusive rule? In other words Pay TV can never have anything that’s exclusive to them unless none of the free-to-air channels don’t pick it up. But it’s still non-exclusive. Also for the free-to-air channels they can only have exclusivity for anything on free-to-air but they can never deny Pay TV anything at all.
So it means if Pay TV wants to show something then they can but neither one can deny the other service anything i.e. free-to-air or pay TV. It means the free-to-air channels can only exclude or include each other based on the deals they do.
It really is stupid they can’t fix this to be sensible..
Why is changes to the anti-siphoning list a state election issue? Senator Conroy should announce the (provisional) changes next Monday so that Nine could make arrangements to the first Ashes Test coverage. For example, each day’s play could go until 6.30pm in VIC, NSW, ACT and Tasmania on GEM while Nine has the news. The extra half hour will cover the last ball of the day plus some post-game interviews and analysis.