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Turnbull calls for consensus before media reform

Malcolm Turnbull will not present media reform proposals to the govt until media organisations reach “a higher level of consensus.”

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lm-turnbCommunications Minister Malcolm Turnbull will not present media reform proposals to the government until media organisations reach “a higher level of consensus.”

Speaking at PANPA newspaper conference yesterday, Turnbull indicated his office had a “very big agenda” which also included the NBN, reform of public broadcasters and the Post Office.

“Changes to media ownership regulations are important but we do need to come to higher level of consensus before we can confidently achieve change,” he said.

Fairfax reports he has been meeting with CEOs to discuss repealing the “two out of three rule”, which prevents any one company from owning two of a newspaper, TV station and radio licence in the same market, and the “reach rule”, which prevents the Nine, TEN and Seven television networks from merging with their regional affiliates, WIN, Southern Cross and Prime.

Seven West Media, controlled by Kerry Stokes, has not supported the abolition of either cross-media ownership role while Foxtel will not support reform unless Foxtel gets significantly more access to sports rights.

Nine CEO David Gyngell and TEN’s Hamish McLennan are due to meet the minister this week.

6 Responses

  1. Too much of our media in this country is in too few hands! Media ownership in this country should not be freed up, instead it should be further restricted! Media proprietors should be allowed 1 TV station, or 1 radio station(AM or FM, not both!), or 1 newspaper in one market only, be it metropolitan or regional/rural, and there should be no cross-media ownership permitted under any circumstance. Regional networks, Prime, Southern Cross and WIN should be devolved to their original pre-aggregation component stations and allowed to operate independently of their metro affiliates. Networking should be by affiliation agreements only and shall only apply to TV. Radio should be strictly local, with stations subscribing to a national news feed only. All other programming should come from the station’s own studios. his I write in response to the calamitous way in which all our media has been…

  2. I, for one, think that Turnbull is the best communications minister we’ve had in many a year. I don’t agree with everything he proposes, but he at least speaks with some understanding of the technology he’s dealing with and that puts him way in front of most others who have had the portfolio.

    I can haz NBN now?

  3. What is the point of commissioning the Convergence Review, the Lewis Review and all manner of Utopian-style White, Blue and Green papers on various sectors of the media when all Malcolm intends to do is ring around key execs representing commercial media business interests, ensure they’re all agreed and happy- and take a machete to the national broadcasters for good measure to secure their total compliance? Is this what passes for leadership in the communications portfolio? Not for the first time I ask – has Malcolm lost his mojo?

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