ABC chief: free content is not the problem
Oct 12
The ABC‘s managing director Mark Scott is set to hit back this week at suggestions that the media industry must move toward paid online content models.
The Australian reports that Scott will use a lecture at the University of Melbourne this Wednesday to defend the role of the online presences of the ABC and other public broadcasters around the world, which have been identified by paid content advocates as an obstacle to introducing “monetised” models.
In an address entitled “The Fall of Rome: Media after Empire”, the ABC boss is expected to reject the argument put forward by Rupert Murdoch and other critics that the proliferation of free content threatens traditional journalism. Promotional materials distributed by the University of Melbourne suggest that Scott will contend that erecting pay walls will simply reduce the size of the audience for quality journalism.
In commercial television, the age of media moguls is passing. Private equity now dominates. In newspapers, the Murdoch media empire has responded to the crisis of advertising by proposing to transform the online world in the same way that cable transformed television – by making consumers pay.
What happens to quality journalism when its reach and audience are limited in this way? What will Australians expect of the ABC in the next decade?
Scott has previously launched strong defences of the role of the ABC and public broadcasting in general, saying that going down a more commercial path was out of question.
The lecture will come just days after a bombastic speech by Murdoch at the World Media Summit in Beijing, in which he hit out at online “kleptomaniacs” and “plagiarists”, and argued that “content creators… will pay the ultimate price” if they failed to move to paid content models.
Media Spy discussion: The Internet and the media future
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- APN chief criticises ABC Open
Cyril Washbrook October 12th 2009