Pay television: overseas experiences and Australian options

Abstract

The issue of pay television has generated a plethora of reports and submissions from politicians, bureaucrats and industrialists for a decade. That the issue is not yet resolved is the result of many factors, all of which serve to highlight the structural complexities of the Australian electronic media system. At the political level, social policy is in a state of transition and broadcasting policy has reflected this. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) have been forced to reappraise their roles as public broadcasters. The commercial networks have seen their reserves and their profitability deteriorate drastically in an environment of poor management, fluctuating government policy and a depressed national economy. The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT), the federal regulator of commercial broadcasting, is struggling to adapt to these new circumstances, and is confronted by new challenges to its powers and responsibilities.
Ideally, a discussion on the introduction of pay television would be conducted within the context of a comprehensive and established federal broadcasting policy. Basic to this thesis is the perception that no such policy exists. It is left to the analyst to speculate as to the intentions evident in Government initiatives, suggest the potential impact of pay television in that light, and offer constructive criticism accordingly.
This thesis recognises that pay television seems inevitable as both major political parties are committed, in principle at least, to its introduction. This thesis sets itself the following objectives: to identify the salient components that serve to define pay television; to develop and employ a methodology to extract lessons from the experiences of others with pay television, whilst remaining sensitive to historical and structural context; to apply those lessons to the Australia condition; and to make recommendations on the introduction of pay television, based on both the definitional and comparative work of this thesis, within the context of contemporary Government deliberations, as evident in the Report from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Transport, Communications and Infrastructure of November 1989.

Date of Award	1991
Original language	English
Supervisor	John Penhallurick (Supervisor) & Graeme Osborne (Supervisor)