Commercial networks in unison over bid to dump licence fees
David Gyngell and Hamish McLennan back Tim Worner's call to end licence fees.
- Published by David Knox
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Network bosses David Gyngell and Hamish McLennan have backed Tim Worner’s proposal that Free to Air commercial broadcasters no longer pay a licence fee.
Last week the Seven boss argued that Australian networks paid too much in licence fees when new platforms were free from any such fee, making the competition imbalanced.
“I think there should be no licence fees,” Gyngell told The Australian. “We’re trying to enhance the culture of Australian consumers and Google comes in, eats our lunch, and takes the money offshore.
“Around the world, licence fees have been removed by largely all free-to-air network industries.”
Australian networks pay 4.5% of gross revenue in licence fees, lowered by previous Labor government from 9%.
Comparative fees are: USA (0.06 per cent), Canada (1 per cent), New Zealand (0.58 per cent), Austria (0.4 per cent) and Hong Kong (0.37 per cent).
TEN CEO Hamish McLennan added, “It is illogical for the free-to-air networks to pay a monumental licence fee when SVOD products stream directly into the home via the internet for free around Australia.”
Both Nine and Seven have already entered the SVOD market in Australia via Stan and Presto, respectively.
But ASTRA Chairman Andrew Maiden points out, “Seven Network chief Tim Worner’s bid to scrap licence fees is understandable,” he said. “However, licence fees should only be abolished if networks give up valuable commercial benefits gifted to them by taxpayers or bestowed by regulation. Free-to-air networks enjoy discounted access to a finite public radio spectrum, a rigged market for sports broadcast rights, and protection from competition from a fourth network.”
13 Responses
Why bother giving our FTA commercial stations any kind of “free ride” Geez, they can’t ad won’t even come out of hiding behind their obsolete channel numbers in the metropolitan areas(they should’ve been made to use the same digital channel allocation numbers as their regional affiliates – TCN = 8; ATN = 6; TEN = 5) The free-to-air commercial stations are spoilt little brats who cram our airwaves with utter crap. No, don’t cut the fees, quadruple them instead!
If the licence fees were scrapped would we get a fourth fta commercial network?
Of course none of them want to pay,but that’s the way it is.FTA gets away with a lot in this country.The government already helps out in a big way to pay for their fees.They are on a great wicket.And have endless amount of cable shows in their hands.Which is so wrong in my opinion
Make it an additional content quota on top of their current quotas (non sport). The govt will make it all back in payroll and GST while adding substantial fuel to the industry which then flows onto job creation.
FTA uses billions of dollars in public owned spectrum which they get cheaply. The other services have to either pay market price for spectrum or access on cable networks or consumers are paying for bandwidth on broadband to access them. The idea that it is free is nonsense. If people would rather pay thousands of dollars a year in broadband or cable fees rather than watch your free product that is hardly someone else’s problem.
If the FTA networks think that they are not getting a good deal and are disadvantaged relative to internet companies, then why don’t they stop broadcasting, saving themselves the licence fees, and stream their content?
Their idea of enhancing the culture is broadcasting cheap US M and MA15+ content to children.
Scrapping licence fees? No way, Jose! If anything the fees should be quadrupled! The commercial FTA stations have a privileged position in the media landscape of Australia and they have wantonly abused it! Not only should the licence fee be quadrupled but harsher, stricter licence conditions must be imposed on the stations. Stick that in your pipes. Gyngell & McLennan!
Man on $19m salary says his company is being wounded financially.
What Maiden says in the last para pretty much sums up my position. Perhaps the Aus FTA networks can consider the higher percentage of gross revenue that they pay to be an “Australia Tax”?
“We’re trying to enhance the culture of Australian consumers…”
with dumbed-down reality and endless repeats of The Big Spam Theory, while Ten’s contribution to enhancing our culture is to show the same programming on all of its channels for the first two hours of primetime.
I think if this troika succeed, then they should give themselves a massive hike in their personal bonuses…
Other platforms aren’t leasing the massive amounts of spectrum that FTA networks are.
Wonder how much the FTA networks will have to ‘donate’ to the two major political parties to get the fees removed? How much did they pay for Conroy to slash their fees last time?
And I’d like a free pony. Can I get all you people to back me on that?
I don’t have a problem with this, so long as they use the money they save to make more shows and not give themselves pay rises.
Make it a law. You don’t see one tenth of the US shite on UK tv as they produce 90% of their schedules – even for their digis.
Would prove both a massive boost to the industry and reinforce local content as the best defence against being flooded with imports.
Apart from stump cam, Australian networks have never been innovators and have shown they need their hands held.