WIN TV reassesses regional News after govt shelves media reform
"We will have to review how and if we can produce local news," says WIN TV CEO Andrew Lancaster.
- Published by David Knox
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WIN Television is reviewing whether it will continue to produce 16 regional News bulletins after reports the government has shelved plans for media reform.
Reports claim a reform plan from Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been rejected by Cabinet, delaying any hope of the reach rule (no more than 75% media ownership in a licence area) being abolished.
WIN Network CEO Andrew Lancaster said, “WIN is extremely disappointed by recent reports that the Government is looking to shelve any media reforms.
“Without having the ability to compete on a level playing field and faced with rising programming and infrastructure costs, we will have to review how and if we can produce local news and what level of support we can provide to regional communities.”
WIN recently closed its news bureaus in Mackay and Mildura.
“Of great concern today is the silence on the issue from politicians in regional communities who seem to only find a voice after their communities are impacted by the removal or reduction of a local news service,” Lancaster said.
“Now might be the time for them to speak to their parliamentary colleagues in light of the overnight news of shelving media reform. The 75% Reach Rule needs to be removed and License fees reduced or removed if WIN is to continue with the level of services it provides in Regional Australia.”
Prime Media Group chairman John Hartigan has also criticised shelving the plans, telling The Australian, “I find it very difficult to believe the Abbott government can sit there with such a significant range of regional voices and ignore the fact that over 200 journalist positions across television and newspapers have gone in the past 12 months.”
Some reports claim Joe Mr Hockey voiced concerns that it was ill-conceived and would advantage Nine and Fairfax, while others suggest an angry Seven West Chairman Kerry Stokes phoned Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop, resulting in the reforms being shelved.
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13 Responses
If there was a buck to be made in Country TV News the Networks would be there in a flash. There isn’t so they’re not. If Country TV News is to be subsidised it’s up to the Govt.
Another jumped up organisation carrying on with the usual tantrums and rent-seeking behaviour. The commitment to regional news should be mandatory. If they can’t make a buck out of the privelaged licences they have then give them back to the government and let someone into the industry who will provide a service. Even the amatuer Ch. 31 are better at program production than the scrooges at WIN.
@Wharto, I agree but I would take it much further. Regional TV stations should be required, as a strict condition of their licence, to produce a full comprehensive news bulletin out of their pre-existing(pre-aggregation) studios, just as Station NBN-Newcastle already does. This should be coupled with the stations retaining, or reverting to their pre-aggregation identities, but not referring to channel numbers. Instead of Prime, we’d have Television New England(Tamworth/Taree) and Country Television Services(Orange/Wagga/Central West Slopes) etcetera, and of course, not forgetting Northern Rivers Television! Affiliations with capital-city stations should never come at the expense of local(regional) identity and autonomy.
“Southern Cross style 3 minute noodle news updates” – for us in Wollongong make that 20-secs, one sentence items days old, no more than three per “bulletin”, and an irrelevant weather comment such as “thormth in the thuthern areath tomorrow”.
There simply isn’t the content to sustain 30 minute local news so a 15 min insert into the hour long news should be enough .. But each region needs to have at least one broadcaster mandated to doing local news
And most of those 200 jobs went from newspapers. So how does allowing print and TV to merge and giving benefits to WIN and Prime shareholders, (why else are they pressing so hard for it?), help with what is an inevitable technological change that is only going to accelerate with the NBN and high speed wireless.
Ten, Seven and Nine can’t agree on anything, and the entire industry is mostly interested in making up bogus arguments (e.g. this press release) to pressure the government into cutting their already greatly reduced licence fees.
If they are so unhappy with the industry they can sell out or just hand the licences back to the government at anytime.
Sounds like WIN has given a threat.
I most certainly hope WIN-TV is threatened! The station should be ordered, on pain of revoking its licence, to relinquish all(emphasise: all) of its stations outside its Southern NSW base. As for the so-called “Reach Rule”, it should not be abolished, but strengthened so that no media owner may own more than one licence, for one type of media and in one market only! Absolutely no cross-media ownership should be permitted under any circumstance.
Yep, saw this coming a mile off.
No doubt WIN will use this as a convenient excuse to cut most, if not all their stand alone bulletins and instead insert a 5 to 10 minute local window at the bottom end of the hour long 6pm Nine News bulletin in each state no doubt to all be produced out of Wollongong for each state/region WIN broadcasts into now. Tasmania may still stay a separate statewide composite local/state/national/international bulletin as Nine does not produce a 6pm bulletin for Tasmania. With the balance of required ACMA localism points taken up with Southern Cross style 3 minute noodle news updates at other times of the day.
Gotta luv the Southern Cross 3 minute news updates – “noodle news” – ,most accurate description I have seen in a long time. I love to watch it as they mispronounce almost all place names on the NSW North Coast – certainly worth the interuption ;-p
They pretty much read a truncated but word for word version of a story that has appeared on ABC news or news.com online a few days ago.
I for one think these media reforms should be put on the table regardless if Joe Hockey doesn’t like then so be it. It needs to be relaxed. I think ALP would support it regardless as they are outdated such as two out of three rule, reach rule, primary channels to HD, licence fees reduced for networks, minor changes to anti-siphoning for example golf plus others from the list. I would have thought Foxtel and Ten would be the big winners. I think Kerry Stokes is showing his age. Is Kerry Stokes that worried when his network is leading the charge but they need to be overhauled
Kerry Stokes is too busy pottering around the relics in the Australian War Memorial. Seven and Prime7 are still showing those Australia Remembers idents for the centenary of Anzac even though Anzac Day came and went almost three months ago.