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Ray Martin to front regional media campaign

Prime Media Group, WIN Network & Southern Cross lock arms in a campaign for a level playing field.

Australia’s leading regional media companies have enlisted veteran television

Veteran journalist Ray Martin will front a regional campaign calling on the government for further reforms in media ownership.

Rival broadcasters Prime Media Group, WIN Network and Southern Cross Austereo have joined with newspaper publisher Australia Community Media under the banner “Save Our Voices”. They claim the 1992 Broadcasting Services Act prevents regional outlets from competing fairly with the metropolitan media and global platforms such as Netflix and Disney+.

“I lament the towns and regions that have lost newspapers, television and radio stations,” Martin said. “As a storyteller, newspapers and television honestly give a town soul.”

Regional networks previously campaigned under the Save Our Voices banner, ahead of media reforms approved by Parliament in 2017 under then-PM Malcolm Turnbull. They claim an overhaul helped metropolitan media but failed to recognise the impact of new digital entertainment and news services.

An advertising blitz featuring Ray Martin begins on Monday.

Source: The Courier

8 Responses

  1. Prime7 and Prime tried to merge to créate the scale the regional networks are Asking for to compete…. and it was blocked by…… 2 men who dominate ownership of regional tv. So……what gives?

  2. Why do I feel this to be a little hypocritical?

    Bruce and Antony (respective owners of WIN and ACM) who jointly own part of Prime blocked the sale of Prime to Seven that could have helped invest in bringing a better level playing field to prime…. But now want to whine about being left behind from the big players? Doesn’t make sense to me.

    1. exactly, what a very good point. i have heard rumors that Bruce and Antony want to buy PRIME, not sure if together or in competition, lets see what happens here

  3. We should break up the broadcasters even further and bring true independence back to regional media. The only reason regional TV is too expensive is because the three metros have a monopoly on content and can charge whatever they want

    1. Aint that the truth. But that would worry me, as we would go back to the bad old monopoly days. Some of the pre-aggregation regionals knew it and provided a very bare bones service with very little localism and scheduled decades old content the metros had not screened in years. At least, there should be two competing operators in each regional licence area, which is how aggregation should have been originally established. There was and still is no capacity for three competing operators in regional areas. Case in point, look how poorly served viewers are in Griffith and Mt Gambier/Loxton being they are still serviced by a monopoly operator with very limited HD and multi-channel choice.

      1. That’s a perfectly legitimate perspective but I feel like we need quality over quantity here. Regional areas don’t need so many multichannels for instance and we don’t need so many versions of the same identical Sydney news bulletin coming from Seven Nine and Ten.

        I feel like one or two good independent commercial stations complimented by the ABC and SBS would be better than what’s happening now.

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