You’ll hear the shouts joy from Australia’s media owners should the Government get its way in Parliament this week. On the chopping block for the House is the much-talked-about media laws.

Having apparently rediscovered his swagger, Prime Minister Turnbull said that successive governments had “kicked the reform of these media ownership rules into the long grass for so long that they have formed part of the rich subsoil of Australian political inertia and we are taking them out.”

 

 

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The changes – which include higher thresholds for local news content - have been welcomed by almost all players in the regional television industry. Andrew Lancaster, CEO of WIN Television (which remains family-owned and highly profitable) was certainly thrilled.

“The new local content obligations strike a sensible balance between ensuring reasonable levels of local content are maintained upon the merger of a regional and metro broadcaster, while ensuring local news services remain financially viable in the meantime.”

 

 

Composed of two key pieces of legislation, the reform package will have a big impact on regional networks and include new legislative settings for traditional media, and includes:

 

THE REACH RULE

Previously, media owners were prevented from accessing more than 75% of the population through a single form of media. For example, News Corp Australia has approximately 70% of Australia’s newspaper market which is under the current threshold.

Under the proposed legislation, this threshold will be abolished.

 

THE TWO-OUT-OF-THREE RULE

Previously, media was described as television, radio and newspapers. This rule prevented media companies from being involved in all three media, which is largely why News Corp Australia has stayed out of radio (given it has interests in Pay TV and newspapers) and Fairfax Media has stayed out of television (due to its papers and majority share of Macquarie Radio Network).

This will be also be abolished.

 

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It’s not difficult to see how outdated these laws are. As described by the PM, they were created before Pay TV and the Internet entered the Australian media market. The argument for change is that the internet brings diversity of opinion and that the old transmission models are losing their influence. Clearly the growth of online news over the last two years has had a huge impact, and readership will continue to build in the years to come.

 

 

However, the longstanding claim that the digital environment presents a much more diverse set of voices is certainly under fire. The sheer amount of resources required to deliver online media means that it tends to be traditional media companies that attract the lion's share of readership online.

No surprise then that the result of the January 2016 online news survey (courtesy of Neilsen) shows that traditional newspapers and television broadcast companies own nine out of the top ten news websites:

TOP SITES RANKED BY UNIQUE AUDIENCE FOR NEWS 

Name	Owner
news.com.au	News Limited
smh.com.au	Fairfax Media
ABC News Websites	ABC Corporation
Daily Mail Australia	Nine Entertainment
9NEWS Websites	Nine Entertainment
Yahoo!7 News Websites	Seven West Media
The Guardian	The Guardian
The Age	Fairfax Media
The Daily Telegraph	News Corp Australia
Herald Sun	News Corp Australia

 

 

Oh, and with News Corp Australia and Lachlan Murdoch already holding a 15% share of Channel Ten, you can bet the moment that these laws are passed they’ll swoop in to take most of the rest.

 

 

By the end of the year, one of the network’s struggling multi-channels is likely to become a stream of Fox News.

So, that’s democracy for you.

 

TL,DR?

Traditional TV and newspapers are dead. Everyone is heading online and noone is making money. The new laws allow for consolidation among the big players as they move their resources to focus on digital.