Freudenstein: ABC boss Scott’s paid content claims are laughably inaccurate
ABC boss Mark Scott’s prediction last week that the organisation would come under attack in the paid content debate proved correct today, with News Digital Media CEO Richard Freudenstein returning fire in The Australian.
In a lengthy piece, Freudenstein accuses Scott of “bold but entirely inaccurate claims, which demand correction”. Freudenstein argues:
“As the head of a company that takes in excess of $800 million every year from Australian taxpayers, (Scott’s) claim that the ABC’s online news content ‘will certainly be free’ is as laughable as it is disingenuous. Similarly, he has some gall to criticise the ‘old proprietorial model’, which he says ‘operated as a form of protection from harsh realities the businesses might otherwise have faced’, since this precisely describes the ABC’s government-owned model.”
In the piece, Freudenstein asserts: “I am not attacking the ABC’s content or its right to exist, simply advocating a plurality of independent voices.”
Meanwhile, The Australian’s media columnist Mark Day also joins the debate, pointing out that those who predict News Ltd will fail to get people to pay for content do not yet know what the product will be. Although he claims not to have been briefed, he says new News Ltd sites will be “built in the style of social networks”.
In last week’s speech, Scott had accused News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch of being like an emperor who was unaware that his empire was in decline.
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There is alot of grandstanding by people stating they will never pay for news content and will happily source it for free from wherever they can. That may be so, but that is not to say there is not a sustainable (and profitable) business model in selling news content. I am interested to see the details before forming a view.
And for those of you that say it simply won’t work on the grounds that you can’t make people pay for something that once was free, go and have a word with the chaps in the bottled water industry.
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Just what we need … more social networks.
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It’s a muddy debate – no doubt about that, but the attempts by Freudenstein to belittle Scott’s “ABC content is free” argument do seem like a stretch.
Sure, the ABC is government funded. Sure I pay my taxes. And yes, I access the ABC website. But that does not mean I paid for the content any more than me buying a coke means I paid for the News website when a Coke advert appears on it. Indirectly, money ends up flowing through, but it’s wrong to directly link the performance of one to the payment of another.
Of course a plurality of voices should exist as well. I don’t think anyone’s arguing against that. But putting up a paywall actually hampers that plurality. Fewer people will have access to that particular voice and will default to the free alternatives – one of which will be the ABC.
If Freudenstein is pulling a James Murdoch and advocating the government restrict the ABC’s ability to provide free content so as to allow paid competition in this space, then a real argument is about to kick off!
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Just what we need… more business models built like the bottled water industry
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