The bad news for Australian media companies is about to get much worse unless the Government acts
News Corp Australia has announced 60 print titles across its network will be suspended, but executive chairman Michael Miller explains it’s going to get a whole lot messier if the Australian Government doesn’t take decisive action now.
Audience demand for trusted local news and lifestyle content has never been greater, yet media companies are under unprecedented financial pressure.
Too many examples in recent months show Australian media is passing its tipping point. The announced closure of AAP, the looming loss of local voices such as The Sunraysia Daily and the decision by Nine to suspend key products are ominous signs. And yesterday News Corp Australia announced it was suspending the print editions of 60 community titles across four states from 9 April.
The Manly Daily is one of News Corp’s print products now on pause
The question is obvious, when audience demand has never been higher, why are trusted media companies in such danger?
“Australia’s demand for trusted news”, a bit rich coming from an organisation that yesterday published “Things have changed with this coronavirus panic. Now Australians can be – must be – back at work within two weeks” & have willfully downplayed the gravity of the crisis in the US and UK.
And when was the last time you paid tax?
Back of the queue.
Nic, no matter what you think of NewsCorp, you can’t deny that Facebook and Google are hollowing the entire AU media industry?
They don’t pay tax/ & hardly recognise revenue in AU. They don’t create many jobs and certainly don’t pay aggregation royalties/ Neither to journo’s for scraping content. Nor consumers for harvesting data
So why are platforms given carte blanche? But media companies regulated? Focus on the story mate
Spot on Nic.
I can personally attest that their culture would demand all News employees in the building to be at their desks, ‘working through this together’. Of course the rest of AU should be at their desks as well! Ha ha
What a load of rubbish.
If the digital platforms have it so good, you know what will happen?
New competitors will arise and wipe out the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon.
These digital companies are large and slow moving and will be slaughtered by newer nimbler platforms that will eat their lunch.
It’s the way of the market.
The Government should just get out of the way.
Your comment makes no sense.
The argument is that digital platforms are anti-competitive.
Yet yo suggest that despite being anti-competitive new forms of competition will turn up and out-compete digital platforms.
How’s about we just remove the ‘immunity from liability’ for digital platforms? Maybe then these mysterious companies can arise to out-compete Google and Facebook – even despite not having the same market share, access to capital, price point control or data troves?
So you’ve embraced digital innovation within the last 12 months (wow!)…paid no tax for years… failed to engage your audiences (some would say actively insulted them) – yet now you need help. Yeah..Nah…
Perhaps where one of only a few countries where GooBook doesn’t have a stranglehold on traffic is Korea.
Subsequently the search portals have been paying CPV syndication fees to publishers however the user does not land on publisher assets. All news content thus lives on the tech platforms’ own environment and publishers have ended up having no control over their subs and ad revenue.
What’s worse is that the tech portals have formed up “News Committees” that decide which publications are deemed “worthy” of syndication.
Ironically, Google and Facebook are seen as opportunities for publishers to take back control of their own content assets thanks to their “free” distribution and much less “bias” on who gets the traffic.
The way News will abuse any national crisis – corona, fires – for their own gains is such poor leadership.
Bail out the journalists, not the corporation.
Bail out taxpayers not journalists.
Just an excuse…manly daily getting thinner and thinner for years. They are just not interested in community
Why should the Government act??? Get the priorities right. How ridiculous.
Hmmm … for decades the big, Sydney-based media companies have been screwing the rest of Australia and are now, in turn, being screwed by someone bigger. I call it karma …
“Successive Australian Governments have stood by and watched as our traditional business model has been brought to the brink of failure – they must not stand by and endanger our future as well”
It was fine when News was buying up and destroying other small media owners back in the day; but someone else is winning and now its not fair.
The reason traditional business model failed is not the governments fault or other global businesses, it’s to do with the fact that the traditional business model never evolved. Rather than resting on trading deals to fill out your revenue, you should have focused on innovation to stay relevant.
Also, lets remember News is one of the largest global media businesses – even though they like to side with local media for sympathy.
Despite your liking of News Corp or not – the facts are plain and simple and successive governments have not had the gumption and probably not the skills to properly bring to account the Google’s, FB’s etc – so that they actually pay for journalism (quality or not). It’s someone’s copyright that is being devalued…fundamentally everyone needs to value and pay for content…free-loading needs to stop!
A rich opportunity for gutsy journo’s to put their money where their mouths are. Invest in new publications that actually sell.
How hard can it be?
Judging by the number of media companies going bankrupt I would suggest it’s very hard to invest in publications that sell.
Maybe that’s because publication content can be aggregated and distributed online for free without recourse?
I saw someone reading a newspaper on the plane once and it was hilarious. I had to take a photo to show my kids. We were all amazed and how ludicrous it seemed. I am surprised this is still a thing.
“Audience demand has never been higher”. This would be demand for COVID-19 news. Is there anything News Corp could report that AAP couldn’t? If the government wants to invest in objective, just-the-facts-ma’am journalism – as opposed to companies that publish self-interest content such as this post – saving AAP would be a better place to start.
What’s Michael Miller actually asking for here?
The government has already ordered Facebook and Google to produce a code of conduct that governs their commercial relationships with news publishers by November.
If the government thinks these codes of conduct don’t sufficiently address the concerns of the ACCC’s platforms inquiry, it has promised to step in and create legislation to do the job instead.
Does Mr Miller want the code of conduct negotiations to be completed sooner, because the coronavirus is causing so much pain in the industry, making the situation more acute?
Or does he want the government to go back on its already-announced plan and create regulation immediately?
Either way, it would be good if he said what he meant, instead of falsely implying that no action is being taken.