Trump’s victory was a good day to bury news – like the government’s $40m sweetener for TV networks
Australia’s TV networks will be $3bn better off over the next decade thanks to government licence fee cuts. So why did communications minister Mitch Fifield slip out the announcement, asks Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes.
In the PR-driven world of news management, there’s a cynical game to be played at the time of national disaster, public holidays or other dramatic news events. And that’s to slip out your announcement while the journalists are distracted and the public are looking elsewhere.
The practice became notorious when an email sent by a government spin doctor in the UK on the day of the 9/11 attacks was leaked suggesting: “It’s now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.”
It’s one reason why Friday afternoon announcements to the ASX are always worth a look. During the death throes of Quickflix as an ASX-listed company, it was a proponent of both the Friday afternoon drop and the Christmas Eve drop.
The thought occurred on Wednesday night as I flew back into Australia on a Fiji Airlines flight, after seven days without access to the internet or other form of media, and the flight crew made a startling announcement as we approached Sydney.
Isn’t this the cut announced in the Federal Budget in May??
Are these broadcasters total revenues (inclusive of digital assets and OTT, etc) or total revenues of broadcaster’s terrestrial TV only?
Although this wasn’t really hidden was it, given it was announced in the May Budget and has received plenty of press coverage since then. The legislation just happened to pass Parliament that day – a day on which no one expected Trump to win.
The rest of the article is spot on. Just the lead in is a bit midleading.
It is outrageous that spectrum usage licence fees go down while commercial TV networks refuse to increase the licence fees they pay to producers of local Australian creative content! These have remained at the same levels for 10 years or more – between $400-450,000 per hour for adult drama compared to the 50% increase in production costs over that period. Do the makers of the shows we all want to see not deserve a wage increase while the broadcasters still make big profits? Mitch Fifield should be ashamed of himself for not extracting any quid pro quo from the networks for this generous gift. As a worker in the creative industries I expected more.