Turnbull signals support for licence rebate for TV networks

Tim Burrowes

January 31, 2011 11:58

Australia’s free TV networks have begun lobbying for a permanent discount on their broadcasting licences following last year’s $250m rebate from the Government.

And shadow media minister Malcolm Turnbull has signalled to Mumbrella that he is also sympathetic to the networks as the rise of IPTV has taken away their previous monopoly.

In an interview with Mumbrella editor Tim Burrowes, Turnbull – shadow minister for communications and broadband – said: “The TV broadcasters have a very good argument – and it goes like this: When the broadcasting licences were first granted… the broadcasting licences were real monopolies, they were oligopolies. The only way you could get sound and pictures into somebody’s house was over that bandwidth. Now of course that’s changed dramatically so the television companies are entitled to say ‘what we are licencing today is not the same as it was so many years ago’.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.

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2 COMMENTS

Phil Collins 31 Jan 11

The lobbying is in the context of the Convergence Review – this is a massive exploration, even if the outcomes might end up being small. On the other side of the coin to Flynn you’ll have people arguing for the forced transfer of TV to broadband, freeing up even more broadcast spectrum for other uses.

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Bill Posters 31 Jan 11

If they don’t think the license fees are value-for-money any more they can always hand them in.

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