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ABC: The NBN will degrade commercial media around Australia

ABC managing director, Mark Scott, predicts the NBN will boost news and content delivery to country Australia

The ABC’s managing director, Mark Scott, has told a Sydney event the rise of the National Broadband Network will accelerate the decline in commercial media.

Speaking at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) event, Scott claimed the rise of the Internet was a major cause of commercial media organisations reducing services around Australia.

“Digitalisation has meant that it is harder for you to extract a premium or a price for the content you are creating because so much is available free of charge,” he said. “In radio you see a retreat from services in rural and regional areas and more syndication of content created elsewhere.”

Scott said when he began his tenure at the ABC, applications were scaled back to suit the dial-up Internet speeds of rural and regional Australia.

“The first thing that the NBN does is expand the magic and opportunities of the Internet world to people in rural and regional Australia and creates a national market around broadband content,” he said. “Media organisations in rural and regional Australia like newspapers and radio stations are going to experience what media organisations in the city have experienced for a while.”

Scott also claimed the rise of the iPad would not offset the traditionally high costs that were once paid for by media revenues and warned content providers not to count on Internet-based services to pay the same as old products.

Nominations for the 2012 ARN IT Industry Awards open on Tuesday, June 12.

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Comments

1

Simon Reidy

Wed 28/07/2010 - 14:59

Tell us something we don't know. Seems like a real scaremongering headline grab with little substance to the story.

That's like saying the rise of digital television will kill traditional broadcasting! Well it hasn't, like anything networks have adapted to the new technology. As have commercial media outlets in the big cities, as the Internet has risen and affected their print media sales.

If companies aren't ready for the changes a far reaching high speed network will bring, that's their problem. It's certainly a stupid reason to come out against the NBN at a time where it needs all the support it can get.

2

gnome

Wed 28/07/2010 - 17:02


Who would have thought it?

The head of the taxpayer-funded ABC complaining about the taxpayer-funded NBN.

Some people just seem to have no sense of irony.

3

Bruno2

Thu 29/07/2010 - 12:54

@ gnome. Where in the article is Mark Scott complaining about the NBN?
Is anyone capable of actually reading any longer?

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