Commercial Media

Another week has come and gone and were now into our sixth week her at The University of Queensland!!!

This week’s lecture was all about commercial media. Commercial media vs. Public media... What is the difference you may ask - well I'm not too sure, as we are doing public media in the next lecture.  I can however tell you all about commercial media.

So who is commercial media? Channel 7, 9 and 10 along with their funky additional channels (digital television stations such as Go, Gem, 7 Two and 11) are all regarded as commercial media. Our favourite media mogul, Rupert Murdoch has a commercial media empire - News Limited.  Fairfax, APN (i.e regional newspapers et cetera) ARN and Austereo are also all commercial media outlets.  The ABC, ABC2, ABC3 and News 24, SBS, SBS2 are all Public media outlets.

Next we get onto what is commercial media.  It's profit driven - there is no other way to put it than

  Yup, it's all about making money from the things that you watch and listen to.  This is why it survives and fails on business success.  Basically, commercial media is all about advertising, it's the business generating the audiences.  These corporations must pretty important then huh, yup again.  There are a couple of major businesses involved with the media world; Telstra, Macquarie and Austar to name a few.

First, before we get away from all the major corporations that are commercial media, we will go through just what they each produce.

News Limited

Newspapers, cable television, film, and magazines are a small number of the many branches that Rupert Murdoch's empire contains.

• 20th Century Fox
• Foxtel
• Sky News
• National Geographic (shares)
• The NRL
• The Australian
• The Courier Mail

Fairfax

• The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH)
• The Age
• Financial Review
• Brisbane Times
• Domain
• MyCareer
• RSVP.com

APN

• Regional newspapers, digital media, radio and outdoor advertising
• 97.3 FM, 4KQ
• The Gympie Times
• Finda
• Adshell

Nine Entertainment Company (Formerly PBL [Kerry Packer] but now CVC Asia Pacific)

• Free-To-Air television, radio, magazines, events
• Channel 9
• Ninemsn
• Women's Weekly, Cleo, Cosmo
• Ticketeck
• Acer Arena

WIN

• Both channel 9 &10 programs
• i98 FM, 91.3
• St George Illawarra
• TPG - discount Internet, line rental and phone calls et cetera

Southern Cross

• B105, Triple M
• Both channel 9 & 10 programs

7 West Media

• Free-To-Air television
• 7, 7 Two, 7 Mate
• Sky News
• The West Australian (Newspaper)
• Pacific Magazines
• Yahoo 7

Ten

• Channel Ten
• OneHD
• 11
• Ten has never been in the same market as Channels 7 and 9.  They decided instead to play their own game and invested in a different type of audience.  They reinvented themselves with programs such as 'Big Brother', 'Australian Idol' and 'The 7pm Project'. They wanted to appeal to a younger generation and get away from the old style of media that the main networks were producing.  This proved to be an incredible success and they have and still do appeal greatly to the younger market.

Telstra

• Although Telstra is an unlikely player in the Media game, they actually have a very strong business with Bigpond

Optus

• Owned by Singaporean company, 'Singtel' they challenge Telstra's (at one time) monopoly in the market by reselling Austar services and offering phone plans through both themselves and partly owned carrier Virgin.

Macquarie

• Macquarie owns over 40 radio stations throughout the country

Okay, now that we have covered who is included when we talk about commercial media, we come to the Form and the Function of commercial media.

This table basically illustrates what is what...

	Subscription	{Foxtel}
Form	Sponsored	{Channel 9}
	Subsidised	{Govt. Funding}

	Commercial	{Austereo}
Function	Propaganda	{Fox News}
	Social	{'The Local'}

To keep this relevant to Australia, we will have a look at the role and responsibility of commercial media in a democracy like Australia.

The role of commercial media in Australia is to deliver on both commercial (profit) and social (public trust) functions... And not make it all about the money.

There are 5 main responsibilities of commercial media...

1. Be truthful
2. Exchange comments and criticism
3. Balanced and not biased
4. Includes good goals and values
5. Provides full access to the 'days intelligence'.

Along with responsibilities that commercial media faces, there are also challenges.

Basically, advertising is the big bucks for broadcast media, however with new advances online, advertising is becoming less and less.

That being said, there are also new controls in social media. Such as the government regulating content, state press subsidies and, in some countries, licensed journalism - where you must have a license to be a journalist.

There are different styles of journalism. According to John McManus, commercial media Is corrupt, have little equality, are profit driven and have no concern for social responsibility. Hmmm...

Commercial media are responsible for an array of different media niches.

• The dumbing down of news
• Currant Affair programs
• Tabloidisation
• The desire to please
• "Mickey Mouse" news

These techniques have made it difficult to gain the trust of many viewers, which is perhaps why they (i.e. channel 7 and channel 9) have heaps of ads with their stars out holding grinning children and patting dolphins, to seem as though they are real and in the community, to get that trust back.

That's about it for this week folks, and next week is mid-sem break!!!!!! Yayyy!!

I'll see you laterrr!