Public Media

Public Media, well it's not commercial media is it... The difference between commercial broadcasting and public broadcasting is the difference between consumers and citizens - according to Nigel Milan, the former CEO of SBS.

So! What actually is public media..

Public media is there to serve or engage the public... That sounds very much like commercial media to me...

It is not earning profits (Ah there's the difference) well yes, it can earn a profit, but all the money that is earned from anything that they produce must be reinvested back into producing more programs et cetera

In Australia there are basically two different sources of public media (for the sake of my typing fingers, in future we are going to refer to it at P.M) the ABC and SBS.

Naturally the ABC has been around the longest - since 1929 in fact - when it was thought that Australia needed an identity and the ABC was designed to inspire us to be the nation that they thought that we should be - a 'Nation Building Project'. 

Now-a-days, the ABC has many different outlets for their programs.

• The good ole' ABC
• ABC2
• ABC3
• ABC News 24
• ABC Local Radio
• ABC Radio National
• ABC Classic FM
• Triple J
• ABC Radio Australia
• ABC Country

Their 'opposition' is SBS.

They broadcast things such as news from each and every country at 5am, local made, somewhat cheap productions, comedies, sport (soccer) and lifestyle/history pieces.  Basically SBS is by multicultural, which is great in Australia, because there are people from so many different countries.

SBS is the brain child of Paul Keating's 'Creative Nation' project in 1980.  SBS is a hybrid, it's is 80% owned by the government, thus being the public part, and 20% owned by others.  Which is why they do have some adverts.

• SBS consists of:
• SBS
• SBS1
• SBS2
• SBS Radio

The functions of public media are quite simple, and are shown below in my funky picture...

Nation Building	ABC
National Heritage	ANZAC Day, history
National Identity	Indigenous/Multicultural
National Conversations	Sport

There are also lots of international public media outlets.

• BBC
• NPR
• NHK
• CBC
• TVNZ
• Channel 4

In recent years, public media has become more commercial with BBC Worldwide, SBS's World Game Shop, ABC shops, and National Datacast.

Public media’s communication style varies.  There is the press who ‘do the news’, Entertainment who have things like cooking shows and how to have a pet, utilities broadcast weather and stocks and similar, social have more cooking, chat shows et cetera and then there is propaganda, like FOX and CCTV.

Public media faces many challenges, they must broadcast things that are:

• Quality
• Relevant
• That engages with democratic process
• Informative
• Independent

That was our lecture for the week!! And this is, I think, the last one that ill be blogging.  This has been a really fun experience, and I have come to enjoy blogging, it must be because I talk to myself a lot :)

Thats it folks!! BYEEE!!