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Professor Stuart Cunningham
Professor Stuart Cunningham, Director, CIRAC, QUT
As in the Canadian example, we believe that cultural and economic benefits may well coincide in an industry that is growing, more competitive and more dynamic. Most significantly, the anti-competitive regulation and legislation that we currently work under comes at a high cost to producers of content, setting limits on both the size of their market and what they can produce. The current regulatory framework, which actively discourages the development of new content forms in datacasting and multi-channelling, inhibits the growth of a new media sector. At this stage, it would be true to say that most broadband datacasting and multi-channelling options are in a frankly experimental stage of development. This leads me to the second point, which is about industry.
What strikes me most from Marion Jacka's research
in her Tales from the Frontier, is that the production side of the
broadband content industry and the interactive TV industry is at this
stage by and large composed of established players in both production
and distribution. In classic convergence mode, new players that have
moved into the content field are the telecommunications companies and
newspaper companies. There are very few new major, or even
middle-level, players in this field. Secondly, business models at this
stage only survive on the leverage from established content and the
re-purposing of established content, as has already been discussed.
What broadband and interactive TV at this stage look like suggest that
the established rationales for subsidy, and to a lesser extent
regulation, for Australian content do not work as well in this new
environment. The first reason for this is that content at this stage in
these fields is at the lower-end level: not so-called premium content.
Apart from the transmission quota, only premium content is currently
subject to Australian content regulations. This 'lower end' content
does not attract subsidy measures in the current regime. There is also
some evidence that, at this early stage of development, the drama and
one-off social or issues documentary, the two main categories of
content which are covered by regulation and subsidy support, are not as
amenable to exploitation in an interactive environment, though of
course this may change in time. In addition, one of the main needs that
Marion identifies in her research is for content-packagers as much as
content producers. This is a classic industry development issue, not a
cultural policy issue.
…
One of the ways forward is to
centre new policy around a small business development agenda, which
potentially has as much to do with a portfolio like industry, IT or the
information economy as it has to do with culture and the arts. Just as
the Canadians did some 'forum shifting' after they lost the split run
magazine case in the WTO, setting up the Network for Cultural
Diversity, and as the US did after the Uruguay round when they tried to
set the agenda through the MAI, so the cultural lobby in Australia and
elsewhere might have to do some forum shifting of its own, from
cultural policy to the new economy.
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