W7 Lecture: Public Media *Oh Goodie!!*-no, really.

After the lectures for weeks six and seven, my opinions about commercial and public media have not changed (public media 'FTW'). I can say that I am well informed now though, as I hope you will be too, after reading this post. Feel free also, to comment about how awesome public media is compared to commercial.

Public media in Australia includes ABC, SBS, the digital variations of both (ABC 1, 2, 3 & 24 etc), and the associated radio stations. Publci media also includes 'Community media': 31Digital (Bris31), 4zzz. Historically, the 'Auntie ABC' has been considered as less 'groovy' than SBS etc.

The mission of public media is to serve and engage the public; bring the nation together; build heritage and a national identity, and have conversations. It's role in democratic society is to support public and democratic processes. Public media is allowed to generate profit, so long as the ultimate purpose is to serve the public. This means that public media often sets the political agenda, such as with the 4 Corners story on the live cattle exports.

The characteristics and requirements of public media are:

              -value to the public

              -public consultation (the public should be able interact with it)

              -geographical universality (widely available)

              -universality of appeal (cater to many tastes-including minorities)

              -a relationship to national values and identity

              -be unbiased (distanced from vested interests)

Style: The press, entertainment, utility (the weather), social (sport, cooking).

Digital radio hasn't taken off, as it isn't widely available on the most commonly used medium for listening to radio, i.e. in the car, and because it is not available everywhere (partial coverage). ABC started in 1929 as a 'nation building project'. The ABC used to be very posh, as the 'tacit answer the the nation we thought we ought to be'. SBS was launched in 1980 as the 'multicultural channel' to reflect 'the changing nature of Australia'. SBS is an example of hybrid funding, as 20% of its funding is from advertising-though it wasn't always the case. Are they selling out? It has been said that once you go commercial, you never go back, as in the tragic example of TVNZ.

~Just to break up the prose that this post is turning into, here's a picture from one of the quality programs (Robin Hood) that has been on the ABC. Commercial media has nothing on public. ;)





SBS's content is slightly more free than ABC's and provides entertaining and informative multicultural programs. I liked the description from the lecture "Friday nights on SBS are Sex Between Soccer". The news is a big part of public media because it is cheap programming and people want to watch it. I think it also ties in with serving the public and providing them with the important things. Not to mention that public media's reputation for unbiased and reliable news is much better than commercial media's. The news on public media is reliable as it is checked before it's released, which means it's generally not as instant as commercial news.

The public media news programs tends to be more serious and broadcast on the basis of importance over interest. Bruce said that some find public media to be elitist, boring and of limited interest. *I would slander this view as coming from the simple-minded, but the word 'elitist' is not simple-minded. "Everything in moderation" may even be applied to quality (i.e. public media)-it is nice to watch and listen to a bit of 'fluff' (commercial media) for a break, now and then.

The challenges facing public media are remaining relevant and 'cool', and being democratic and independent, which may be problematic because of they're funded by the government. having said this, we, the consumers actually own public media-not the government. Still, in a way, public media 'must bite the hand that feeds it' by being the watchdog of the government. So if the government is ever happy with public media, there is something wrong: there could be bias in public media.

~I'm going to justify the inclusion of yet another picture of yet another attractive man from BBC's Robin Hood, (and other, less important TV shows like spooks etc.). This meme is more related to the topic of how Australia's commercial media has to buy in bad American television because proper programs and good Australian drama is too expensive to make, thus:

-Bon