Lecture Six: Commercial Media

Upwards and onwards!!! For our sixth lecture we moved away from journalism skills and into the realm of journalism studies. Commercial media was our first taste.

The major players in commercial media are:

·         News Limited – newspapers, cable T.V, Film, magazines, books, sport

·         Fairfax Media – newspapers, digital media,

·         APN – Regional newspapers, digital media, radio, outdoor advertising

·         Nine entertainment – Free To Air (FTA) T.V, magazines, digital media

·         Win – FTA T.V, radio, sport, tele-communications

·         Southern Cross – FTA T.V, radio

·         Seven West Media – FTA, newspapers, magazines, digital media

·         Ten – FTA T.V, tele-comm

On the other hand, we only have two major public media players:

·         ABC

·         SBS

Commercial media exists for one main reason. MONEY MONEY MONEY!!!! It is a business, first and foremost and at the end of the day is profit driven. If not for its primary customers, the advertisers, commercial media would essentially fail. Money is made from advertisers who pay big money to expose the world to their products. Contrary to public media (where government funding is provided), commercial media’s key focus is the customer.

There are three forms of commercial media; subscription i.e. Foxtel, sponsored i.e. Channel 9 and subsidised i.e. government funded. In terms of the way they functions there are three options; commercial, propaganda and social.

With social media these days we tend to be bombarded with advertisements (breakfast radio crap anyone?) and the element of the ‘public sphere’ seems to be lost. This is obviously due to the commercial media providers chasing profits (which is understandable). There is a need for a provision of balance between commercial and social aspects.  But how can this be done?

Some suggestions have been put forth and already implemented including government agencies regulating content, state press subsidies and some countries have even introduced licensed journalism. All of these suggestions are in practice around the globe, however, they all come with problems. If governments are to keep censoring media content, where will they know when to stop? What happens if the government can’t handle a controversial issue but the public can? Don’t we live in a democracy??

Over the years commercial media has changed from a “truthful account of the day’s events”, into a dumbed down and money greedy form of media relying on tabloids. Perhaps commercial media giants could take a lesson from Global Media who state “Our audience is our only agenda.” Now wouldn’t that be nice?