So just prior to the break, we started what I like to consider a two piece lecture, dealing with the spheres of media, commercial and public. We begun by discussing the field of Commercial media, which in all honesty was actually quite bland, not because of Dr. Redman, but rather because I think commercial media is painfully boring. I’m not getting into Journalism to learn about the mysteries of the business world (though that is semi-important to all fields) and in all honesty that’s all commercial media is to me.
Commercial media, is any media that is owned and operated by corporations, i.e. for the money and the investors. It is a strange form of media in my opinion, because the main focus, at lest from where I stand appears to be on making businesses money rather than providing the customer with quality. Now don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of quality radio and television coming out of the Commercial Media sector, but it all just seems a little compromised, especially when you consider digital free to air channels like TV4Me and Extra, are being designed with the sole purpose of marketing crap to gullible fools. That last comment was a bit vindictive, but in all honesty, there is never anything of quality advertised in those 20 minutes aneurysm tests and those who go out buying any of it and expecting high quality items should be slapped 3 or 4 times in the face with an abnormally large tuna.
Commercial media also survives and dies based on the success of their business practices. This is probably the most dangerous aspect of all commercial media in my mind and explains why businesses involved with it often have multiple ventures. For example, News Limited, which owns many major newspapers in Australia (like the courier mail, the Australian) also owns Twentieth Century Fox and the NRL in Australia, both financially successful business ventures. The money from this can than be repurposed back into less profitable sectors, while still providing the business with a net profit higher than its losses. This highlights just how significantly these business depend on multiple ventures. However this particular model really does unnerve and irritate me, because the focus isn’t on whether something is a good idea, but rather on whether it will make money.
Now in all fairness, going through the function and form of commercial media would just be an insult to the intelligence of you, my loyal readers, so I’ll just say that the entire process infuriates me. Though something mentioned in the lecture has made me truly mad, the fact that the National government invested billions of dollars in these channels to encourage them to go digital. Now I’m not going to call myself an expert on the subject, but I find it particularly insulting that the government would just invest all this money into what is effectively the businesses stocks, while neglecting the ABC yet again.
These channels are not owned by the government and they certainly weren’t suffering under any significant financial stress, yet Stephen Conroy just flung money at them like it was infected with the ebola virus. This is particularly frustrating when you consider that the ABC had not had anything even remotely close given to it in years, but still had to find a way to switch to digital and publish multiple new channels as well, ABC news24 suffering particularly. If you ask me, I’m surprised there wasn’t more significant uproar from the general public when this occurred, I mean this is our money that they spent, money that should have gone to the ABC or SBS, the channels owned and operated by the government, channels that we are taxed to pay for.
Today, the state of commercial media is almost laughable. Where shows like A Current Affair use to be tasked with finding hard hitting news stories and tackling genuinely troubling events, they are now only concerned with ways to prevent weight gain and stopping those naughty police with their traffic cameras. Where news was once inclined to put out stories because they thought that the public needed to know, they now release stories pertaining to Actors without make up and the various affairs of drug induced celebrities. In my honest opinion, I could very much see a world without commercial media being a better one for all of us, especially when considering the ABC can produce higher quality news and a better standard of comedy, drama and documentary on half the budget.
No comments:
Post a Comment