Is community television even worth keeping around?

That was the question I asked myself this week after it was announced community television transmitter licenses in Australia would not be extended past 2015. Hear me out.

Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull broke the news at an Australian Communications and Media Authority conference in Sydney on Tuesday causing a brouhaha, to say the least. Academics, journalism students, media personalities, and probably your Nan all weighed in on the debate.

Allow me to break it down.

Australia has six spectrums that each transport electronic communication via electronicmagnetic frequenices. Spectrums assist GPS signals, mobile phone coverage and television broadcast to reach Australians across the nation, but the space is limited and valuable. Currently Seven, Nine, Ten, ABC and SBS each occupy a spectrum; the "sixth channel" is dedicated to community broadcasters.

Arguably, the 'sixth channel' is not in the same league as its counterparts; averaging 6000 viewers tuning in at prime time across all five community channels combined, it is arguable these channels fail to make decent dividends to justify taking up valuable spectrum space. Purely from an economic perspective, the cost-benefit is poor.

Okay, okay. Refrain from calling me a Tory just yet.

This does not signify the ultimate end of community television. Mr Turnbull suggested the stations embrace the internet as the way forward for community television.

"The Government believes that the best outcome for community television is that, in the future, it uses the internet as its distribution platform.

"The internet is not new. It is the universal uber-platform to which most people in Australia are connected 24/7," he said.

Despite outcries from community television stations that 15 months is too soon to implement an entirely different business model for the internet, Turnbull disagrees. 

"I have no doubt that this transition is in the best interests of community television. It will deliver wider audiences, at less cost on a wider range of devices and the ability to do more than linear broadcasting," he said.

Yes, traditional media is converging with the internet for multi-platform delivery of content; however, this does not necessarily mean every Australian has access to technology/internet capable of handling content streaming ... let's mark that as another topic for another time!!

Let's be honest here. The LNP develops these policies with economic foci. By freeing up spectrum space, the government stands to make a lot of money from lucrative communications companies on the new-age technological frontier - as proven by last year's spectrum auction. The 2013 switch from analogue to digital television freed up the spectrum known as 'digital dividend'. The reallocation of this frequency to Optus, Telstra and TPG made the government a neat $2bil. The 'sixth channel' auction hopes to follow that lead, with talks of a second 'digital dividend' for non-broadcasting uses.

It is inefficient to keep community television on the air, when spectrum is a scarce, valuable asset for the government. Especially since viewership is poor. I've watched a few broadcasts of QUT News, but apart from that, my viewing is rare. Some capital city channels are capturing fewer than 1000 viewers; compare this to OzTAM statistics to see how dismal that number really is.

National broadcasters, generally less popular than commerical stations, report viewership of 100,000 during the evening news in Brisbane alone. Nine News draws the highest number of viewers with 200,000 (almost 1mil nationally). Even A Current Affair, to quote Roger Patching, the 'paragon of journalistic virtue' manages to, er, swindle 189,000 Brisbanites. These channels are making good use of spectrum, whereas arguably, community television is not.

How many of you, please be honest here, actually watch 31 Digital in Brisbane??

It's not all money though. Auctioning off the 'digital dividend' has given these three companies greater means to distribute 4G coverage to their clients. The sixth spectrum, like the digital dividend, has been described as 'beachfront frequency' making it ideal for long-distance and indoor coverage - a sought after attribute for $$$ telcos.

Turnbull has also noted additional spectrum space would encourage the remaining broadcasters, both commerical and national, to switch to MPEG4. In everyday speak, encourage broadcast of condensed media files (less bandwidth) to free up more spectrum (so more channels can be broadcast, including in HD).

Turnbull isn't targetting the young guns slogging away on community television, it's part of a greater plan for communication efficiency. The current framework was devised under the Radiocommunications Act in 1992, and reviewed by the Productivity Commission. Twelve years ago. When most of us were watching CheezTV (unless you woke up too early and had to watch Aerobics Oz Style).



The government's review is modernising the current framework to better suit Australia's media consumption, markets and technology.

"It is timely to recast the current broadcasting spectrum policy framework to ensure it is fit-for-purpose for the next wave of innovation in the media sector,” said Mr Turnbull at the conference. In a society where technology is constantly evolving, maybe Turnbull's plan is the right one.

As a journalism student, I cannot say I wholly support Turnbull's decision, but I can understand it. Perhaps Turnbull's decision won't spell the end for community television in Australia. I guess we'll find out 1 January 2016 and onwards.

Watch this space! I'm currently writing my own counter-argument: Why community television is worth keeping around!!