Call for government to consider funding of independent media

Tim Burrowes

March 20, 2009 10:06

The boss of Australia’s The Podcast Network has suggested that national broadcasting funding could be top-sliced to support other indepedent media.

In a guest posting on Mumbrella, Cameron Reilly suggests:

“Is it possible that we might end up funding independent media through a mechanism similar to the ABC? Might the government take 1% of the $800 million a year we give to a centralised entity and instead create a fund to support a hundred or more independent new media sites?”

Reilly is also behind G’Day world which is believed to have been Australia’s first podcast.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.

Topics

Cameron Reilly Media The Podcast Network

1 COMMENTS

Anon 20 Mar 09

Actually, it’s not a bad idea. But spreading the $8m (1% of $800m) across 100 sites would mean $80k a site. I’m not sure how much can be achieved with $80k. I think I’d rather have 10-20 cracker sites that are well funded. I think that an $80k handout could easily be frittered away whereas if it was $250k – $500k a site we’d end up with 16-32 really good ones.

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