Fairfax Media accuses ABC of threatening the sustainability of commercial news journalism
The ABC is a threat to the survival of commercial news journalism, limits advertising revenue and affects commercial news subscriptions, Fairfax Media has argued.
The publisher’s submission to the inquiry into the competitive neutrality of government-funded broadcasters said despite the importance and vitality of the national broadcaster in the Australian media landscape, online news platform ABC Online must ‘refocus’ its content towards that which adds to the national identity and addresses areas where the wider market has failed.
Audiences that might pay for subscriptions are less inclined to do so with the free content available on the ABC website, the submissions says
I don’t get it … on the one hand Fairfax journalists are regularly joining with the ABC news department to do joint gotcha “exclusives” – presumably to get one up on the common foe – while on the other hand, Fairfax management are arguing that the ABC is “distorting the market” and “limits the industry’s ability to generate revenue”. Don’t the journos and management at Fairfax talk to each other?
Did the Fairfax submission really say, “online news platform ABC Online must to ‘refocus’ its content”? I wouldn’t be surprised, but still…
The Turnbull Government have now hired ex-Foxtel (Murdoch camp) CEO Peter Tonagh to head the review into the ABC/SBS, how biased and stacked will this be?… lets face it, this review is nothing more than a political Witch hunt, and their end game is to constrain both Broadcasters into extinction.
The very weak paywall that is so easy to circumvent does not help in the case of Fairfax. Look in your own backyard first Fairfax.
Agreed. How can Fairfax claim that paying customers are being poached when it doesn’t even try to limit access to what it’s selling? It’s like a rancher leaving all his gates open and then blaming rustlers for the loss of all his cattle.
good analogy @Paridell. Besides, Fairfax have been crowing about their allegedly surging Digital Subscription numbers. If this is true (and it’s a big if) then they can’t also claim that ABC is hurting their digital subscription numbers….
Mr Hywood seems to have done a grand job of undermining the sustainability of news reporting all by himself.
Get your act together Fairfax. You’re quite happy to collaborate with ABC on investigative pieces (and thus share the not-insignificant cost of those investigations), but then you turn around and slam the same ABC for undermining commercial journalism. Which is it?
Wow. So Fairfax are saying the ABC should just close down all its news websites and apps and have no internet news presence?
That is absurd.
The vast majority of Australian’s trust the news and analysis content of ABC and SBS and to say they should both disappear from online news just so that Fairfax can have less competition, is disgraceful.
If Fairfax are so worried about its financial situation then find another investor or merge with Channel 7, or perhaps produce better content?
We don’t live in the 1980s we live in the 21st century where the majority of people, especially young people get their news online. To say there should be no government-funded online news to protect the profits of Fairfax and News Corp is utterly stupid.
How dare the tax funded news broadcaster offer free news to tax payers?
If that is what Fairfax thinks of the ABC, and that the ABC is a root cause for Fairfax’s woes, then what the hell must they think of Google, Facebook et. al.
On the ‘damage done’ front I’d lay most of the blame at the foot of the revolving door of Fairfax’s management.
“The vast majority of Australian’s trust the news and analysis content of ABC and SBS”
Err where did that stat come from ?
https://www.radioinfo.com.au/news/abc-australias-most-trusted-media-organisation-radio-tops-trust-study
ABC is Australia’s most trusted media organisation, followed by SBS.
Facebook and social media generally are deeply distrusted.
https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/7641-media-net-trust-june-2018-201806260239
Also, have a look at this survey from last year:
https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/trust-in-daily-and-local-newspapers-on-a-steady-decline-according-to-essential-research-432670
And another survey from 2016:
https://tvtonight.com.au/2016/02/abc-sbs-news-current-affairs-most-trusted.html
@ Michael… you forgot to drop the mic
Fairfax is just blaming the ABC for its own incompetency and slothfulness in understanding the impact on its businesses in the early days of online. Fairfax once owned the “rivers of gold”—the home and car classifieds—and thought they would go on forever. They were the backbone of the company. But now they are mostly in other hands. Various Fairfax boards and management failed to understand, even in the most basic way, just how the company would be skewered by the internet. Now after the horse has bolted, Fairfax is looking around for someone to blame for their ineptitude. But it is not alone in this: just look what is happening in UK newspaper and magazine publishing where similar myopia exists.
Fairfax, have a look at the terrible mistake you made by moving 95% of your agency sales staff over to direct sales.
No wonder agencies are not spending with you…
Don’t blame the ABC for getting it right, when you obviously have it all wrong!
It has been obvious for years that ABC Online has been eating Fairfax’ lunch. Fairfax crows about their online ‘subscription’ rates, when I suspect they’re referring to their gratis registration figures.
That Fairfax haven’t had the self-assurance to inflict a real paywall (emphasis on ‘pay’) says it all. They know their market well enough to understand that their soft-left, small-‘l’ liberal readership won’t part with a penny to access their content while very similar content is being produced and promulgated on the taxpayer’s dime by the ABC.
Simples.