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A cautionary tale…
Why is free-to-air TV still hogging sports coverage?
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Some of you may have been watching Wimbledon. Perhaps following the efforts of Australia’s oldest 8 year old, Lleyton Hewitt. The Nine Network, of course, has the rights to broadcast Wimbledon, primarily through the operation of the Federal Government’s anti-siphoning list, which prevents subscription television from obtaining the rights to events unless free-to-air broadcasters have passed them up. The list was conjured up by the Keating Government and strongly supported by the Coalition. It amounts to direct, government-approved theft from sports bodies, who receive lower revenue for their broadcast rights than they would in a genuinely competitive market, and a handout to free-to-air broadcasters, who pay less for those rights than they otherwise would. The purpose is to give a tiny but vociferous minority of television viewers who’d rather watch sport than a thirty-year old Clint Eastwood movie but are too lazy to get Foxtel, something for nothing. And to keep the subscription television industry enfeebled, at the behest of the free-to-air networks – something it has failed to do. The list is misleading, however, because Nine won’t show all, or even a large proportion, of Wimbledon. In 2007, the last year for which figures are available, Nine showed less than 10% of the event, and only 4% live. In fact, to be fair, it would be impossible for Nine to show what is on the list, because the whole event is listed, that comprises several hundred matches, many going simultaneously, and some on courts without cameras. Fulfilling the letter of the law and showing the whole lot would be impossible even if Nine wanted. And Nine has a deal with Fox Sports to pass on some matches, if it feels inclined to. Still, Wimbledon gets more coverage than the French Open (no free-to-air coverage at all), the business end of which remains on the anti-siphoning list, along with the fag end of the US Open and all of the Australian Open (10% of which Seven managed to broadcast live in 2008). The anti-siphoning list was clearly crafted in the days when Australian tennis players hadn’t changed their names by deed poll to add “was bundled out in straight sets” as a suffix. The French Open isn’t the silliest thing on the list. How many people seriously care about Australian golf tournaments unless obese American alcoholics are strangling photographers? But the Australian Open AND the Australian Masters – yes, there are two such tournaments in Australia - are on the list. Each round. Each round, each shot from each non-entity of a local or foreigner too hopeless to get on the US tour. The whole problem of free-to-air networks being unable or unwilling to broadcast events was supposed to be addressed by the “use it or lose it” rule, which was adopted by the previous Government as a supposed quid pro quo to the subscription television sector for loosening restrictions on free-to-air broadcasters in the 2006 media reforms. Under the “use it or lose it” approach, free-to-air coverage of listed events was monitored by the broadcasting regulator ACMA and events that weren’t appropriately covered would be removed from the list. Stephen Conroy in Opposition declared that Labor supported the “principle” of use it or lose it. “Free to air broadcasters should not be able to ‘hoard’ sport and deny viewers access,” he said. As Minister, Conroy slightly strengthened his position, telling the subscription television sector last year he “unequivocally supports use it or lose it”. But despite a demonstrated lack of using, there hasn’t been any losing. In 2006, the subscription television sector pushed hard but unsuccessfully for “use it or lose it” to be enshrined in legislation. Their instincts were correct. No events have been removed from the list since 2006. In fact, last year Conroy told ACMA to stop monitoring coverage. ACMA’s reports were showing that a number of events were getting minimal coverage from the free-to-airs. There is, however, to be a “review” of anti-siphoning. This isn’t just another Rudd Government review. The current anti-siphoning list ends at the end of 2010, and a review is legislatively required by the end of the year. Which is to say that, at some point before 31 December, Conroy must “cause to be conducted” a review. It may never actually see the light of day, just so long as Conroy “causes it to be conducted”. According to Conroy’s office, however, the discussion paper for the review will be issued in the next few weeks. Crikey understands that the paper has been prepared and cleared by his Department and simply awaits Conroy’s convenience. The Productivity Commission has already made its views clear. Last week it ripped into the list, calling it outdated, burdensome, inherently anti-competitive, harmful to sporting bodies, of limited effectiveness and far longer than comparable lists overseas. It wants it abolished or dramatically shortened. This being media policy, however, the views of the PC, of respondents to the forthcoming discussion paper, of the Department of Communications – indeed, of Stephen Conroy – don’t matter a great deal. For a start, broadcasting is one of those areas in which everyone thinks they’re an expert , so Cabinet decisions become particularly fraught. Daryl Williams went to Cabinet with a shorter version of the current list in 2004 and his Cabinet colleagues promptly added all sorts of crap like golf to it. More particularly, any significant changes to anti-siphoning would deeply anger the free-to-air networks and be a boon to News Ltd, as quarter-owner of Foxtel and half-owner of Fox Sports, which would be the biggest beneficiary of a shortened list. And while ever it doesn’t control a free-to-air network in Australia, the media policy cards are stacked against News Ltd. It can run all the anti-Labor campaigns in The Oz and its tabloids that it likes, but the evening television news bulletins remain far more potent as shapers of opinion, particularly during election campaigns. That’s why significant media policy decisions are made by Prime Ministers, and you may have noticed that both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard have been singling out News Ltd papers for criticism of late in relation to the fake email business. The other players in the game are Foxtel’s half-owner Telstra and James Packer’s CMH. Telstra is another company of enormous popularity in Canberra at the moment; indeed; the Government is publicly considering forcing Telstra to divest its share of Foxtel. And CMH’s abandonment on the Nine Network means the Packer family is no longer quite the media player it was in the days of Sir Frank and Kerry. Accordingly there’ll be no changes to anti-siphoning without the beneficiaries providing some serious quid pro quo. Indeed, the forthcoming review might even extend the free-to-airs’ grip on listed events by allowing them to multichannel different events. Sports rights holders shouldn’t get their hopes up that the anti-siphoning rort will end anytime soon. |
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29 Comments
“Too lazy” to get Foxtel. Interesting. So the poor are lazy?
The indolence of the impecunious? Too lazy to pay for what they currently watch for free? How do they sleep!
Too lazy to get Foxtel??? Sheesh Bernard, that’s got to be one of your sillier brainfarts.
“Too Lazy” to get Foxtel? What a silly comment.
How about if you live in an area Foxtel didn’t feel like building a cable to? Where the topography means you can’t get satelite? Hell, I’m only 40-50 k from the centre of Melbourne in the Dandenong hills.
Free up anti syphoning and there’ll be next to no sport on Free to Air TV which in a country that likes it’s sport would be political suicide for the clowns that bought it in.
If the option to get Foxtel were universal then your argument may hold some water but as it isn’t you’ve blown yourself a hole you could drive a ute through it in your opening statement.
Right on, RV. I’d say I like my sport probably more than the average person, yet Foxtel still looks ridiculously overpriced to me. All the more so since you still get ads as well. I know it’s a while since the ABC was $0.08/day, but by my reckoning it still costs Australians many times less than a Foxtel subscription, and I would have thought the ABC’s production costs higher. Subscriptions would need to be less than half what they are now before I’d seriously consider one.
Agree that “too lazy to get Foxtel” is silly, but the answer to the whole conundrum is digital TV. As a Melbourne based rugby league fan I would love to spend Fridays nights watching back to back games. I don’t understand why Channel 9 don’t show them on one of their other channels and take 10% off the AFL ratings on channel 7? I don’t understand the technology side of it but surely that is possible? Why don’t they do it?
All these free-to-air tragics holding out against foxtel. It’s great to have principles and sit there watching two tenths of five fifths of f.. all which is what free to airs give you. And when they do show it they move the times around Seven has AFL and V8s and it means big games are on delay. Nine goes off to the news in the middle of the cricket. First half hour of one dayers never seen cos current affair is on.
If it was open slather and the free to airs had to compete for everything there would be more money in the pot for sport so some of the struggling ones could get some rights money. At the moment with free to air holding the rights to everything they have shut out a lot of secondary sports who would have a show on the cable networks.
If you don’t want to pay go to the pub. Footy especially is more fun in a big crowded pub. Alexandria in Redfern is a top footy watching pub (especially for us Swannies) . You wear the colors and behave like a nong…..All for the cost of a schooner.
The the rugby is covered on Victorian TV and AFL in NSW and QLD TV is justification enough for the siphoning laws to be abandoned.
Sheesh, it’s not like opening things up to one more competitor is going to make things better. There’s free-to-air. Then there’s Foxtel. That’s it. We still have bugger all choice in this country and while Bernard’s rant is soundly principled, the reality is that there’s still not enough players in this market for any sort of benefits to consumers to be realised … at least the ones proposed above.
For the record, I’m an ex-Foxtel customer. Total waste of my money. More repeats than i’ve ever seen on free-to-air, more rubbish too. About 3% is actually worth my while watching. Another example of how increased quantity does not represent quality. Free-to-air is rubbish to and i won’t deny that, but at least the 3% of it worth watching i get for nothing.
So long as you don’t have any expectations of television in this country, you can’t be disappointed by it.
digital is the answer, wasn’t that why we have the freetv cabal? Sport will go to the highest bidder which will always be foxtel. What would the a-league be if they had a free to air highlights package? I know they are going great but what would it be like if the ffa didn’t sell the product before the last world cup?
As for the too lazy comment/stir I just say build your walls high bushwah because when the depression hits you will see how lazy the poor are when one of them is robbing your house to survive.
Duratti column-how much fun is it for people in a public bar who dont want to see the footy or be harassed by a bunch of yobs, i mean yobs affectionately as I did the same in my youth until I learned respect for others.
I can’t afford Foxtel either after paying for a mobile for which there is no reception in this neck of the woods, home phone, broadband and a booster for free-to-air television because again reception in northern NSW is r*tsh*t. The rest of the article is spot on.
Yep, too lazy to get Foxtel/Austar. Or convinced they should get something for nothing. You want to watch sport, pay for it, like you pay for other products and services.
I’m with the masses here BK, Foxtel is a mighty pain in the ahse and impossible to get for many people.
Firstly, it’s impossible for most renters. No certainty in their leasing arrangement, yet needing to sign a 24 month contract with Foxtel.
Second, Foxtel is shit. There’s no option to get just sport, and instead they package it with 24 channels of American sit com tripe and movies from the 50s and make you pay MINUMUM $60 a month for the privelidge. All I wanted was international cricket, and 4 tours a year was going to cost $720 plus installation. Fukk that.
Also, the anti siphoning laws must stay, in some form, for any TEAM representing Australia. They’re trading on a Commonwealth owned name to make a butt load of money, stands to reason we should get access to the teams that are trading on our name. I don’t care about individuals in tournaments, but national teams need to be available.
Doesn’t mean the laws are perfect though, and could do with some re-working. But under no circumstances should the Ashes not be available on free to air TV. If cable wants to show it as well, fine, but offer a product different/better than that available on FTA.
“You want to watch sport, pay for it, like you pay for other products and services.”
LOL
Now you’re sounding like one of those “Hartigan bloggers” BK.
@Bernard well, yes, thirty plus years of getting something for nothing does rather tend to ingrain the habit.
In principle I don’t mind paying for what I want to watch - my wife and I happily paid US$3 an episode to watch the entire final season of Battlestar Galactica on iTunes. But the way pay TV is currently packaged and priced in Australia is just light years away from where it needs to be as far as I’m concerned. If the subscription TV industry is “enfeebled”, they should look to their pricing structures, not whinge about the laws.
And I agree 100% with the excellent points made by Evan B on this - an eloquent demonstration that sport is truly the religion that unites all Australians.
Nah I’m just someone who doesn’t watch much TV and never watches sport.
We pay for free-to-air TV in the form of advertisements. It’s not really something-for-nothing.
Anyway, why can’t free-to-air and pay TV both show the tennis if they want to?
As a World Football/Soccer supporter I must say that I think Foxtel has been instrumental in ensuring the survival of the fledgling A-League.
Luckily as an inner suburban dweller I can go to a local pub and watch the games and I accept that, as I don’t think the A-League has the mass appeal that would make it attractive to a Free To Air channel as yet.
However this is a different story for the Socceroos which do attract mass audiences and represent the whole country and should be on the anti-siphoning list as matches with Australian representatives teams of the Rugby codes.
It is illogical that we can’t watch World Cup and Asian Cup qualifiers anymore on Free to Air (and the Asian Cup itself it is now on Pay TV). Also every World Cup has to be put on the list each time, instead to have a blanket ‘all world cup final matches’ as it seems to be the case for other sports. Then we have the FA cup final on the list which has little relevance to Australian soccer (unless an Australian player is involved, but even then it is not that important compared to matches played by the National Team). It showed that the people that drafted that list haven’t caught up with how the Socceroos have become an important part of the national sporting landscape and treat soccer as a marginalised sport.
Hopefully Conroy, a long standing fan of the round ball game will do the right thing.
World Football!? I thought I only used that phrase! Awesome to see it in useage.
As far as the content of “free to air TV” being free - anyone who was paying attention in primary school would know that we pay for the ABC and some of SBS in taxation and the rest we pay for in the form of advertising, which is factored into the retail pricing of all advertised products. Why pay for it twice?
As far as the potential loss of audience if the anti-siphoning goes: what percentage of households have a pay TV subscription including sport? I bet it is less than 25%.
much of Foxtel is repetitious and crap, so it’s not lazy no to have it. I do because I can’t get a decent picture from FTA tv (they never talk about that) but 90% of the channels are shite
I do agree that some of the stuff on the anti-siphoning list should be removed and more should be done about the use or lose idea, in aprticular now that the existing free-to-air stations have little excuse not to show those sports in their entirety given how they were basically gifted the extra digital TV channels by the government.
But I do take issue with Bernard’s idea that if you want to see these sports you should be willing to pay. Apart from the obvious arguments about the poor being able to access international sport, the deeper problem is that all these sports supposedly being denied the benefit of getting the true value for their product are all massively subsidised already by the taxpayer (ie the viewers of free-to-air TV). Whether it be in provision of stadiums and transport infrastructure, to the various institutes of sport that fund the development of the participants and the government funded junior sports and playing fields infrastructure that eventually lead to the top level sportsmen that the sports denied their “true value” sales pitch. (As an example just the other day the ACT government provided a massive “bailout” to the ACT Brumbies for junior development, the Super 14 competition being one of those that can sell itself competitively across the pay/free-to-air divide.
I’ll quite happily support the removal from the anti-siphoning of any sport that pledges to refuse any and all government support across all it’s levels. How many of the sports do you think will take up that offer?
Ooops a doodle Bernard, are you saying the terminally lazy are the ones who have the money to pay for Foxtel? That’s interesting.
As a loather of superficiality I scarcely watch teeve, so would never be in the market for Foxtel. When I’m OS I’ll watch it but as far as I can make out it’s a mish-mash of old movies, endless soccer and Animál Planet, as they say in South America.
Iam not lazy, i just will not give money to Rupert, he has enough. Use it or lose it should have a clause about not cutting the last laps of V8 races to go to wan#ers talking shite before the game of footy. Not happy Jan. With kerry in the ground,we might get multi- channel FTA and sport should be shared so both can use it.
Perhaps an international perspective would help. I left Australia for the UK 6 years ago when 30 and an avid Foxtel subscriber….mainly because I lived less than a kilometre from the Channel 9 transmitter in North Sydney and couldn’t see any channel but 9 without Foxtel (the reception on channel 9 was awesome though!).
In the UK there is very limited anti-siphoning provisions. Pretty much only the World Cup, Champions League games involving English teams, a few England matches and the FA Cup final. Cricket, Rugby, Rugby Leage, Most Football/Soccer and a host of minority sports go to the highest bidder.
And that highest bidder is 8 times out of ten is Sky (owned by Rupert himself and a satellite service). Other subscription TV providers are Virgin (mainly cable) and until recently Sentata who are Irish and now insolvent due to mismanagement. Ultimately 3/4 of all sport in the UK can be found on channels 401,402,403 and 404 which are Sky Sports. You do find sport on other channels (such as Wimbledon on the free to air channels), some golf, the above mentioned soccer, the Olympics and big events. But these tend to be iconic events rather than run of the mill.
Now I’m not saying this is a perfect system. Sky is so dominant and profitable due to it’s near monopoly on sport that you find 80% of us have Sky. Premier League soccer is dominated by over paid prima donnas and show boats and all the clubs are reliant on pay TV revenues to prevent being swamped by the ridiculous wages they must pay. Sky satellite dishes spoil the landscape and it’s not cheap (though everyone on welfare here seems to have one).
But the plus side is that you can pretty much see any and every sport you want at some point. Cricket down to county level, tennis at most events, cycling, rugby at all levels, rugby league at premier league level, car racing at all levels from F1 to karts, motor cycle racing, athletics, swimming, triathlon, anything to do with horses, badminton, table tennis, hockey, baseball, American football, basketball, handball, alpine sports of all types, hurling, gaelic football, fishing, hopscotch and many others (ok I made the last one up).
And if you don’t like sport, here is the kicker, because Sky has such a high subscriber base and makes so much cash, it puts on much of the high quality TV that can be found on UK TV. They provide 3 main channels (out of
with a variety of quality programming. In fact Sky has gone from having no market share to speak of in the 80s to second only to the BBC now, bypassing the other two players. All on the strength of buying up most of the soccer broadcasting rights.
Is that a good thing for the UK? At the moment the other TV broadcasters are barely solvent due to BBC dominance. This is the BBC that is paid for by a regressive $350 licence (read: tax) paid by everyone with a TV. It’s like the ABC’s evil older sister having a massive multi-billion pound budget to compete with the private sector and has been slowly squeezing the others out. Only Sky stands up to it and provides broadcasting we want. If the UK had anti-siphoning then we’d have half the channels and nothing like the choices we do. Imagine if all you had in Australia was the ABC……. scary thought.
My view is that Foxtel is crap because it can’t compete with the cosy, protected channels (and the state in the ABC) and has nothing much it can show. Give it a chance to buy sports rights and you will find it can afford to provide better infrastructure, better choices, better quality programming and more competition. Other players will join the market and sport will recieve a massive boost in revenue. Keeping the status quo will see Aussie TV and sport continue to stagnate I’m afraid.
It was only a 6 or 7 years ago that the anti-siphoning and anti-hoarding legislation was reviewed. If I recall, most if not all of the major sports supported the regime, but with a toughening of anti-hoarding legislation so that FTA operators had to make a decision to acquire rights longer than 30 days out from the event. That period of time was too short because even if the pay operator could acquire the rightsm it was too late to use the event they’d just bought as a driver to increase subscriptions and to include in the program guide, etc.
Sport will be the single biggest driver of revenue for TV operators going forward, whether they’re in the FTA or Pay space. The reason is that sport is really the only product that has to be viewed live - and therefore has a greater likelihood of ads acually being viewed rather than TiVo’d out as in the case of shows that are watched on delay.
More and more sport, expecially from overseas, is being streamed onto computers and whilst the quality isn’t anywhere near that of TV, it will become a more significant channel over then next 5 years. The problem for sports is that online advertisers have far greater transparency when it comes to who actually sees and then clicks on their ads. With that comes less wastage and a real need for sports to pay more attention to the needs of their sponsors.
Josh - “But I do take issue with Bernard’s idea that if you want to see these sports you should be willing to pay. “
Is sport not a commercial enterprise? Last I checked it was. Your argument that it is essentially subsidised by the taxpayer due to government sport for junior sports and stadium construction etc. is drawing a very long bow. First of all, the primary reason governments support junior sport is out of a sense of support for the community (necessary), to lift the levels of health among our youth (commercial) and thereby counter such taxes on society such as childhood obesity. These are policies designed specifically to negate the ongoing health costs that you and I partly pay for in our public health system that are associated with poor health and lack of exercise among our youth, which can flow through to an ongoing health burden in adulthood.
What sort of motherhood, socialist drivel it is to assume that because governments (local, state and federal) invest and support sport at the junior level to various extremes there should be a dividend to taxpayers in the form uncommercial, of free-to-air rights to cover sport that just leads to the inapproriate utilisation and exposure of top level, elite sport. The burden on taxpayers in the end is that we don’t get to see the complete product. Anti-siphoning is anti-competitive. Competition is not a bad thing. Then again, neither is a monopoly if it is regulated appropriately. Unfortunately we are stuck somewhere in the middle when it comes to this issue.
Foxoff. “the primary reason governments support junior sport is out of a sense of support for the community”.
The primary reason a government does anything is if they see votes in it. Why do you think movie stars and famous sportsmen get all the gongs? Because there is a big vote out there who will love it when David Beckham gets one-and he did.
Why do governments positively soak the iron-jock strap brigade with money, money, Andrew Demetriou, and more money? Because all the intellectually challenged adore it and will vote accordingly.
This is what it all boils down to, no use giving any government kudos, all they want is the votes.
for all those that say that you should be willing to pay for it I ask where does the value come from? Does the value from sport come from the history of those sports and those who come earlier? This arguement was put to me by a club official when I once discussed not renewing my membership when the board I did not agree with was in power. “dont worry about who’s running it, support the club, the club will still be here when they are gone.” Who deserves the profits? Hasn’t the community paid enough by supporting these sports when times were not so good. Didn’t the ffa get all registered players to save the league before the a league relaunch? Who should get the profits now that the socceroos make the world cup? The ffa now or the people who worked for years to get direct qualification through Asia?
Some people think that everything has a price whereas others think nothing has a price.