Media of Australia

Main article: Television in Australia

New South Wales and Victoria were introduced to television in 1956, with the other states and territories following suit up to 1971 (the Northern Territory). Colour television was introduced in 1975.[2]

In addition to the public broadcasters which are available to almost all of Australia's population, there are three major commercial television networks: the Nine Network, the Seven Network and Network Ten. Most of Australia's heavily populated cities are serviced by all three networks. Some rural or regional areas may receive a more limited selection, often with some of the channels available showing programming from more than one of the major networks. An example of such a "shared" regional network is Imparja.

Digital free-to-air broadcasts commenced on 1 January 2001. Analogue broadcasts were originally intended to be phased out by 2008, however analogue phaseout was not achieved until 2013.

After heated debate in the early 2000s over a Bill that would have removed the foreign ownership restrictions of broadcasting TV licences, the Australian government chose to retain the foreign-ownership restrictions in its 1992 Broadcasting Act. The Howard Government was set to remove this law sometime in 2007, having gained parliamentary approval to change the legislation in 2006.

In 2007, with Helen Coonan as communications minister, there were two significant changes.

Foreign ownership limits were scrapped, government changed the cross-media ownership rules to allow ownership of two out of three media types.[3]

There are 2 national and 10 state/territory daily newspapers, 37 regional dailies and 470 other regional and suburban newspapers. All major newspapers are owned either by News Corp Australia (formerly News Limited) or Nine Entertainment Co (formerly Fairfax Media). The national daily newspaper is The Australian. Also with nationwide circulation is The Australian Financial Review, the most prominent financial newspaper. Notable newspapers and news websites are: News.com.au (News Corp Australia), abc.net.au (ABC Online), The Age, au.yahoo.com (Yahoo!7), sbs.com.au (Special Broadcasting Service), Crikey, smh.com.au (The Sydney Morning Herald), The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), the Herald Sun (Melbourne), Ninemsn, theguardian.com/au (Guardian Australia), The Saturday Paper and The Spectator.[4]

Australia's first regular radio broadcasts began on 13 November 1923 with station 2SB (later to become 2BL) in Sydney. The ABC began broadcasting in 1932. Talkback radio was first broadcast with 2UE in Sydney, just after midnight on 17 April 1967[5]. ABC began experimenting with FM stations in the 1960s, but it wasn't until July 1980 that the first FM station commenced full operations[6]. Melbourne-based 3EON (now known as 3MMM)[7] was the first to air.[6]

Currently there are 274 operational commercial stations (funded by advertising) and 341 community (publicly funded) radio stations.[8]

Regulation of the media in Australia is limited to a narrow range of specific areas. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is the broadcasting regulator for radio and television in Australia, and also the co-regulatory Online Content Scheme. Consumers who have complaints about programs on television and radio or certain types of content on the Internet can apply to the ACMA. The Commercial Television Code of Practice is a set of regulatory guidelines, registered with the ACMA, with which commercial television broadcasters should comply.

The Australian Press Council is the self-regulatory body of the print media. The Council deals with complaints from the public about editorial material in newspapers and magazines published in Australia, and aims to maintain the freedom of the press.

Controls over media ownership in Australia are laid down in the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, administered by the ACMA. Even with laws in place Australia has a high concentration of media ownership compared to other western countries. Ownership of national and the newspapers of each capital city are dominated by two corporations, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, (which was founded in Adelaide but is now based from the United States) and Nine Entertainment – Murdoch-owned titles account for nearly two-thirds (64.2 per cent) of metropolitan circulation[9] and Nine-owned papers account for a further quarter (26.4 per cent).[9]

News Corp, Nine and Seven West Media co-own Australian Associated Press (AAP) which distributes the news and then sells it on to other outlets such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Although much of the everyday mainstream news is drawn from the AAP, all the privately owned media outlets still compete with each other for exclusive pop culture news.

Rural and regional media is dominated by Australian Community Media (formerly Rural Press), with significant holdings in all states and territories. Rural Press received a takeover offer from John Fairfax Holdings in late 2006, and completed the merger on 8 May 2007.[10]

There are rules governing foreign ownership of Australian media and these rules were loosened by Helen Coonan under the Howard Government via Act No. 129 of 2006 which allowed for changes to the cross-media and foreign ownership laws with the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Media Ownership) Bill 2006 . These changes came into effect in 2007 and are still In Force. The changes relaxed restrictions against cross-media ownership & control by a single company.

According to Reporters Without Borders in 2006, Australia was in 35th position on a list of countries ranked by Press Freedom; well behind New Zealand (19th) and United Kingdom (27th) (but well ahead of the USA, ranked 53rd). This ranking was primarily due to the restrictions imposed by the recent anti-terrorism laws. The problem, and the concentration of media ownership, was one of many mentioned on the television show Media Watch, broadcast on the government funded ABC. As of 2018 these rankings have changed with Australia moving up to 19th, New Zealand moving up to 8th and the United Kingdom falling to 40th[11].

On June 4 2019 the Australian Federal Police conducted a raid on the home of News Corp journalist, Annika Smethurst’s home looking for information connected to a story she had written a years earlier about new laws that would give the security forces new powers for surveillance over Australian citizens.[12] Radio host, Ben Fordham also claimed that he was under investigation for some of his reporting.[13]

The next day the police raided the ABC over a story about alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.[14] The search warrant allowed the police to "add, copy, delete or alter" any files they found on the computers.[15]

The incidents caused an outcry of condemnation, even from the Reporters Without Borders, BBC and The New York Times.[16]

• Canberra Press Gallery
• Journalism in Australia
• Australian media personalities (Category)
• Australian Commercial Television Code of Practice
• Convergence Review

• The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Media in Australia
• Kim Jackson, Parliament of Australia- Parliamentary Library, Media Ownership Regulation in Australia, 2003