Lecture 6: Commercial Media

This lecture hit close to home for me. I happen to be very passionate about the idea of peer brokerage and monarchical control of news and media. The ability and ease in which already powerful figures such as Rupert Murdoch, the Packer Family and the newly emerged Gina Rinehart, can manipulate the news is disgusting. As an archaic relic Rupert's sour outlook on politics is aptly reflected in his tendency to alter his media for political power and control. 

For example the freedom and liberties granted by News Limited to Bill O'Reilly (a presenter on the Fox US channel) is worrying. He, i feel, is a great example of how Rupert's brash opinions and poetical games harm the community.

Obviously the point of commercial media is to generate money through large audience viewership and their gain paid advertisement, but in a lot of cases advertising is seemingly excessive and is almost killing certain mediums. For example, commercial radio is a joke. The amount of tedious, repetitive and dumb advertising is almost silly. That is why i prefer ABC radio and tv. 

The various conglomerate media companies can be divided as such

NINE ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK

• Channel 9
• GO!
• Gem
• Extra
• Ninemsn
• Womens Weekly, Cosmo, Cleo
• AcerArena

NEWS LIMITED

• Courier Mail
• The Australian
• Quest Community Newspapers
• NRL
• HarperCollinsPublishers
• Fox Sports
• National Geographic Channel
• SkyNews
• Foxtel
• 20th Century Fox

SEVEN NETWORK

• Channel 7
• 7 Two
• 7 Mate
• Sky News
• The West Australian
• Yahoo 7
• Pacific Magazines

FAIRFAX MEDIA

• The Sydney Morning Herald
• The Age
• Financial Review
• Brisbane Times
• Domain.com.au
• MyCareer.com.au
• RSVP

I didn't know that the government now subsidises Free to Air media apart from the ABC. IT seems sensible to me to maintain citizens writes to free press and media. As someone who doesn't have foxtel or austar i think it is extremely important that we keep pastimes such as Sport on FTA. The slow shift in sport broadcast rights toward pay tv worries me. Things such as the A league and Soccerroos, Super 14 and now even a lot of cricket is on the Fox Sports network. As a enthusiast of all these Sports it angers me and i am sure many others that i cannot access it.

Having been introduced through this subject to the Global Mail, i am now a massive fan and read a lot of their articles. A recent article by Jeremy Clarke about Kenya marathon runners i found genius and mesmerising. This is definitely the kind of journalism that inspires me.

http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/how-to-win-marathons/308/

peace. x