ABC chief champions 'free' online content

James Riley
Wednesday, 14 October 2009 17:04

Your IT - Home IT

ABC managing director and tweeting Web 2.0 aficionado Mark Scott will maintain the public broadcasters' policy of free online content, and says traditional publishers like Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited and Fairfax plan to charge fees for content is unrealistic.

The world has turned, Scott says, and the proprietors of yesterday's media models would do better to adapt to the way the world is, rather than wishing for a world as they want it to be.

In a speech titled 'The Fall of Rome: Media After Empire' at Melbourne University, Scott openly antagonised Murdoch – who has in recent weeks attacked the UK’s public broadcaster BBC, as well as content aggregators like Google.

News content had been largely free online for 15 years – and trying to charge for it now would not wash with the user-public.

Instead, media organisations – including the ABC – needed to adapt to the new environment, engaging with its readers in new ways and coopting new ways of doing business through technology partners.

Building critical mass would enable a new model to emerge. But the old days are gone, he said, and traditional business models with it.

"When you have been so powerful and dominant for so long, it is hard to believe that empire is slipping away. You want to believe you’ll see the green shoots of recovery, the good times coming back when advertisers start spending again," Scott said.

"And any deference to audience power seems acquired only when all other possibilities have been exhausted," he said.

"The latest example is the push by newspaper proprietors, led by Murdoch, to get people to pay for their content online. After nearly 15 years where the vast majority of online news and information has been free."

"Much of the content, most of it, nearly all of it when you look at the totality of the web – will be free. It will certainly be free online at the ABC."

Scott conceded the public ultimately pays for ABC content online, but said the broadcaster has an important role in shaping the future of the new digital media environment in Australia

"The public pays for the ABC to deliver distinctive, quality content to them – and if it is content we are creating and packaging for them now, they are entitled to view that content free of charge," he said.

"Survivors (in the media business) will be those who face up to how the world is, not as they might want it to be," Scott said.

"And who are determined to secure a future in that new media world, not just squeeze out a few more years' profits, not just milk the business till the CEO’s retirement and the Board moves on."