Aussie confab gets a red flag on pay TV
"Be careful," cautioned Bruce Gordon, the expatriate Aussie who is president of Paramount TV Intl. He noted Australia's faltering efforts to establish pay TV.
Gordon was speaking soon after news filtered out that UCOM, one of the two consortia initially granted pay TV licenses, failed to guarantee its financial credibility.
Small population
Explaining his skepticism, Gordon pointed to Australia's relatively small population of 17 million, and struggling pay services in Japan, Italy and Scandinavia.
"Pay TV won't work unless the Australian government restricts terrestrial broadcasters' role in the market -- and I hope they don't," said Gordon, who has a vested interest as the owner of the WIN TV regional network and Melbourne-based Crawford Prods.
He argued that pay TV would only be viable if people were forced to pay for films and sports that previously were free. Even so, he said he considers pay TV here "a very bad gamble."
Gordon urged Aussie producers to demand the new licensees be mandated to provide "a sufficient amount of Australian content so (you) don't get swamped by U.S. product." Government regs call for 10% of pay TV program spending to go to local content.
"The American (programming) ogre is a bit of a myth," Gordon added. "The majors don't make enough product to cover the requirements of the networks (globally) and around the world local product rates better than imported product."
Attendance up
Some 384 delegates, up from 320 last year, are attending the three-day conference at the Hyatt Hotel Canberra.
Keynote speaker Gerry Byrne, Variety Inc. VP and director of publishing operations, criticized cultural protectionism as dangerous in the new playing fields of multimedia, convergence and consolidation.
In the global market "investment in international production is increasingly essential," said Byrne, citing the U.S. webs that, freed from network program ownership restrictions, would boost co-productions to satisfy the thirst for new programming.
But Australia's opposition leader John Hewson sided with the protectionists by telling the conference that without the present local content regs for terrestrial webs, Australian TV would be swamped with overseas product.
