On January 1, 2007, rules restricting multi-channelling, datacasting and a new free-to-air television network will lapse. Laws regarding foreign and cross-media ownership are currently under review and will mostly be changed in early 2006.

In the meantime there should be a vigorous public debate about why the current restrictions exist and what sort of media landscape we want to try and create in the future. There's almost no chance this government will allow such a debate, but even if they did, you wont be able to participate unless you understand what people are talking about. Here's a very quick guide.

Analogue TV is what most people have right now. The cheapest TV set you can buy is an analogue TV, meaning that sound and picture quality are good (stereo sound for example) but not wonderful. Analogue television was meant to be turned off by 2008 (just as the analogue mobile phone network has already been shut off, and there is talk of turning off the CDMA network too) but not enough people have bought digital TVs or set-top boxes so now the minister says it will be about 2012. Less than 20% of Australians have digital TV in their homes at the moment.

Much of the blame for this slow take-up of digital is levelled at the free-to-air TV owners who don't have a strong incentive to promote digital TV when they are making a fortune from the status quo. The government is said have taken a 'softly softly' approach to the promotion of digital TV at the request of powerful media owners.

Digital TV is basically just really good quality (audio/visual - not more shows like The West Wing) TV and isn't that exciting. It's what digital TV allows that is important. The difference between digital TV and analogue TV is like the difference between a dial-up modem and a cable modem. Cable just means you can download data many, many times faster which isn't particularly exciting - but it's what cable modems allow you to do (watch video files in real time, view more sophisticated websites, etc, that is important. Same with digital TV - it's what it allows you to do that important.

Firstly it allows better quality through Standard Definition TV (SDTV), which is available if you buy a digital set-top box (or digital TV). You'll get the normal TV channels that are available (plus ABC2) but the picture quality is better and the sound is CD quality.

OR you can pay more (for a HD set-top box or HD digital TV) and get High Definition TV (HDTV) which offers widescreen TV, super sound quality and other cool audio/visual stuff. The catch is that because SDTV is the legally required standard, there are not many TV programs that are made in HDTV format (I wonder why the government decided to make that the standard... hmm). There is currently a quota of 1040 hours, per channel, per year of HDTV programs. A present there are about 50 programs available in HDTV format, but it's growing slowly.

Secondly it allows Datacasting, which is the ability to send additional data alongside the normal TV signal. So it basically means that your TV will appear more like the internet, with additional text and materials available alongside the usual picture and audio. So if you were watching sports, you could get access to all the stats of all the players, while you watched the game. If you were watching the news you could get background or additional information about people or places mentioned in a story. There is a trial of a datacasting service in Sydney at the moment where (amongst other things) you can get 'surf watch' which is a series of cameras at prominent beaches and you can use them to scroll around and check out the conditions.

At present datacasting is highly limited (as a result of there being very few users of digital TV, which means there is very little incentive for stations to invest in datacasting content).

Thirdly, digital TV allows Multi-Channelling, which is technically possible right now on digital TV (either a digital TV set or an analogue set with a set-top box) but is banned by law.

Because the SDTV signal contains relatively little data, an individual frequency could transmit up to 5 or 6 'channels' within the frequency spectrum currently used by just one channel. In other words using the same amount of 'space' on the digital spectrum, there could be up to 6 "channel 7's" and 6 "channel 9's" and 6 "channel 10's".

Currently multi-channelling (sometimes called multi-casting) is not allowed under media regulations set down by the government - except for the ABC and SBS. The ABC has been allowed to set up ABC2, which basically plays re-runs of ABC programs (there is very little new content except for a regional news 'round-up' program) and has a focus on children's programs and rural/regional news. It does have some cool features though. For instance you can watch all the 'editions' of Stateline (usually you can only see the version of Stateline that relates to your state). Ok, maybe only I think that's cool.

SBS is also doing cool stuff, including running a "World News Channel" 20 hours a day in a variety of languages - none of which I speak except English of course, but it would still be cool.

NOTE: Foxtel Digital is a different thing again. It's a cable/satellite service, entirely in SDTV format (except for programs coming from the free-to-air channels that are re-broadcast through the Foxtel digital service).

Anti-Siphoning (AS) is a restriction on the Pay-TV operators ability to buy the rights to certain sporting and cultural (Olympics, Commonwealth Games, etc) events. Put simply, the rules work like this; there is a list of sporting and cultural events, and only the free-to-air networks are allowed to bid for the exclusive rights to show it.

It's a little more complicated then that in practice, but that's good enough for the purposes of a definition. The argument behind the AS provisions is that certain sporting events (AFL Grand Final, Olympics, Melbourne Cup) are of such national significance, that they must always be available on free-to-air TV and not 'siphoned off' by pay-TV.

The anti-siphoning list generally covers the period up until 31 December 2005 and contains sporting events within 11 sports categories - so most likely the whole list has been renewed, but with this government you'd never know because they don't like knowing things...

Content Quotas exist on commercial TV. The current quotas are; there must be 55% Australian-made programming shown between 6am and midnight on free-to-air TV (10% of all expenditure on programs on pay-TV must be spent on Australian drama as well, but there are no such quotas on the SBS or ABC).

Within that, other conditions must also be met. There are requirements for the broadcasting of 285 hours of (first run) children's TV per year (across various categories). Plus 20 hours of documentaries per annum, as well as 80% of all advertising (6am - midnight) must also be made in Australia. There is also a requirement for stations to show 250 hours of Australian made drama each year, although stations rarely meet this goal and nothing happens because the licence owners are powerful people and you're not.

In 1983 Australia and New Zealand signed the "Closer Economic Relations" (CER) agreement, which makes it illegal for either country to discriminate between products on the basis that they were made in the other country. The High Court ruled in 1998 that the CER meant that New Zealand made TV products should therefore be treated as "Australian made" for purposes of meeting the content quotas in what became known as the "Project Blue Skies" judgement.

To ensure that this decision didn't result in cheaper made NZ TV programs being used to make up the whole quota, the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) revised its rules, maintaining certain safeguards for categories of Australian TV which were deemed 'vulnerable' to being obliterated.

Cross-media Ownership Laws state that media proprietors (owners) must choose between owning a radio station, or television station or newspaper in the same city. Proprietors are limited to owning one television station in a market (a State usually or regional centre), or two radio stations.

In total a proprietor may not own broadcast (TV and radio) from media assets that reach more than 75% of the Australian population. Newspapers are regulated by the states and so don't fall under federal media laws on total population reach - which is why The Australian newspaper is allowed to exist (that could potentially reach an audience of more than 75% of the Australian population).

When the current laws were brought in the then PM Paul Keating famously remarked that media owners would have to choose between being "Queens of the Screen or Princes of Print". Later this year that will become a very quaint notion indeed.

Richard Alston proposed to change the law to be a "2 out of 3" system, allowing proprietors to owner any two of radio, newspaper or TV stations in the one market but these changes were never going to get through the old Senate because Alston is evvvvvvvvil.

But now there is a new Senate and new Minister, Helen Coonan who seems to favour a 'rule of 5', meaning that there must be 5 independent media owners in any market (and after that you can go nuts and buy whatever you want). So as long as there are five different owners of TV, radio and newspapers then Coonan thinks that enough diversity of opinion. I think 5 would be even more pathetic than the current level of concentration of ownership - which is the highest in the developed world!

Foreign Media Ownership Laws state that foreign ownership of television licence is capped at 20% (it actually says that "2 or more foreign persons cannot have company interests that exceed 20%"). Foreign ownership of newspapers capped at 30% total (no more than 20% by one foreign person).

Ok test time!!
If you think you've understood all that rubbish reasonably well, then read this recent article about the impending media 'reforms' (bear in mind who owns The Australian, so take some of the analysis with a pinch of salt) and see if it makes sense!

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