On 29 September 2014, the Australia Network television service, which is run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), will be replaced with a more limited television service to be known as ‘Australia Plus’. Australia Plus will deliver Australian content with a focus on news and sport, business, lifestyle, education and English language learning. According to the Australia […]

SBS has received strong viewer numbers for its broadcast coverage of the 2014 World Cup from Brazil. Coverage of the tournament on ESPN and ABC in the United States has seen record numbers for that market. However the real growth story is the number of users going online to follow the action from Brazil. According to […]

The  20th Commonwealth Games begins on 23 July in Glasgow and Australian audiences will be able to follow all the action on ABC Radio Grandstand. The ABC Grandstand team will bring audiences all the colour and excitement of the eleven days of competition, plus the Opening and Closing Ceremonies on ABC Local Radio, ABC Grandstand online, […]

The Fairfax Radio Network (FRN) has secured rights to broadcast cricket for the next five years. The FRN which includes Melbourne’s 3AW, Sydney’s 2UE, Brisbane’s 4BC and Perth’s 6PR will have live ball-by-ball coverage of: the Commonwealth Bank Boxing Day; the Commonwealth Bank Sydney Test; the Carlton Mid One Day International Series; the KFC T20 International […]

Frost Global has long highlighted the need for an Australian Hulu and Netflix, but to date there has been no firm commitment from either company about commencing Australian operations. This has left Australian consumers with silo catch-up services, that is catch-up content only accessible through each free-to-air network’s online catch-up services (save for services such […]

I wrote a couple of years ago about the struggle that Melbourne Talk Radio (MTR) would face in establishing a strong radio presence in Melbourne, especially given the existing players in the market namely Fairfax-owned 3AW and ABC 774. Since the well-publicised launch of the station back in April 2010, the station has continued to receive […]

The English Cricket Board (ECB) today announced that the UK’s Sky Sports has been awarded the rights to continue broadcasting live international and county cricket in the UK exclusively until the end of the 2017 English summer. There is also an option for Sky Sports to extend the deal for an additional two years, which would cover Australia’s […]

We reported earlier in the year that leading US online catch-up TV service HULU had applied for registration of its trademark in Australia, fuelling speculation of an Australian launch of the service some time in the near future. HULU is jointly owned by US media companies NBC Universal (Comcast), News Corporation & The Walt Disney Company and has around 260 partners […]

This week the Gillard Government announced that the Department of Foreign Affairs’ international television network, the Australia Network will now become a permanent feature of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s duties as the national broadcaster, rather than have the network put out to commercial tender. This announcement comes after the Government scrapped that tender process to run […]

  Reports in the Australian and the Australian Financial Review last week confirmed the government is failing to act on important regulatory issues affecting Australian television broadcasters. The first is the delay to pass the Anti-siphoning reforms that were first announced in December last year and second the delay to award the new Australia Network contract. Since this […]