The Australian reported this moning that Mark Scott is going before a Senate Estimates committee today in relation to the funding of the ABC.
The two or three readers 
that I have as part of the viewing audience of my vast media empire will know I will be very much looking forward to the results of this due to an article I previously wrote in relation to the launch of a 24-hour news broadcast on its high-definition channel.
The article seems to suggest that he is going to get asked those hard questions, including what effect this will have on current ABC services, that needs to be answered. In fact the article cites that opposition communications spokesman Tony Smith’s office has spoken with Coalition members on the committee about pursuing the issue, and one Coalition source is quoted as saying “We will be asking about (Mr Scott’s) plans for world domination…”.
Let me be clear here, my beef is not about Mark Scott or his aspirations for the public broadcaster. It’s about fair competition and what is the ABC’s role in public broadcast.
You see, just recently a “second front” has opened up in this battle between commecial media and the public broadcaster, with Fairfax accusing the ABC’s plans in relation to the ABC Open project, which involves building new regional broadband hubs, threatening the future of commercial media in rural and regional areas.
Again, I think this is a fair concern and that the Head of Fairfax Media (which is Mark Scott’s previous employer) is justified in his comments that he does not believe that it’s “…the role of the ABC to disrupt the commercial landscape by building empires with public funds,“. This singular comment highlights the issue at hand, especially when you consider the investment that private and publically listed companies, and their shareholders, have made into regional and rural communities.
Where should the ABC operate?
The ABC is a tax-financed and tax-exempt organisation that operates in many spaces where you could argure there is “market failure” – that is where it’s economically unviable for commercial enterprise to operate, often in regional and rural markets, and if it wasn’t for the ABC the public in those communaties would be left with out services we in the city centres take for granted. This is where the ABC should operate.
But there is no market failure in demographics where there is healthy comeptition and where commercial enterprise is supporting the needs of the communtity. These are the area’s that both the 24- news channel and ABC Open project seem to be targeting.
The concern is that in these enviroments if the ABC are allowed to compete you will create market failure – that is where private companies that have been able to operate will move away because it is economically unviable when your comeptitor can provide a superior service for free.
In fact FREE is a strategy being employed by online players when they want to try to discourage competition. That is a competitor will only set up in competition against your site if they feel they can generate revenue – but if your price point is $0.00 it is very hard to make any form of revenue.
You can’t beat free, especially when it’s funded by tax payers dollars.
