American vs. Australian Television News
With NewsCorp dominating the print press and heritage media controlling television news in Australia, much of the content feels slower and drier than that of media platforms in America. Why is this so? Smaller economies tend to be more conservative with their spending. Heritage owners almost always have an opinion that they would like to influence stories with for a political goal, i.e. SkyNews’ (owned by Rupert Murdoch, inspiration for Logan Roy in Succession) coverage of Australian and American politics is unashamedly right-wing, using tactics rarely more creative than criticism of left parties. Some platforms are more controlled, less attack-based in their communication. And how do Australian media heads insist on presenting these? On channels like 9news, you’re lucky to get any stories beyond a single segment of any international events, despite living in a thoroughly globalised country. On channels like ABC, presenters speak at 0.7x speed, forcing viewers to sit through 5 minutes of a story before getting two answers from any politician or anchor on any given topic. In short, considering Australia is a significant political player as a middle power in global politics, our media sphere is outdated and generally burdensome to watch. Accordingly, television as a news source for people is declining rapidly, from just over half of the population, while 60% of Gen Z get their news from social media sources. Understandably, news organisations could be in deep fear of repeating the mistakes of American news channels, such as Fox News, which could become a funnelled source for misinformation from the highest bidder, usually a populist, and almost always has a last name like Murdoch or Trump on their resume. However, that fear is driving people away from the screen. Instead, we need to take the constructive lessons in the value of engaging critical information through pleasurable visual and audio tools as well as constant expert opinion, use comprehensive legal frameworks in each organisation detailing the prohibition of owner-opinion driven stories for political outcomes, and focus more on our audience as subjects in a rapidly changing wide consumption environment, rather than inevitable viewers. Instead of showing audiences a weekly 10 minute story including a tour of a record breaking priced $1million studio apartment in Sydney, cut it to 4 minutes and include a statement from someone who can do something about the housing crisis, instead of prolonging the anger of young adults watching frustrated with the fact of having to enter the housing industry amid a living crisis, among other unforeseen circumstances. Because in short, they just won’t watch. And they aren’t.