Malcolm Colless, and the war between Chairman Rupert and the ABC continues to simmer ...

(Above: cap of the Australia network 'about us' page - you can see it here - such a bland goody two shoes page full of the ABC and The New Inventors and Play School and learning English. Where's Kochie and the rugger buggers? Where's a bit of thugby league? Where the heck is Australian culture?)

Go looking for any disclosure of interest at the bottom of Malcolm Colless's ABC's 24-hour news channel too much of a stretch and you'll discover what it's like to go barking at the moon.

Entertaining, but pointless.

For the record, Sky News in the UK is part-owned by Chairman Rupert's News Corporation via BSkyB (here), while in Australia the Australian News Channel Pty Ltd, which runs Sky News, is a joint venture of PBL Media, Seven Media Group and British Sky Broadcasting. (here). PBL has a 33% stake, as does Kerry Stokes' Seven Network, with BSkyB completing the holy trinity.

Now while the figures might be a little out of date (Media Ownership Regulation in Australia), contemplate this state of affairs, as outlined in the same parliamentary library brief:

News Ltd is an Australian subsidiary of News Corporation (Chairman, Mr Rupert Murdoch). It has interests in more than one hundred national, metropolitan, regional and suburban newspapers throughout Australia. A list of the major titles can be obtained from this page. In terms of its share of circulation, it has:

68 per cent of the capital city and national newspaper market;
77 per cent of the Sunday newspaper market;
62 per cent of the suburban newspaper market;
18 per cent of the regional newspaper market.

These figures include Queensland Press Ltd, jointly owned by Cruden Investments (Murdoch’s own company) and News Corporation. Other News Ltd. media interests are AAP Information Services (jointly controlled with Fairfax), a 25 per cent stake in Foxtel (pay TV) and News Interactive (online).

Enough is never enough, is it, not when you've got big eyes and a big tummy.

I think that begins to set the mood for Colless's attack dog piece, which naturally consists of an attack on the taxpayer funded ABC, and which suggests that as revenue comes under stress this year for Chairman Rupert, his minions will have much to do and much to pen:

The ABC's plan to launch in the next few months a 24-hour national television news service amounts to a taxpayer-funded declaration of war on commercial media outlets in Australia.

It also raises serious questions about the ability of the national broadcaster to support its image as the provider of high quality news and current affairs programming.

With no additional funding from the government for this service, ABC management will have to rely on savings in other areas to underwrite this digital channel.

Oh dear, that sounds serious, and it must constitute some kind of clear and present danger to Chairman Rupert's plan to charge for news (whatever it might be) or corral opinion behind a bamboo paywall curtain (however that might work) or form a social community online wherein the sheep will be only too happy to line up to be shorn of a little cash each day (however that shearing might work).

But no you goose, the danger is entirely to the ABC:

"The real danger in pursuing this 24-hour news service is that quantity will be put ahead of quality," one senior ABC executive tells Focus. There is concern that the key daily news service at 7pm and current affairs programs such as The 7.30 Report, Four Corners and Lateline will suffer, he says.

The quality of the 7.30 Report might suffer? Is it possible to go from utter tedium to devastating boredom and call it suffering? But you see - he's only caring about the fate of the average ABC viewer, doesn't give a toss about his own bit of paddock.

But who could be behind this vile apparatchik bureaucratic monstrous program to ruin the ABC and in the process and as a soft aside, denude Chairman Rupert and all the commercial operators of their sheep?

The 24-hour TV channel is being driven by ABC managing director Mark Scott as a key part of his policy for a continuous news centre inside the national broadcaster, extending across all of its media outlets. To this end the ABC is setting itself up in direct competition with the commercial media sector at all levels. For example, its funding boost in last year's federal budget to set up a series of regional broadband hubs gives it a significant advantage over commercial rural radio services, which rely on advertising to survive.

Yep, it's the fiendish clap happy Mark Scott:

It is clear that a primary objective of Scott's strategy is to counter the success of the 24-hour service delivered by Sky News on pay TV.

"If Sky News can deliver a 24-hour news service with a fraction of the number of journalists working in ABC newsrooms, then it stands to follow that the ABC is capable of producing a 24/7 news service for our audiences; we just need to work smarter to deliver it," Scott said in an article in The Australian in March 2008.

Oh the presumptuous goose, doesn't he understand that the ABC is congenitally incapable of rising to such an onerous challenge:

But does this necessarily follow that a bigger staff is the answer to meeting this challenge? What is required is the degree of flexibility in news delivery that runs against the ABC's entrenched culture. For a start, a 24-hour service involves the capability to cross live to breaking events, something the ABC has religiously avoided in its news and current affairs formats.

And for second, a 24-hour news service of this kind involves the capability of the consumer to unstitch their wallet and sign up to pay TV, a tithing system that ABC viewers have religiously avoided since the days of the TV license system.

But never mind all that, what really irks Rupert's warriors is the way Scott is still trying to keep hold of Australia Network Television:

Scott's battle with Sky News extends beyond Australia into the area of international broadcasting. His plan for continuous news embraces the Australian Network Television, which is currently operated by the ABC under contract from the Department of Foreign Affairs to deliver programming offshore, particularly in the Asian and South Pacific region.

He has strenuously opposed any suggestion this service should be run by Sky News, arguing that the national broadcaster was the only suitable vehicle to deliver the federal government's diplomatic message.

He says that a substantial boost in investments by countries such as China to upgrade their government-owned propaganda outlets proves that this role should be left exclusively to the national broadcaster. This demonstrated an understanding that diplomatic activities can't be outsourced, he claims.

Oh dear, he's shameless that clap happy chappie:

In international affairs, where words can be bullets, there is a growing appreciation of the role of "soft diplomacy" - using subtle methods such as the sharing of perspectives to deliver policy objectives. It is not widely known how aggressively other countries, including our partners in the G20, are investing in international broadcasting ass a principal tool of soft diplomacy. And how far behind Australia lags in this new race for influence.

The British spend $868 million on international radio and television; the French $618 million; the Germans $532 million; and the Chinese about $380 million. All this is government investment in international broadcasting. In Australia we currently invest $34 million in Radio Australia and Australia Network television. The ABC has long argued that we extract the maximum possible efficiencies from this outlay, delivering "good bang for our buck".

Out of this small sum, we broadcast on radio in seven regional languages and reach 44 nations in Asia and the Pacific on Australia Network.

But the ABC - and Australia - risk getting drowned in the growing proliferation of broadcast voices. The Japanese, the Russians and the Germans have recently announced plans for new English television services in Asia and Pacific. (someone liked Mark Scott's piece so well they made it into a google doc here).

The cunning fiend. Notice the way he conflates the ABC and Australia! As if we're a bunch of socialists leeching off the teat of the taxpayer, instead of the rugged individualists we are (all hail Chairman Rupert - you there, in the stalls, you're not bowing low enough, scrape that floor, suck up the carpet).

Well it seems that Colless has fired the first shot across the bow for 2010 between Rupert's minions and the public broadcaster, and he shows a certain anxiety as to whether he might have delivered a fierce enough warning:

Scott has a close ally in Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, but the future of the Australian Network is something in which our Prime Minister has taken a close personal interest as he develops his image as a middle power diplomatic leader.

As a result Conroy may feel more comfortable staying out of any debate about the future management of the network.

Oh no, could it be that Chairman Rudd is still in power, and he might take a view! And that Conroy is a lick spittle subservient time server? And could the Chairman's view be blocked by a mote in the eye? Despite the extremely friendly way he's been treated by Chairman Rupert's press.

Quickly, cast an eye on the runes, poke at the entrails, is there any sign of a decision?

Probably awaiting directions, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith has been prevaricating for months on who should run the Australian Network when the current five-year contract with the ABC expires next year.

Oh dear, no decision yet. How then to run it down?

In the meantime the network is believed to have lost the rights to Super 15, Tri Nations and home international rugby for the next five years. Rugby has been a key source of advertising revenue for the network, which is forbidden from carrying commercials during news, current affairs or children's programs.

No rugby!? How on earth can the ABC deliver Australian culture to the Asia Pacific region without rugby!

With a decision on the future of the network's management contract required by August, Smith will next week call for submissions from interested parties on how it should be operated in future.

It is understood that the deadline for submissions will be the end of April, with a decision on the network likely in May.

Oh dear, decision time is getting close, and Chairman Rudd - who thanks to Chairman Rupert's press we now understand aspires really to the running of the United Nations and not a tin pot country like Australia - might not swing in the wind in the way he should:

This move coincided with the scheduled visit to Australia by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this weekend, which she cancelled on Thursday because of the Haitian earthquake disaster. Rudd's vision of becoming a key player in regional diplomacy received a boost from Clinton, who said earlier that the Prime Minister had been a leader in promoting dialogue in the region and she looked forward to his contributions on engagement with Asia.

Rudd's view on the role that international broadcasting can play in enhancing Australia's diplomatic clout in the region may well be influenced by the significant boost in the Voice of America budget to assist the US government's Asia engagement process.

Oh no, not the Voice of America, funded by that Kenyan socialist islamist blow in - where the hell is his real birth certificate - when the only true American culture worthy of being exported to the world is encapsulated in Fox News, Bill Orally and Beck the non-musical non --scientologist, who has yet to explain so much about himself, even though people are just asking for an explanation.

But if this is an important part of selling Australia's diplomatic image overseas it must engender the flexibility required to meet the rapid and continuously changing communications demands of an increasingly selective audience.

One capable of delivering pious private enterprise free market blather in a way only Chairman Rupert's minions can manage, in support of the grand vision of an always richer and more influential Chairman Rupert, who was born in 1931 but holds on to his empire as if he was born in 2001.

Oh it's going to get heated this year, as Chairman Rupert's minions comes out firing at the ABC. But what if the government takes this as a sign and awards the new Australian Network gig to the ABC?

Never mind, I'd just settle for a disclosure at the bottom of the page of any 'deep think' piece of propaganda in The Australian, as most lately delivered by Colless.

Something like: The Australian is intimately linked, as part of Chairman Rupert's empire, into the commercial outcome of the Sky/ABC battle for the Australia Network, so everything we say should be judged in the light of our rampant desire for Sky to win, and for the ABC, which threatens News Corps plans to charge its users for its content, to be soundly defeated, thrashed up hill and down dale, for the sometimes evil, always unbalanced and unfair, taxpayer funded bureaucratic socialistic haven for lefties with a Darth Vader-like appetite for growth that it is ...

Oh and perhaps we should develop a chant and make it obligatory. Four legged Chairman Rupert good, two legged clap happy ABC baaad ....

Meanwhile, the rest of us can sit back and relax and watch from our lounge chairs as the media circus comes to town, and the performing elephants dance for our pleasure ... (any accidental crushing of children will not see entry fees cheerfully refunded. Look after your bloody children yourself.)

(Below: the Australia Network footprint. Some footprint. Or should that be pie? Want a bit of the pie? Sky does).