FOLLOWING the switch-off of Channel 10 broadcasting into Mildura on June 30 due to its perpetual unprofitability, industry stakeholders and some in the wider regional community have been left wondering about the future of free-to-air (FTA) TV services as increasingly society has moved towards watching content primarily via internet connections.

While the Sunraysia town of about 35,000 people still has the other broadcasters for now, well and truly gone for every Australian is the heyday of the influence of conventional TV from towers high on mountains with only one channel of rigidly-programmed standard-definition analogue content in a 4x3 aspect ratio offered and audiences adjusting their weekly schedules around their favourite serials and upcoming Sunday night blockbuster movies.

No remote controls, fuzzy and unstable pictures potentially depending on the weather, and interference from your dad’s drill and your mum’s hand mixer were just a few of the challenges of TV watching back then; it all seems so quaint now.

Anyone under 20 probably has no idea what I’m talking about, which is not entirely surprising to me, as I remember saying to a work colleague at Channel 7 in 2006 that the writing was on the wall for FTA with only two obstacles holding back the tide – the speed of the internet and some kind of expanded remote control to do more than just turn the power on, channel change and volume control.

He scoffed; it must’ve seemed a ludicrous suggestion to him, given where he was sitting – at the central technical operations desk (called master control) of the then state-of-the-art only-four-year-old Broadcast Centre at Docklands in Melbourne outputting content to all of the network in the country.

But with the change from CDs to online music already well underway (after CDs themselves had taken over from vinyl records and cassettes some 15 years earlier) and YouTube content exploding less than a year after it launched, I realised it was inevitable that major market change was also coming to video delivery.

It wasn’t difficult to see that the only content viable for FTA could not continue to be overseas shows that formed the majority of programming, but local content largely restricted to news and sport; why would anyone wait up to several months to watch a new series of their favourite show when they could just stream or download it minutes after its release somewhere in the world?

But that programming bottleneck was just one of the pressures explaining what some industry observers of the shutdown of Channel 10/Mildura Digital Television (MDT) have called a harbinger of further changes in the way content will be delivered and will likely affect regional areas before metropolitan ones.

Population density and international FTA

THE low-density population of much of Australia has always been a big issue for the conventional TV broadcasting model and this trajectory is set to accelerate now that the first regional town to go fully digital (2010) has ironically been the same one to start switching those services off.

In Europe and the UK, discussions among broadcasters have been ramping up about what kind of replacement infrastructure to implement as online content continues to overtake, with the BBC possibly flagging the death of its terrestrial services likely after 2034 – and with Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain trialling 5G-based parallel outputs, there are clear signs of change.

Switzerland has already wound down most of its transmitters (2019) due to being well served by satellite and internet protocol services, but it’s not all in one direction as France recently implemented terrestrial TV upgrades to 4K ultra-high-definition services across 200 towers in anticipation of the Paris Olympics; it will switch off high definition (HD) in 2029.

However, 5G is hardly an FTA TV option for Western Victoria (or for that matter, most of regional Australia) – its transmitter footprint typically only reaches about 600 metres and that’s without obstructions – and ageing rural transmitter towers are certainly unlikely to get upgrades to 4K when the market is destined to shrink further.

Spectrum fee hits regional broadcasters

MUCH has been made of the Commercial Broadcasting Tax (CBT, or spectrum fee) stations pay as the hefty aggregate price tag of $43.5 million per annum is simply unable to be covered by the potential advertising revenue for some; regional stations have pointed out the CBT hits them harder than their metro counterparts.

In a pre-Budget submission to the Federal Government in 2022-23, Free TV Australia said the tax “was introduced as a five-year interim arrangement as part of the 2017 Media Reform package” and agreed to it on the basis of a review after that time.

“Without a genuine review of the tax, as anticipated by the legislation and supporting materials, there is no clear pathway for the proper consideration of appropriate taxation arrangements going forward,” they said.

“We submit that a full examination of the appropriateness of the CBT, including international approaches to the level of taxation, would lead to a recommendation to repeal the CBT Act.”

They also pointed out how advertising competitors such as Google and Facebook, and content competitors such as Netflix were not required to pay for spectrum use.

With that kind of marketplace, TV licences simply weren’t the “licence to print money” they were famously called by Roy Thompson of Scottish Television when first issued in 1956.

The Mildura closure has prompted the Federal Coalition to initiate a Senate enquiry with shadow communications minister, David Coleman saying he supported abolishing the CBT.

“Scrapping the CBT would allow regional broadcasters – who are disproportionately affected by this impost – to reinvest in their local businesses,” he said.

“Without reform of the CBT, it is very likely that MDT will not be the last station to close.”

Mallee MP, Dr Anne Webster, wanted the Senate inquiry to hold a hearing in Mildura so that it can know first-hand how the closure of MDT was affecting local communities, and slammed the Australian Government for having “presided over the dishonour of being the first to see a digital television signal switched off.”

She was also critical of the suggestion for those affected to get a Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST) receiver as an alternative; the service was launched in 2010 and uses two Optus satellites to deliver digital television and radio services to viewers in remote areas of Australia. (See grey areas on map on left.)

The service was primarily meant for viewers who are unable to receive digital TV through their normal antenna because of issues relating to local interference, terrain or distance from the transmitter in their area.

bout $800 for the dish and one outlet, with the signal encrypted and requiring an application process for a smartcard to access the full services; Ms Webster called the suggestion a “tin-ear option for Sunraysia residents” and Mr Coleman said during a cost-of-living crisis “this is not a great solution for the people of Mildura”.

Is satellite a long-term solution?

HAMILTON-based Look Cabling Solutions director, Jono Lowin said the price named was comparable with his own experience selling receiver kits, but real-world installations could easily increase costs, especially if more than one screen was to be served.

“You need a box on every TV and those boxes are $400 on their own,” he said.

“So it can add up very quickly if you’ve got two or three TVs.”

He agreed about the erosion of FTA market share, questioning if the government could offer a subsidy for such situations like the MDT shutdown, and added VAST could possibly also have some reworking in terms of its offering, given much of its content was not HD.

Mr Lowin said the SpaceX’s Starlink service would be an attractive option for some, but with the monthly charge of $139 on top of the set-up costs – and countries like Switzerland and India showing a good market for satellite TV – he admitted there may still be scope for VAST to continue and fill the gaps as terrestrial towers got switched off.

In the meantime, he said the main Mt Dundas TV transmitter 13 kilometres northwest of Cavendish was used by about 80 per cent of his FTA antenna customers in the region, but he admitted getting good reception for residents to the east of Hamilton hadn’t always been as easy.

“Once you get past the pub in Dunkeld, the mountain (Grampians) blocks (Mt) Dundas,” Mr Lowin said.

“Everything … that way goes back to Mt Cole (for) Ballarat.”

(The transmitter in that region sits on Lookout Hill, about 25 kilometres east of Ararat.)

Mr Lowin admitted he was happy to hear about technology changes and market responses creating new situations, not just because they drove his business, but often presented individual challenges he had to figure out solutions to.

“I do love this industry that is forever changing,” he said.

Content agreements

WHEN asked about the MDT shutdown, Wannon MP, Dan Tehan told The Spectator although his own viewing habits had changed alongside much of society, he noted another market factor with the influence of overseas companies on local broadcasters and news sources on the Coalition’s radar.

“When we were in government, we required the digital multilateral companies to pay our broadcasters or the news (sources),” he said.

“That underpinned the viability or health and viability of our broadcasters.”

He claimed the Australian government had failed in its duty to keep the market equitable.

“What we’ve seen is the large multinational digital providers now not pay for the content that they get from our local news providers,” Mr Tehan said.

“That is putting enormous pressure on our local media organisations.”

He believed it was vital for the overseas companies to negotiate agreements for content and “regional providers have been hit the hardest” but admitted overall it was difficult for politics to keep up with the continual rapid changes in the field of communications.

“Often things can move very, very slowly,” Mr Tehan said.

“(But) you have to make sure your ministers are on the ball.”

He concluded by saying the Coalition would be announcing new policy before the next election.

With so many variables associated with this subject: the CBT, delivery technology, video standards, advertising spends, internet access, online platform decisions and potential changes in government being just a few – there’s a lot more difficulty in predicting what FTA broadcasting will look like in the next decade or so, but what appears most likely is many regional areas will be the first to deal with the inevitable changes.

Spectator editor, Mark Rabich worked in broadcast TV in Melbourne for about 30 years, mainly as a video editor.