Commercial Media

 Commercial media. What is it? What does it do? Who uses it? All these questions were answered in lecture 6, with the topic being commercial media and a specific look at it in Australia. Commercial media encompasses television, newspapers, magazines and radio. It can also include telecommunications companies, such as Telstra and Optus. Some examples of the commercial media in Australia today are channels 7, 9 and ten, companies such as News Limited and Fairfax, and radio producers like Austereo. The purpose of commercial media is to ‘sell audiences to advertisers’. This is to say, every time you sit down to watch a show on your favourite commercial station, you are in fact wanted there to view the advertisements, rather than the programs themselves. Commercial media is a form of profit driven media production, which requires audiences in order to attract advertisers and generate profit. That said, commercial media outlets still attempt to gain the trust of the audience. Media has a responsibility in a democracy, as well as having to meet formal state requirements, such as legal prescriptions and statutory boards. The lecture also made mention of a public sphere, which is space between commerce and government where people can debate freely and form public opinion (for a more in depth look at this concept, and others associated with commercial media: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611795/100438659076).

There are also new controls on commercial media, such as government agencies regulating content, state press subsidies and licensed journalism in nations such as Indonesia and East Timor. Some believe that commercial media is corrupt and lacks quality (John McManus – Market Driven Journalism 1994) and that ‘In this regard, one thing stands out above all others –the view that the very nature of the commercial equates to a corruption of the social. In other words, as media become more commercial, they do so at the expense of their social function. This is seen as a zerosum game. Profits come before quality’ (Prof. Michael Bromley – SJC  2009). This is an interesting concept, and I have to say, that to a certain extent, I agree with the aforementioned opinions. To be honest, I was unaware that the majority of media I consumed was considered commercial, and that the main drive behind these entities was profit. So are their claims of commitment to delivering quality content or local productions merely a strategy on their behalf to attract a wide, previously elusive audience, to advertisers? I believe that this is probably the case, however I do also believe that commercial media is not necessarily bad. At the end of the day, these media outlets are businesses, and the goal of business is to make money. So no, I will not stop watching, reading, or buying things produced by these commercial media bodies, but I will view them differently, with the knowledge that for the big players, the news isn’t always about the story.