SPARK AND CANNON Telephone: Adelaide (08) 8212-3699 TRANSCRIPT Melbourne (03) 9670-6989 Perth (08) 9325-4577 OF PROCEEDINGS Sydney (02) 9211-4077 _______________________________________________________________ PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION INQUIRY INTO THE BROADCASTING SERVICES ACT 1992 PROF R.J. SNAPE, Presiding Commissioner MR S. SIMSON, Assistant Commissioner TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS AT MELBOURNE ON TUESDAY, 8 JUNE 1999, AT 9.12 AM Continued from 7/6/99 Broadcast 693 br080699.doc PROF SNAPE: Welcome to the resumption of the hearings in Melbourne in the Productivity Commission's inquiry into broadcasting. The terms of reference for the inquiry are available just outside the door, as is the issues paper. As you can see, the day's proceedings are all recorded on transcript, and the transcript will be available on the Web site within about three days of the hearings and we send hard copies to the relevant people when they're available. At the end of today's hearings I shall ask anyone present who wishes to make an oral presentation to do so should they wish. So we begin today and welcome Kiss FM Inc. We have one representative to speak from Kiss, and I'll invite him to identify himself and then to speak for the transcript and then to speak to the submission. Thank you. MR BYRNE: My name is Tim Byrne and I'm the station manager at Kiss FM. We've submitted a report on how the regulation would be as it affects ourselves and community broadcasting in general. We've selected several areas to talk about. One was the social dimensions of the public interest. The government, the CBAA - Community Broadcasting Association and the present government - have identified community broadcasting as a viable and effective way of providing services to the community as well as training people, but our experience is that the act hampers or slows down that process due to primarily the situation we're going through the moment, which is the licence area planning of Australia, and Melbourne in particular. There are something like 23 community groups trying to get a licence. Not all those are after Melbourne-wide licences. I think there are probably eight after Melbourne-wide licences. The problem we have is that basically we're told to go off and operate in a business world as effectively and productively as possible. In fact, we have annual meetings, or the CBAA has annual general meetings, where the ABA comes and talks, and always the underlying theme is the community sector needs to get more productive, economically efficient and so forth. I believe at Kiss we've been fairly successful at adopting that attitude, yet when we try to act in a proper business world we have the uncertainty of not knowing as an aspirant broadcaster when we're next going to broadcast. This makes it extremely difficult to make a business viable, a community organisation, which is a business, and also to plan for the future when you're unsure as to your income - when it's going to come in and so forth, when you're going to be on air to generate that income. I've gone on here under Promoting Australian Identity and Culture to talk about the experience we have with Kiss. We are a 100 per cent dance music station and there is a very viable culture, I suppose, of artists, producers, in Melbourne and Australia who are basically ignored by mainstream media. As we are a 100 per cent dance music station, obviously we are interested in Australian dance music artists and promoting them. Currently we have a situation where we have the quota system for Australian artists but unfortunately there's no quota system for new Australian music, and in our situation basically during the day we program our music and then at night-time it's not programmed. But during the daytime 30 per cent of that program music is Australian, and that's by choice, not by a rule set by ourselves or anything. The amount of music that comes through the place, there's enough to make up 30 per cent new Australian dance music. I just go on to say here that this could become a good export earner for 8/6/99 Broadcast 694 T. BYRNE Australia. Already we're seeing situations often where Australian artists are going overseas and being signed overseas first rather than here because there's no support, apart from ourselves, who aren't full-time, for these artists in getting their product played on air. Economics of broadcasting: we believe that what we do targets a very niche sort of market, but by no means small, when we say "niche". They tend to be a savvy sort of audience and aged anywhere between 14 and 35. Our research - we just concluded a second survey and we're compiling it. This was actually compiled from our first survey - that about one-third of our listeners turn off radio altogether when we're not on air. I believe that percentage has gone up, but I don't have the final figures. A lot of them go to JJJ, which is the national broadcaster, and from our point of view or our sponsors', the people who are supporting us, that's quite a large audience or market, they view, that they cannot reach through any other means of radio. Commercial radio certainly doesn't get to them, and JJJ - there's no advertising allowed on there. So they are feeling quite frustrated in the fact that they've identified a market and an audience that they want to target but they're not able to do it on a regular basis. We've got the four minutes an hour rule. I still don't understand why there should be a four-minutes an hour rule when commercial stations are free-to-air as many hours as they like. There were rumours that it was going to be lifted to five but I haven't heard any more of that, but I think it should be abolished altogether. The problem I think here, I go through to say, is that it's extremely hard to plan financially for the future. The act says that it should not impose financial or administrative burdens on broadcasters due to the regulation. There's no doubt that that's what's happening to us. I just go on to say this is very frustrating. It's very hard to maintain enthusiasm with volunteers to keep staff, to keep trained personnel, when you're unsure when you're going to be on, unsure whether you're going to be able to pay them, unsure if you're going to be there necessarily in another six months. Very shortly I just talked about ownership and control. It doesn't really affect community radio as such. It does in the sense of new licences being available, but we're of the opinion that diversity of ownership is beneficial to Australian media. Program standards: again I just go on to talk about the fact that perhaps there is a quota system needed. The French example - I'm not exactly sure. I tried to find out some more information on this but wasn't able to in the short time we had, but just the French experience - they have had an explosion of electronic music coming from France due primarily to the laws - I think this is the story - they put in place before the European Union was established to protect their cultural identity, and as a consequence the flow-on of that has been a huge increase in electronic music selling around the world and making it into especially the European charts, not so much the American. But this sort of protection of their culture and art has certainly helped build an export industry for France. The planning process: it's just ridiculous that for so long we've been told that licences would be issued, 94, 95, 96, and it's gone on and on. No deadline has ever 8/6/99 Broadcast 695 T. BYRNE been really set. Now that digital is supposed to come in in 2001, I'm led to believe that analogue will be concluded by the planning for digital. But we have, like I say, had the decisions moved back and back. The latest I've heard, the draft will appear in the second half of this year, but I'll wait to see. For those of us not only at Kiss but generally in the community broadcasting sector, it is extremely frustrating and confusing as to why this whole process has taken so long. No-one has seemed to want to speed the process up or answer questions or set a deadline. I've had conversations with the current minister, and he would not give any indication of a deadline, only that, "We're working on it," and so forth - not particularly heartening when you go back to a group of community-minded people and say, "I don't know anything." That's basically what's been going on for something like six, seven years. Every year we have a CBAA AGM, we attend and come back knowing no more. I think it's extremely unkind, and in fact, I go on to say, unethical and immoral, to string people on for so long without proper deadlines being given. In conclusion, I would argue that the act has certainly hampered productivity for ourselves and generally for the community sector. I'm talking particularly, obviously, about the aspirant community sector but it is a very viable and energetic part of the community sector in general and they're some of our frustrations we've experienced with it.