WEEK 6 – “Commercial Media”

“Advertisers are the real customers of a commercial media organisation, not its reader, viewers or listeners.” Commercial media really is everywhere and until this lecture, this did not actually occur to me. What is more frightening is that the organisations that we see as competitors are often owned by the same company.

But first, I thought I should define commercial media. Commercial media is any media organisation which derives part of its income or revenue from advertisers. That is, they are profit-driven and not government or license funded. Like any corporate business, the success of a commercial media organisation rests on its ability to generate audiences (or customers) and in turn generates a profit by selling advertising. This can be anything from free to air television, radio or sport to newspapers, outdoor advertising, magazines and digital media.

As I said above, a number of commercial media organisations are owned by the same company. News Limited, Fairfax Media and Nine Entertainment Co. were particularly interesting as they appeared to have the most diverse range of media outlets. If one branch of commercial media went down for whatever reason, these three companies would still have their hand in the cookie jar. This is not something I realised before this lecture and I can see how these companies hold such a competitive edge. A company that owns two or more businesses, that appear to do the same thing with perhaps a slightly different audience, is incredibly profitable. For instance, take a person who owns two different clothing stores on opposite sides of the street. One sells high end fashion and markets themselves by selling only clothes made in Australia, whilst the other sells dirt cheap, everyday clothing that is made in China. Customers will inevitably decide which store to attend, based on their values and what will suit their needs. This, as it does for the big commercial media organisations, results in a win for consumers and a win for management.

Here are some, but not all, of the ‘sub-companies’ owned by the large commercial media organisations in Australia.

News Limited:

• 20^th Century Fox
• Foxtel
• Sky News
• Harper Collins Publishers
• Quest Community Newspapers
• The Courier Mail

Fairfax Media:

• The Sydney Morning Herald
• theage.com.au
• Financial Review
• mycareer.com.au
• RSVP

Nine Entertainment Co:

• Channel 9
• GO! And GEM
• Ticketek.com
• ninemsn
• Women’s Weekly, Women’s Day, Cosmo, Cleo, FHM, etc,.

Seven West Media:

• Channel 7
• 7 Two and 7mate
• Who 
• Better Homes and Gardens
• The West Australian
• Yahoo!

What is the form and function of commercial media? Commercial media has a role to deliver both on a commercial (profit-based) level and on social (public trust) functions. I think it is fair to say that the majority of those companies listed above do perform adhere to both these parameters. But that’s not to say that the commercial media we receive is all good. Unfortunately commercial media results in the dumbing-down of news, tabloidization, the desire to please, less general knowledge and ‘mickey mouse’ news. We say that we would be happy to pay for quality journalism and yet we’re interested in the best beach bums, stars without makeup and shark attacks over the important political news. Hmmmm, it just doesn’t add up!

But commercial media is not without its challenges. Advertising revenue for broadcast media is down and continues to slide. Have you ever wondered why so many channels play repeats of CSI, Law and Order, How I Met Your Mother or Friends? They are cheap!! And today there is no hiding as online behaviour is tracked and organisations know exactly what is catching peoples’ attention.  

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