My Role
Specifically, I have been looking at the following:
* Government Related Issues
- Media Ownership: defining what the changes in law are. This includes also looking at the current laws and discussing the possible implications that these laws may have for Australian free-to-air television.
- I have also taken note of the Labor Party's $4.7 billion broadband proposal into consideration. If the party win at the September election this year and implement the proposal it could then give the technological cababilities for quicker developments in Internet and Digital television.
* Content on Free-to-Air
- I am going to be looking at the current state of content on free-to-air television and research into what the future content may look like in the near future.
Progress
Note - have some drafts on my blog which I can't access, only have access to some of it at the moment via our group blog which I have been contributing to regulalry, by copying and pasting it from my raws server blog. I have researched a fair bit into media ownership in Australia and into television as a whole. e.g. overview of ownership, who owns what
However, I found when looking at these subjects, that I have also needed to look into some technical aspects of the industry such as IPTV and voIP as well as looking at the industry more broadly, its history and where it might be headed in the future, who to contact.
My next section that I will be looking at is content - for this one I would like to arrange a couple of interviews from our list of contacts, (media industry & stations themselves) as it will be more of a speculative nature perhaps than the media ownership issue.
Research Strategies
I have spent a lot of time on the internet, as a lot of the information which is published as a book, in the library are often out of date technologically. The online journals have also been valuable in terms of gathering expert opinions on the subject of the future of television. The newspaper, (in particular the Green Guide is a wealth of informaton as well). I have found some relevant books on ownership as it stands (although, again in the coming months this is also likely to change), and some information on the history of television and the media in Australia. I have created a delicious account also which enables me to collate the research I have found in the hope of creating a bibliography when we upload all of our material together. I have also been lucky in terms of another class I have, The Media, Australian and Global which has had a couple of specific lectures on television, past and present. The group blog has also been fantastic in terms of seeing where the others are at in terms of research. Where I am wanting to go next is to compile some questions between the group and get some interviews organised. I also think that it might be valuable to do some research into advertising - as this is how television is currently paid for it would be interesting to get a perspective on how they see the future of television and whether there is decrease in advertising revenue.
Problems
Being a large group, sometimes it has been hard for us to meet together, especially because of pp as well - only really occasionally, however, we have resolved this by communicating with whoever could not make the meeting straight after by email or in person.
A potential problem might be how to collate the information we have sourced, some of our research already tends to have overlapping issues, however, I think that in bringing this up we can come up arrangements. For instance, the other week when I was looking at ownership and I found info on IPTV, I told Skye who was looking at Broadband TV so that we didn't end up with 2 of the same things down the track.
Some of the information I have found has been pretty dense, particularly legal documents, so I have found that also looking at newspaper articles has been immensely helpful because it simplifies the content and lists major points of interest.
Project Intersecting/Connecting with other research
I think our project intersects with quite a few of the other projects people are doing - lots of them are connected to content, new media, advertising, interactivity etc which are issues that influence the focus of our research project.
There is a lot of interest in the subject particularly aspects of it. I think our research has its own place as it is more of a broad overview of the topic which can touch on other more specific research. Some external examples include:
- Melbourne Uni PHD Assignment on Project: Interactive Television: Impact on Australian TV Industry - ---
PHD candidate Maria Jakovljevic's research is more focussed than what we are looking at, but highlights issues which are relevant to our research as well. - Age Article 'Stop tiptoeing around TV's future'
Discusses the failure in uptake of digital free to air television and proposes reasons why - C Net Article, 'The internet and the future of TV'
- Mark Pesce Report (link on my other blog)
- Paul Budde Report - mentioned in previous post - more of a broad overview - costs a bit to purchase report. Budde has discovered through research an upturn in television viewing, however, attributes this to the increase of pay TV subscriptions. May be worth trying to track him down for an interview - perhaps phone as he is in NSW.
- Geoff also forwarded an email a while back from the University of Queensland's publication - Media International Australia who had a call for papers for 'Beyond Broadcasting: TV for the Twenty-first Century' which was great in terms of giving us possible avenues to go down. Some suggested topics to research include:
- What is television in the twenty-first century? Should our definition of television change? What new cultural habits are emerging?
- Does television require an industry? How are audiences reinventing themselves as producers?
- What are the relationships between free to air, pay TV, public broadcasting and emerging new formats?
- What are the impacts of new distribution models, legal and illegal?
- What impacts do the new technologies and habits have on traditional institutions, policies and regulatory frameworks?
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