Community TV: Malcolm Turnbull confirms licensing for stations will end in 2015

Updated

Community television will be booted off air by the Federal Government in a little over 12 months.

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that community stations would only be licensed until the end of 2015.

After that, they would not be granted access to broadcast spectrum and Mr Turnbull suggested they use the internet instead.

Mr Turnbull unveiled the move in a speech to a conference hosted by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) in Sydney.

The move would affect C31 in Melbourne and Geelong, 31 in Brisbane and TVS in Sydney, as well as 44 in Adelaide and WTV in Perth.

Australian Community Television Alliance secretary Richard McLelland described it as a "death knell of community television in Australia".

Mr McLelland, who is also the general manager of C31, said he was frustrated by the decision.

"He [Turnbull] seems to have a view that community television is not worth having in this country," he said.

The community television stations currently use a small amount of spectrum that has been set aside for a fourth commercial television station.

Mr Turnbull told the conference the Government was not planning on licensing a new station.

Instead it could be sold off, with Mr Turnbull planning a review of whether the spectrum could be "replanned for alternative non-broadcasting uses, perhaps as the basis for a second digital dividend".

Online future for community television?

Mr Turnbull said the future for community television was online.

"The Government believes that the best outcome for community television is that, in the future, it uses the internet as its distribution platform," he said.

"It will deliver wider audiences at less cost on a wider range of devices."

But Mr McLelland said it would take time and money to make such a radical change.

"To get a seriously under-resourced sector to move to a completely new business model, to reconstruct itself in a little over 12 months, it's ludicrous to suggest that's reasonably possible."

He said if the Federal Government was willing to give community television stations three years instead of one to end licensing, a move to online-only broadcasting could be possible.

"Why not give us a little more time and explore a way for community television to continue?" he said.

It is not an argument Mr Turnbull accepts.

"The internet is not new," he said.

"It is the universal, uber-platform to which most people are now connected 24/7."

Community television a launch pad for Australian talent

Corinne Grant, who got her start in television on Melbourne's Channel 31, said the move was a strange decision.

"I don't understand how he thinks that community television can automatically switch its business model to being online when he's not expecting the same thing as commercial free-to-air channels," Ms Grant told the RN Drive program.

"I don't understand why he thinks one business model won't work for others but it will work for community television."

Ms Grant said community television provided programming that was important to smaller audiences and had launched the careers of many Australians.

"Not just for the performers in front of the camera, people like Rove and Hamish and Andy, and more recently Celia Pacquola, but it also teaches producers and crew how to hone their craft," she said.

"They're not the kind of skills you can pick up once you're live-on-air in front of a million people, it's much better to do that on community television.

"I don't think you can replicate that online, it's not the same environment."

Topics: television, arts-and-entertainment, television-broadcasting, broadcasting, information-and-communication, turnbull-malcolm, australia

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