Notes on Nigel Dick's lecture on Australian FTA Television - past, present and future

Had a great lecture from the the venerable Nigel Dick who has held many key influential positions in the Australian television industry - including as senior executive and then general manager of GTV9, director of Crawford Productions and deputy chairman and founding board member of the Victorian Film Corporation, now FilmVic.

Nigel set the scene with an overview of the history of free to air television in Australia and then launched into a discussion about advertising/revenue growth patters - the snapshot doesn't look great - a couple of his slides below:

He made the point that while media outlets have multiplied (ie. between 1993-2008 we have 104 new radio stations) "additional services had no effect on increasing advertising revenue"... so the cake remains the same, the slices of it just get smaller.

He also spoke about Australian television drama - it's huge popularity with local audiences and its high expense compared with purchasing overseas programs... and it's importance in fostering the Australian film industry...

These two points resonate with an ABC Television Media Watch story called The Future of Teleivision view the segment or read the transcript HERE - it's from October 2008, but many of the issues and concerns are still current