Lecture 6 - Commercial Media

Upon arriving to today's' lecture, which also happened to be on my birthday, we were informed that we would be learning about Commercial Media vs Public Media. This topic was to be spread over two sessions so the main focus of this lecture was Commercial Media.

Commercial Media expands over a variety of media types that are no government funded. This includes online sources, broadcast radio or print. On Australian TV, the stations that are classified as commercial include Channel 7, 9 and 10. Other TV stations such as SBS and ABC rely and tax payer funding (Public Media) to stay up and running. These two stations are Public Media and therefore are not part of this particular strand of Commercial Media. Other Free-to-Air stations such as 7mate, Gem, Go! etc. are classified as Commercial Digital Media. The focus of Commercial Media is simple - to make money. This can be seen through pay per view organizations Austar and Foxtel who play major parts in this area.

Basically there will always be competition between television channels. They are constantly trying to top one another by differentiating their service. A channel targets a particular audience and designs the program in order to engage with that targeted audience through their common interests. For example Channels 9 and 7 aim their programs to a more mature audience in comparison to Channel 10 who have targeted a younger audience. This can be seen through programs such a The Project which is designed to make news more interesting to this audience type.

The reading that was provided in Simon's book Commercial Media describes the long lasting rivalry between Channel 9 and Channel 7. This is reinforced by the fact that there has never been one story that Channel 9 has done that Channel 7 has not done also. This seems a strange concept, that both Channels would have such similar programming. This returns us to the issue of competition and the drive of money.

This raised two important questions of;

1. Can commercial media deliver in their role to be profitable and socially responsible?

2. Is it all about the mighty dollar?

In my opinion I would say that it all comes back to the dollar and how much can be gained for the organization. It will be interesting to see the next lecture on Public Media and how it is different from Commercial Media.