Canberra's media voices

The Canberra Times is having a fret over a possible reduction in the “media voices” available in Canberra if the proposed changes to media laws going ahead.

At issue is that the laws would only guarantee the existence of a minimum four “media voices”. The Canberra Times counts six in the Territory:

“Rural Press (publisher of The Canberra Times and The Chronicle), Austereo (proprietor of the city’s two commercial FM radio stations, FM104.7 and MIX106.3), Capital Radio Network (proprietor of commercial AM stations 2CA and 2CC), Southern Cross TV (Channel Ten), Prime TV (Channel 7) and WIN (Channel 9).”

Which goes to show how stupid the whole debate is. Of those listed only Rural Press, Capital Radio Network and WIN run (more or less) credible local news services. So really we’re at three and not much possibility of mergers between those three.

Furthermore this discussion completely neglects the ABC, community radio (artsound and 2xx actually do discuss local issues to an animated audience) CityNews, The Word, and yours truly at RiotACT (15,000 unique readers a month even if there is no money in it).