Today was a day for speechifying by television big wigs. Even as Foxtel’s Kim Williams was calling for deregulation of the television industry, as reported in my previous post, the ABC’s Director of Television, Kim Dalton, was suggesting that regulation be extended to cover new platforms, including mobile telephones and television content delivered by the internet.

In a speech to the Screen Producers’ Association of Australia, Dalton expanded on arguments he made in New Zealand a few weeks ago. He said that the arrival of the National Broadband Network would mean that many, many providers of television content would soon be in the market.

In may cases, telecommunications companies would offer cheap or free content as part of a bundled package of services, with the main revenue earners being telecommunications, not content. This would mean these providers would buy cheap content wherever they could find it, particularly from overseas.

In an argument likely to make Kim Williams turn beetroot, Dalton asserts that the threats to Australian culture justified considering extending regulation to the new platforms. Dalton also argued for the money raised from selling spectrum made available by the switch to digital television to be used  for a cultural fund to support the making of Australian content. On this, Williams and Dalton agree.Williams made a similar suggestion in his speech.

Dalton said that the Government was focussing on communications infrastructure, but that attention was also needed for cultural infrastructure.

Dalton also gives an interesting report card on how Government funding has been used by the ABC.

Read the whole speech here.