media convergence

Here's a bit I did on media convergence, the newest and certainly most radical topic dominating talk in the trendiest places in the world... or is it nuclear power? or Paris Hiltons home documentary?... I'll let you decide.

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To me, media convergence is one the most obvious types of convergence in the creative industries. I see, hear and read about it every day.

There are laws governing how much media and how many media outlets one corporation can own, but it seems as though the Murdochs, Packers, and their respective organisations are just finding more devoius and cunning ways to foxtrot around these laws. According to Barr, even the corporations themselves are converging (although we won't mention the failure of One.Tel), but Foxtel is one successful amalgamation of Murdoch's News Corp and acker's PBL. I think in Australia Telstra owns about 25% of Foxtel.

The new legislation in the upcoming media policies should address these issues to provide for a fairer and more diverse Australian media industry: an industry that already has heavy ownership monopoly and autonomy. The policies should also, due to international media convergence, uphold the importance of Australian media content in Australian media. While the necessary good and evil of globalisation is affecting the world media so dramatically, we need to protect and encourage our local arts industries and avoid being lazily satisfied with second-hand content from the US.

The most obvious cross-media convergence is the way television channels, telecommunications, magazines, newspapers and radio stations have become less independent from each other and promoting more as one. An example of this is Triple M's afilliation with Channel 7 and Desparate Housewives, and I'll be a monkey's uncle if Bec Cartwright hasn't been on 9 out of the last 10 covers of 'TV Week'. You don't have to look far to find one media entity sprinkled into another.
Also, radio stations have strategically aligned themselves with the Apple iPod ("sleeping with the enemy" and "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" are some analogies that come to mind). Podcasting is becoming very popular - it makes me wonder if we'll have any use for fm radio in the future when we're all walking around with four million hours of audio content at our fingertips? It’ll be interesting to see how stations like Nova, 97.3, Triple J and the Austereo networks respond and the CREATIVE ideas they come up with.

There is also convergence of regions of the world, like the EU (the most prominent and integrated), South-East Asian Nations in ASEAN, Aussies and (our annoying but lovable little brother) New Zealand, and our increasing connectedness to the rest of the world in terms of trade and economic trends – the free trade agreements seem to be coming thick and fast. All of this can come under the umbrella of globalisation (what doesn’t!), but I think it fits well into the context of convergence because of the creative ideas being generated and the technologies allowing these initiatives to occur.
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I know, it's pretty scrawly, not very academic, but hey, it's my opinion and that's what the current is all about right? I think I'm getting the hang of all this bloggerama.

Talk soon,
Chris