Media of Australia

Australia has a modern and diverse media industry spanning traditional and digital formats mostly catering to its predominantly English-speaking population. In 2011-12 Australia was ranked 30th out of 179th countries in the Press Freedom Index, which was a setback from the preceding year.

New South Wales and Victoria were introduced to television in 1956, with the other provinces following suit up to 1971 (the Northern Territory). Colour television was introduced in 1975.

In addition to the public broadcasters which are available to almost all of Australia's population, there are three major commercial television networks: the Nine Network, the Seven Network and Network Ten. Most of Australia's heavily populated cities are serviced by all three networks. Some rural or regional areas may receive a more limited selection, often with some of the channels available showing programming from more than one of the major networks. An example of such a "shared" regional network is Imparja.

Digital free-to-air broadcasts commenced on 1 January 2001. Analogue broadcasts were originally intended to be phased out by 2008, however analogue phaseout was not achieved until 2013.

After heated debate in the early 2000s over a Bill that would have removed the foreign ownership restrictions of broadcasting TV licences, the Australian government chose to retain the foreign-ownership restrictions in its 1992 Broadcasting Act. As such, Australia continues to disallow foreign control of a broadcasting licence and limit foreign ownership of broadcasting firms to 20%. The Howard Government was set to remove this law sometime in 2007, having gained parliamentary approval to change the legislation in 2006; however, the Howard Government was removed from power in 2007.

Approximately 25% of Australian households had access to pay television services by the end of 2005. The main provider is Foxtel in both metropolitan, regional and rural areas offering nearly all Australian channels via cable & satellite TV in capital cities, and mostly the same channels are offered by Foxtel via satellite TV (predominantly) in regional areas with the recent merger with Austar in 2012.

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