Does Sky News want to run the World Ser­vice? Well, it does in Aus­tralia. Accord­ing to the the Sydney Morn­ing Her­ald:

A dis­pute has erup­ted between the ABC and the sub­scrip­tion tele­vi­sion industry, triggered by a call by the pay TV chan­nel Sky News for taxpayer-funded broad­casters to com­pete with the private sec­tor for gov­ern­ment money to set up new channels.

Sky News, which is shown on Fox­tel and Aus­tar, said fund­ing for a pro­posed new children’s chan­nel or edu­ca­tion chan­nel should not auto­mat­ic­ally go to pub­lic broadcasters.

“The Gov­ern­ment should open a fair and trans­par­ent con­test between pub­lic and private pro­viders to deliver new taxpayer-funded ser­vices,” the chief exec­ut­ive of Sky News, Angelos Fran­go­poulos, told the Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Sum­mit in Sydney yesterday.

He said Sky News would con­test the ABC’s AU$20 mil­lion con­tract to run the tele­vi­sion sta­tion Aus­tralia Net­work, which is broad­cast through­out Asia for the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and Trade. The con­tract expires next year.

(Angelos, BTW, was once — many years ago — the trus­ted lieu­ten­ant of Sky News UK boss John Ryley, before kick­ing off Sky’s Oz version.)

Accord­ing to the Aus­tralian, the ABC isn’t happy about the pro­spect of a branch of the Mur­doch empire tak­ing Aus­sie gov­ern­ment cash:

Defend­ing the ABC’s role, Mr Scott told The Aus­tralian last night there had been “sig­ni­fic­ant growth in invest­ment by gov­ern­ments around the world in broad­cast­ing as part of their dip­lo­matic activ­ity, and it’s being delivered by the pub­lic broadcasters”.

“There is an agreed under­stand­ing that you can’t out­source your dip­lo­matic activ­it­ies, and you can’t out­source it to Rupert Murdoch’s inter­na­tional oper­a­tions,” he said.

(Sky News is one-third owned by Brit­ish pay-TV group BSkyB, which is in turn 39 per­cent owned by News Cor­por­a­tion, the owner of The Aus­tralian.)

“We strongly believe the Aus­tralian Government’s dip­lo­matic efforts in broad­cast­ing need to be delivered by the Aus­tralian Government’s pub­lic broad­caster,” Mr Scott said.

He said the ABC was the only media group in Aus­tralia with a ded­ic­ated Asia-Pacific news­room, staffed with 60 people.

Com­ing soon — a Sky News bid for the BBC World Ser­vice? A little way off per­haps… but impossible?

Noth­ing is impossible.