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.