ACMA's news on news

We usually think of ACMA as the media and communications regulator. While regulation is the main game, its information gathering and research work has recently yielded some interesting data for those of us concerned with the state of news media in Australia.

Last week the ACMA released its latest report on commercial TV program expenditure. Although attention focussed on the collapse of investment in local children’s drama – and lingering uncertainty over new rules for streaming services – there was some interesting information on investment in news and current affairs. The report told us that in 2023-34, $407.6 million was spent on Australian news and current affairs programs, slightly down from $412.6 the previous year, but up 19% from five years ago. ACMA breaks these results down into metro and regional networks, so we can see that of the $407.6 million spent in the latest reporting year, only $35.2 million came from regional networks. That’s not surprising in itself, given that affiliation agreements mean most programming comes out of metro stations, and that one of the regional networks was absorbed by a metro network following the repeal of the 75% reach rule in 2017. However, local content quotas remain in force for at least some regional markets, and ACMA’s report shows that news is almost the sole form of local programming by regional networks: apart from the $35.2 million spent on news and current affairs, the regionals combined spent only $122,914 (yes, that’s thousands, not millions) on other programming genres. Of course, the amount spent by regional stations doesn’t include the costs incurred by metro stations in reporting on regional areas, investments which have been diminishing over the past decade as our series of reports on Regional News Media has documented.

In other reporting on the state of the news industry, the ACMA’s first annual News Media In Australia report brought together some existing data sources (including the news mapping and sampling research conducted by PIJI and the Digital News Report produced by the University of Canberra), presented some new data, and showed how it’s possible to think of media diversity in terms that are more suited to the contemporary media environment. While there’s too much to cover here, we’ll just highlight the new measure of ‘share of attention’.

‘Share of attention’ was developed by the UK regulator, Ofcom, and it’s something we urged ACMA to adopt here when it was developing its own measurement framework. This metric moves beyond ‘reach’ (how many people use a particular source) and offers at least some indication of the overall influence of a news source. As ACMA explains it, share of attention measures ‘time spent engaging with a particular news source, relative to the total time spent engaging with all news sources used’. (ACMA also asked respondents to its survey which of the news sources they rely on the most – another important new measure explored in Chapter 9 of its report.) The results show that, excluding digital platforms such as Google and Facebook as distinct sources of news, the ABC has the greatest share of attention (22%), followed at some distance by Nine (13%) and Seven (11%). The usefulness of the share of attention measure can be seen here because when we break down ‘the ABC’ and other media organisations and look at specific outlets, we see that ABC TV trailed Channel 7 free-to-air, leading ACMA to conclude ‘it appears that the Seven Network's capacity for impact is primarily exercised via its free-to-air TV outlets, where it enjoys the majority share of attention’.

But that’s not all. ACMA also included digital platforms in its assessment of share of attention. When considered alongside the other news ‘brands’ such as the ABC, Nine and Seven, the importance of both Meta (parent of Facebook and Instagram among others) and Alphabet (parent of Google search and YouTube, among others) as news sources is revealed. They both returned shares of 12%, so some way behind the ABC, but only one point behind Nine and one point ahead of Seven. And considered at the level of individual news outlets, Facebook was the equal second highest source at 8%, level with the FTA services of Nine and the ABC, and just behind Seven’s FTA service at 9%. Importantly, ACMA considered demographics in its assessment of both share of attention and news reliance; it observed that while the ABC skewed older, Facebook skewed younger.

ACMA has said that it will expand on its data collection and analysis for future reports. All up, apart from giving us a much better picture of diversity in Australia, this timely research should serve as additional evidence in the government’s attempts to make Meta accountable for its role in the information ecosystem. 

Finally – moving on from ACMA – MediaNet also issued an interesting report in the last fortnight, its annual Australian Media Landscape Report. The research was based on a survey in January of 521 journalists working across various platforms, with the majority being employed full-time and working in some form of digital media. The respondents were asked about threats to public interest journalism, with 69% citing the closure of media organisations/newsrooms – up from 56% the previous year, making it the second highest point of concern, followed closely at 66% by a lack of resources and staff. The most threatening aspect – at 75% – remained the increase in disinformation and fake news. Forty-five per cent cited Generative AI/Large Language Models, although when asked separately about this, 88% said they were concerned about the impacts these tools could have on the overall integrity or quality of journalism. That said, the survey showed that most respondents (63%) had not used these tools in their work.

References: 

Australian Communications Media Authority (ACMA) – Commercial TV Program Expenditure, https://www.acma.gov.au/commercial-tv-program-expenditure   

Guardian Australia – ABC Doing ‘All the Heavy Lifting’ as Commercial Networks Abandon Local Kids’ TV Drama, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/may/27/commercial-spending-on-local-childrens-tv-drama-drops-as-advocates-call-for-abc-sbs-investment 

ACMA – Local Content Quotas for Regional TV, https://www.acma.gov.au/local-content-regional-commercial-tv#:~:text=Great%20Southern%20TV1-,Local%20content%20quota%20and%20points%20system,relates%20to%20the%20licence%20area' 

ACMA – News Media in Australia, https://www.acma.gov.au/news-media-australia 

MediaNet – Australian Media Landscape Report, https://engage.medianet.com.au/2025-media-landscape-report