Wipe all the rules Australia currently has about digital broadcasting clean. That's the advice Michael Gordon-Smith would give Australian Minister Helen Coonan if she called him in for a crisis meeting to solve Australia's TV and broadband woes. And Mr Gordon-Smith should know. He was a member of the Australian Broadcasting Authority until September 2004 and was Executive Director of the Screen Producers' Association of Australia for many years before that. In this interview, he accepts Netvideo's challenge to imagine how he might advise the Government were it to ask for help to remodel Australia's media and broadband landscape into a better form.He says the rules in place today prevent multi-channeling, for example, because it would be a challenge to the unique selling proposition of the pay-TV operators. "There is a series of compromises and deals which essentially ossifies the status quo and prevents innovation, experimentation and exploration of new ways of reaching the market with...new technology," he explains. The answer he submits is to liberalise Australia's broadcasting spectrum, both in terms of ownership for new entrants, and in terms of the use people can make of it.Gordon-Smith explains the implications of Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). He puts recent proposals to plow back free-to-air broadcaster tax into the film, TV and new media industry into the broader context of taxation revenue (and hypothecation), explaining why the proposal is probably not realistic.Gordon-Smith's view is that there is a "sharp clash of interests" between what is good for the free-to-air (FTA) broadcasters on the one hand, and for most of the rest of the digital industries on the other hand. "My sense is that there are very few people within that [FTA] industry who can really look the future in the face - it has got to be pretty scary," he says.He also comments on what the big new global media brands - such as the BBC and Google - mean for the Australian media landscape. (Real-time) "event" TV's premium will be a key part of the future model, he says. And the public broadcaster's role will also be key. Gordon-Smith assesses the relevance of the BBC's present set of ground breaking initiatives for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and contrasts those BBC initiatives with the ABC's current crop of commercial licensing tactics. He says the ABC's activity blurs the rules against ABC advertising and the ABC's activity today is arguably inimical to the ABC's role as an important public space.Finally, Gordon-Smith comments on the legacy of the Australian Free Trade Agreement with the United States. He says the "deal" between intellectual property (IP) owners and the public is now weighted very heavily in favour of the IP owners. "That means benefit accrues largely to the major corporate distribution companies rather than to individual creators, but individual creators continue to buy a pup sold by that line of rhetoric in the way they have since Molly Meldrum resisted the calls for parallel importation on the grounds that the record industry was going to do wonderful things for Australian artists," he says. "They continue to buy that ridiculous line ...and the public is being sold a very bad deal."Michael Gordon-Smith is Head of Continuing Professional Education with the AFTRS Centre for Screen Business.

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