تجزیه و تحلیل شبیه سازی اثر بازار از بنگاه سخن پراکنی استرالیا

In this paper we utilise a stochastic address model of broadcast oligopoly markets to analyse the Australian broadcast television market. In particular, we examine the effect of the presence of a single government market participant in this market. An examination of the dynamics of the simulations demonstrates that the presence of a government market participant can simultaneously generate positive outcomes for viewers as well as for other market suppliers. Further examination of simulation dynamics indicates that privatisation of the government market participant results in reduced viewer choice and diversity. We also demonstrate that additional private market participants would not result in significant benefits to viewers.

Recent micro-economic reform of Australian industry has sought to increase market place efficiency via two primary strategies: (a) liberalisation of some markets by removal of regulatory barriers to entry and other regulatory reforms to increase private participants and viewer choice in a market and (b) the privatisation and/or corporatisation of government enterprise. So far as the television broadcasting industry is concerned the discussion of regulatory reform covers a variety of policy areas including the optimal number of suppliers, cross media ownership issues, adoption of new technologies and their convergence, and the role of public broadcasters and their funding. In the Australian context, many of these issues have been examined in a recent investigation by the Productivity Commission entitled Broadcasting: Inquiry Report (2000). The Australian television broadcasting industry is made up of three free-to-air commercial networks, the Seven, Nine and Ten networks; two national public broadcasters, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS); three major subscription television corporations (Foxtel, Optus and Austar); and three regional networks and one indigenous network, each affiliated with one of either the Seven, Nine or Ten networks; and six community television stations broadcasting on channel 31 in each of the six Australian capital cities. Indicative figures for market shares of prime time viewing (during the summer of 2002–2003) for the free-to-air networks, public broadcasters and subscription TV are shown1 in Table 1. The Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA) is the principal legislative framework for regulating “Australia’s complex mix of national (public), commercial and community broadcasting services” (Productivity Commission, 2000, p. 47). The BSA allows the federal government to “regulate the number of stations, station types, the technology employed, access to broadcasting platforms (radio-frequency spectrum, cable, satellites), company ownership and structure, program content, and even sources of revenue in some cases (Productivity Commission, 2000, pp. 47–48). National broadcasters are identified as a public provider category under Part 2 of the BSA, and separate Acts for the ABC and SBS set out their objectives and provide the regulatory framework governing their operations. The charters of the ABC and SBS outline specific public interest objectives. The main objectives of the ABC are detailed below. For SBS the charter states that the principal role of the SBS is “to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians, and, in doing so, reflect Australia’s multicultural society” (Special Broadcasting Service Act, 1991, s. 6). While the Productivity Commission’s report covered a number of aspects of public broadcasting, an analysis of the regulations governing the public broadcasters was outside the Commission’s terms of reference. It was assumed that the ABC and SBS would continue to play an important part in Australian broadcasting. This provides a focus for our research. In this paper we examine one aspect of broadcasting regulatory issues, namely, the effect of a public broadcaster, such as the ABC, on the performance of the broadcast television market, using a stochastic address model of broadcast oligopoly markets. Section 6 of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act (1983) provides a charter for the ABC, in particular: (1) The functions of the Corporation are: (a) to provide within Australia innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard as part of the Australian broadcasting system consisting of national, commercial and public sectors and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, to provide: (i) broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community; and (ii) broadcasting programs of an educational nature; ⋯ (c) to encourage and promote the musical, dramatic and other performing arts in Australia. and (2) In the provision by the Corporation of its broadcasting services within Australia: (a) the Corporation shall take account of: (i) the broadcasting services provided by the commercial and public sectors of the Australian broadcasting system. Thus the charter of the ABC provides a general direction, or broad framework as to the choice of programming available to the management. Certain programming genres are specifically required, and all broadcasts must provide some alternative to the programs broadcast by the commercial sectors. That is, the programs broadcast are not to be chosen with respect to revenue or profit motives, but rather to ensure greater diversity in programming through catering for alternate segments of the population. The public financing of television programming has been a sometimes contentious issue. While neoclassical microeconomic theory provides a rationale for markets which are largely free of government interference or public industry representation, it also identifies various forms of market failure which provide a basis for government regulation. For example, in the context of the television broadcasting industry, some authors such as Levin (1980) have suggested that television programming diversity is a form of merit good. Levin provides several rationales for the public financing of what he calls merit programming, largely in terms of the ‘infant industry’ argument and the interests of minority groups. Privately owned suppliers of broadcast television services are assumed to be profit maximisers. However participants in the television broadcast industry can be classified, according to how revenue is raised (Brown and Cave, 1992). The traditional, free-to-air market cannot collect fees from viewers and thus revenue is collected from advertisers. Consequently, the profits of a free-to-air television corporation is directly proportional to the number of viewers (as opposed to being based on willingness to pay). Church and Ware (2000), in their discussion of product differentiation and address models, note that this advertiser supported broadcasting results in two types of economic inefficiency: (i) a mismatch between viewer preferences (and their intensity) and willingness to pay; and (ii) program duplication (bunching of programs). In other words, advertiser supported broadcasting tends to favour the preferential majority. Minority audiences are in effect discriminated against. The degree to which this discrimination occurs depends on the number of channels, the extent to which viewers preferences are skewed, and availability and adoption by viewers of technology (e.g., cable TV) that incorporates a pricing system. But technological change will “… not eliminate, the bias against programs that are high cost or have relatively inelastic demand” (Church and Ware, 2000, p. 384). In the Australian context cable/pay TV has been available since the mid 1990s but its adoption has not yet been especially high.2 Given these points, we aim to examine the effect that the presence of the ABC has in the free-to-air Australian television market, a market which is typically accepted as an oligopolistic market. We will examine the effect that the presence of the ABC has on viewer choice, diversity of product supplied and the profitability of the privately owned industry participants. To do this, we will establish a simple mathematical framework and corresponding model of programming choice for the Australian television broadcasting market, and then simulate this model under differing market conditions. We note that while this model is presented in the Australian framework, the model itself is independent of any regional characteristics. Indeed, the market model we present is a generic model of broadcast markets which could equally be applied to other regions or countries, or to other broadcast markets such as the radio broadcast market. This paper is arranged as follows. Section 2 provides a brief review of address models pertaining to broadcast industries along with some results relevant to this paper. Section 3 presents the stochastic address model we will use to analyse the Australian free-to-air television broadcast industry. The model we present in this paper is a variant of a broad class of discrete choice models for oligopolistic markets examined by Anderson et al. (1992). This model is simulated under various conditions in Section 4. Analysis of the model is given for two, three and four commercial players as well as for a market with three commercial participants and one not-for-profit government participant (the ABC). Finally, a summary is given in Section 6.

The simulation of the model in Section 3 exposes two key issues which can be empirically tested. The first point is that the presence of a government player can play a significant role in increasing market diversity, to the extent that in the absence of a government player there is almost no product differentiation. Increasing the number of private players in a free market (FM) (devoid of a government player) had little effect on market diversity. Withers, 1980 and Withers, 1982 has argued that for welfare economic reasons the functions of the ABC should include increasing program diversity in the Australian television market. However little econometric analysis has been done in the Australian television market to verify whether this is indeed the case. Among the empirical work that has been done, Withers (1985) finds that adding additional commercial stations to the Australian metropolitan television market did not significantly increase program diversity. In the US television market, Levin, 1971 and Levin, 1980 has empirically investigated the effect of introducing a public station to a previously free market (FM). He determines that adding additional commercial stations to a free market has little effect on market diversity. Further, he explains that market diversity is increased far more by the introduction of a public (non-commercial) broadcaster7 than by addition of another commercial station. Interestingly, he notes that the increase in market diversity is achieved only by judicious selection of the programs presented by the public broadcaster. The second issue raised by our model is that the presence of a government player (or public broadcaster) has the potential to increase the profit of the other, private players in a market. Levin (1980) found that existing commercial stations suffer no apparent economic losses due to the introduction of a public broadcaster in an otherwise free market. In fact, he suggests (1980, p. 271): “that bringing a new public TV station into a market without one may be a highly cost-efficient way to promote types diversity, compared, at least, to the number of commercial stations needed to generate an equivalent amount of diversity.” However we are not aware of any econometric work that suggests that the presence of a government player can have positive economic benefits for the private players. Although we do note that in our modelling a large reason for the beneficial effect of the government player was due to the increase in market capture. Some support of this feature has been obtained by Withers (1985) in the context of television set ownership and use. He discovered that as more people switched on their television sets, they were more likely to watch the ABC than were previous viewers. That is, empirical evidence suggests that the presence of the ABC may, indirectly, increase market capture.