Fighting for regional communities throughout Australia

Year

2002

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The challenge‍

In 2002, Regional Television Broadcasters started to shut down throughout Australia. Southern Cross Austereo, who had at the time recently bought out Channel 10 across the country, decided to axe ALL regional TV news bulletin services, resulting in the closure of all news rooms and all journalists and cameramen being out of jobs and local regional communities without adequate local news services. Danae Jones at the time was the Senior Reporter at the highest rating news service in Far North Queensland at Channel 10 Cairns. It was one of many media roles she has had throughout her career, but one of the ones she found herself fighting for on behalf of the journalism industry and her colleagues across the country.

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The outcome

‍Danae Jones, with the help of her colleagues, launched a public and nationwide protest against the closure of regional television news services across Australia. Danae rallied the troops with a call to arms to save the industry and everyone rose to the occasion. Through the public protesting and six months of intense media campaign to bring about change, with he help of the then Senator for Queensland Jan McLucas and the Federal Member for Leichardt Warren Entsch MP, a nationwide investigation into the adequacy of local news services throughout Australia commenced.

The findings of the investigation resulted in the Federal Government introducing minimum standards when issuing broadcasting licenses in Australia. Through the Australian Broadcasting Association (ABA), the Federal Government introduced the standards that were legally enforceable and if not adhered to, broadcasters were faced with losing their license to broadcast. This brought about the reinstatement of regional television news services across the country for national broadcasters to be able to maintain their license and privilege to broadcast.

For Danae, the outcome was the single biggest accomplishment of her career which to this day she is extremely proud of. She did it for free, without seeking kudos, just to ensure the survival of an industry she was so proud to be a part of, but more importantly knew was essential to the survival of regional communities in many aspects (up-to-date weather information, health advice etc). 25 years on, she finds herself now fighting for the news services and the minimum standards to be upheld once again as the ever-changing media landscape continues to see rapid consolidation.

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