It will
be the most interesting Australian media event this year. At 4pm
today at Doltone House in Sydney, the chief executives of the three commercial free-to-air Networks are due to speak on the
future of TV in Australia. Sam
Chisholm, David Leckie and Grant Blackley, the new CEO of TV at Ten,
will be together on the same platform.

Whether
they will say anything insightful is beside the point: just having them up there
on the same stage is going to be a very rare sight. Hopefully no-one will get
cold feet at the last minute.

Now, can anyone imagine the head of News Ltd, John Hartigan; the new
CEO of Fairfax, David Kirk; John McCarthy of Rural Press; and APN’s
Brendan Hopkins, gathering to talk about the future of newspapers? That
would be a far more interesting topic than the future of TV, but the
newspaper groups, especially News Ltd, are insular and very defensive.

Just
look at what must have been an amazing night of self-indulgent backslapping in
Adelaide last
night.