THERE is already a fourth commercial television network in Australia -- Telstra -- according to Hamish Cameron, the boss of the Telstra-owned multimedia and TV production company Chief Entertainment.
With Telstra Media's expansion into 24-hour news and daily sports programs on mobiles via its Next G network and online via its BigPond portal, Chief is coming into its own as a supplier of platform-agnostic content after eight years of operating largely below the radar, Cameron says. The company, which both makes and repurposes content for viewing on TV, online and on mobile phones, has 60 staff and produces seven different video channels.
Chief this week will begin producing three daily sports bulletins for Telstra's BigPond Sports channel, as well as the general sports program BigPond Sports Weekend.
It also produces the TVSN Home Shopping and Expo Channel for pay-TV, makes music and arts programs for ABC TV (including late-night blues show Live at The Basement and 10 concerts a year broadcast direct from Sydney's Opera House), produces horseracing coverage and earlier this year formed a joint venture with the National Rugby League to make sports documentaries due to be screened on Nine and later released on DVD.
"For years it was a very closed industry and the emergence of Telstra as a serious media player has given those of us that work in TV another platform," Cameron says. "We are the fourth network. We're ... gathering momentum."
Telstra's role in the broadcast world, according to Cameron, is to supplement the available TV channels with "fully convergent" content that can be viewed whenever and wherever people want to access it.
But that doesn't mean Chief needs to play in the same space as the federal Government's stymied B-licence for mobile TV services.
"If I went home and told my wife, 'We're going for the B-licence, darling,' she'd say 'What's that? Why don't you get a real job?'.
"I think we're a new model for TV production. I think we have to say Telstra's emergence as a media communications outlet is being complementary and supplementary to the existing broadcast world."
Chief began life in 2000 as an experimental internet video project by former radio star Doug Mulray and Mr Cameron. It produced a blues music-themed program screened at thebasement.com.au.
After Mulray sold out of the company and Telstra bought it in 2004, Chief morphed into the production nerve centre pulling together the telco's numerous internet and mobile rights to show sports including rugby league, Australian rules football, V8 Supercars and others.
With a masters degree in law, specialising in intellectual property rights, Cameron seems uniquely qualified for his role on the edge of the multimedia frontier. He was a production staffer at Nine and Ten, CEO of radio station TripleM, general manager of Sydney ad agency Harris Robinson, and was once Mulray's manager.
He likens Chief to Fremantle Media, the Nine Network and Foxtel. "We used to say 'If Kerry Packer ever found out how cheaply you can build a TV station, they're all dead over at Nine'," he said.
With Telstra Media's expansion into 24-hour news and daily sports programs on mobiles via its Next G network and online via its BigPond portal, Chief is coming into its own as a supplier of platform-agnostic content after eight years of operating largely below the radar, Cameron says. The company, which both makes and repurposes content for viewing on TV, online and on mobile phones, has 60 staff and produces seven different video channels.
Chief this week will begin producing three daily sports bulletins for Telstra's BigPond Sports channel, as well as the general sports program BigPond Sports Weekend.
It also produces the TVSN Home Shopping and Expo Channel for pay-TV, makes music and arts programs for ABC TV (including late-night blues show Live at The Basement and 10 concerts a year broadcast direct from Sydney's Opera House), produces horseracing coverage and earlier this year formed a joint venture with the National Rugby League to make sports documentaries due to be screened on Nine and later released on DVD.
"For years it was a very closed industry and the emergence of Telstra as a serious media player has given those of us that work in TV another platform," Cameron says. "We are the fourth network. We're ... gathering momentum."
Telstra's role in the broadcast world, according to Cameron, is to supplement the available TV channels with "fully convergent" content that can be viewed whenever and wherever people want to access it.
But that doesn't mean Chief needs to play in the same space as the federal Government's stymied B-licence for mobile TV services.
"If I went home and told my wife, 'We're going for the B-licence, darling,' she'd say 'What's that? Why don't you get a real job?'.
"I think we're a new model for TV production. I think we have to say Telstra's emergence as a media communications outlet is being complementary and supplementary to the existing broadcast world."
Chief began life in 2000 as an experimental internet video project by former radio star Doug Mulray and Mr Cameron. It produced a blues music-themed program screened at thebasement.com.au.
After Mulray sold out of the company and Telstra bought it in 2004, Chief morphed into the production nerve centre pulling together the telco's numerous internet and mobile rights to show sports including rugby league, Australian rules football, V8 Supercars and others.
With a masters degree in law, specialising in intellectual property rights, Cameron seems uniquely qualified for his role on the edge of the multimedia frontier. He was a production staffer at Nine and Ten, CEO of radio station TripleM, general manager of Sydney ad agency Harris Robinson, and was once Mulray's manager.
He likens Chief to Fremantle Media, the Nine Network and Foxtel. "We used to say 'If Kerry Packer ever found out how cheaply you can build a TV station, they're all dead over at Nine'," he said.