In June 2019 News Corp Australasia had ruled out any move by Rupert Murdoch's multinational media conglomerate to acquire a free-to-air television channel in Australia.
However by May 2021 a multi-year agreement had been signed between Sky News Australia (operated by Australian News Channel Pty Ltd a News Corp subsidiary) and media company Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) for a 24-hour Sky News channel to broadcast in regional markets.
The free-to-air Sky News Regional channel was launched on 1 August 2021 and broadcasts to SCA’s 17 regional markets across Victoria, Southern NSW and Queensland including Cairns, Townsville, Sunshine Coast, Canberra, Wollongong, Wagga Wagga, Orange, Bendigo and Ballarat, as well as in WIN Network’s NNSW regional markets Northern NSW, Griffith, NSW and South Australia.
Sky News Regional carries all the Sky News regular rightwing commentators, including Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin, Alan Jones, Rita Panahi, Rowan Dean, Paul Murray, Chris Kenny, Laura Jayes, Kieran Gilbert and Sharri Markson as well as broadcasting a three-hour breakfast show.
It would appear that the 'Sky After Dark' format pushing conspiracy theories, misinformation, barely disguised Coalition propaganda and hard right political figures - which replicates the U.S. Fox News format - has carried over to the new channel.
On 11 November 2020, the Australian Senate referred an Inquiry into the state of media diversity, independence and reliability in Australia to the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee.
It came on the heels of a a petition to Parliament signed by more than 500,000 people which called for a royal commission into media diversity.
This Senate Inquiry has received 3,659 submissions and, today will hear evidence from Google Australia, Sky News Australia, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, Depart. of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications, Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), and the Victorian Branch of the United Firefighters Union.
To date News Corp co-chairman Lachlan Murdoch has refused the Inquiry’s invitation to appear before it. Instead CEO of Sky News Australia Paul Whittaker will be appearing before the Inquiry today.
Apparently presenters Alan Jones, Rita Panahi and Rowan Dean have agreed to appear before the Inquiry and answer questions.
It is the opinion of more than one political commentator that Sky News Australia was an active player in the sustained push within the Liberal Party to oust Malcolm Turnbull as Australian Prime Minister.
Sky News Australia is already on the radar of major Internet platforms and social media - on the same day that Sky News Regional was launched YouTube announced it was suspending the Sky News account for seven days due to the COVID-19 misinformation it was pedalling.
Sustained concerns about the dominance of News Corp in the media industry hit a nerve last month when Fox News threatened to take the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) to court concerning the content of a "Four Corners" program titled FOX & THE BIG LIE.
Both former prime minister Kevin Rudd and GetUp! continue to voice concerns that the new Sky News Regional channel will be shaped by Rupert Murdoch into a southern hemisphere version of that toxic misinformation and rightwing propaganda U.S. television channel, Fox News.
Malcolm Turnbull, another former prime minister, has also voiced concerns about the closeness of News Corp, including Fox News, to authoritarian and conservative governments.
“..the Murdoch media are much more influential within the coalition than they are in the electorate at large, just like Fox News in the States is much more influential among Republican voters than it is in the electorate at large……
The point is they are, I think, the single most influential political player in Australia but they are unelected and they are utterly unaccountable. That is what we're talking about. They do not hold themselves to traditional journalistic standards of accuracy and balance and so forth.
They would say, 'Oh look, it's a business model. We've got a percentage of the population who love being told this stuff and they like the extreme political views and so that's what we're going to do.'
Fox News in the States is commercially very successful. But that is not a justification that we can tolerate if the consequences are so much damage to our democracy”.
