Commonwealth Consolidated Acts

BROADCASTING SERVICES ACT 1992 - SECT 61BH

Matter or material about business affairs--what is included and excluded

  (1)   A reference in this Division to matter or material that is wholly or partly about the business affairs of a commercial television broadcasting licensee, a commercial radio broadcasting licensee or a newspaper publisher:

  (a)   includes a reference to matter or material, where, having regard to:

  (i)   the nature of the matter or material; and

  (ii)   the way in which the matter or material is presented;

    it would be reasonable to conclude that the object, or one of the objects, of the broadcast of the matter or the publication of the material, as the case may be, was to:

  (iii)   promote; or

  (iv)   otherwise influence members of the public, or of a section of the public, to view, to listen to, or to read;

    matter broadcast, or to be broadcast, by the licensee, or material published, or to be published, in the newspaper, as the case may be; and

  (b)   does not include a reference to:

  (i)   a journalistic acknowledgment of a program or article as being the source of particular information; or

  (ii)   advertising matter or advertising material, where a reasonable person would be able to distinguish the advertising matter or advertising material from other matter or material; or

  (iii)   a program guide (see subsection   (2)); or

  (iv)   exempt matter or exempt material (see subsection   (4)).

Program guide

  (2)   For the purposes of this section, a program guide is matter or material that consists of no more than:

  (a)   a schedule of:

  (i)   the television programs provided by 2 or more television broadcasting services; or

  (ii)   the radio programs provided by 2 or more radio broadcasting services; or

  (b)   a combination of:

  (i)   a schedule covered by paragraph   (a); and

  (ii)   items of factual information, and/or items of comment, about some or all of the programs in the schedule, where each item is brief;

where the matter or material does not single out one of those services for special promotion.

  (3)   For the purposes of subsection   (2):

  (a)   a television broadcasting service is:

  (i)   a commercial broadcasting service that provides television programs; or

  (ii)   a national broadcasting service that provides television programs; and

  (b)   a radio broadcasting service is:

  (i)   a commercial broadcasting service that provides radio programs; or

  (ii)   a national broadcasting service that provides radio programs.

Exempt matter or exempt material

  (4)   The Minister may, by legislative instrument, determine that:

  (a)   matter included in a specified class of matter is exempt matter for the purposes of this section; and

  (b)   material included in a specified class of material is exempt material for the purposes of this section.

  (5)   A determination under subsection   (4) has effect accordingly.

Advertising

  (6)   This section does not, by implication, affect the meaning of the expression advertising when used in any other provision of this Act.