- ABC News tops App Store charts in Australia after Facebook’s news ban.
- Facebook’s ban was in response to an expansive Australian regulatory measure.
- Facebook prohibited Australian news and media organizations.
- Australian users were not able to share news posts as well as from seeing news from international sources.
ABC News is the news division of Walt Disney Television’s American Broadcasting Company (ABC) broadcast network. The company also has radio and digital outlets, including ABC News Radio and ABC News Live, plus various podcasts hosted by ABC News personalities. ABC began in 1943 as the NBC Blue Network, a radio network that was spun off from NBC, as ordered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1942. The reason for the order was to expand competition in radio broadcasting in the United States, specifically news and political broadcasting, and broaden the projected points of view. The radio market was dominated by only a few companies, such as NBC and CBS. NBC conducted the split voluntarily. Regular television news broadcasts on ABC began soon after the network signed on its initial owned-and-operated television station (WJZ-TV, now WABC-TV) and production center in New York City in August 1948.
Australia’s ABC News shot to the top of the App Store charts
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s ABC News app shot to the top of Apple’s App Store charts in Australia. It’s not long after Facebook banned Australian news sources on its platform. As Financial Times’ Uma Patel suggests in a tweet thread, that’s possible because ABC capitalized on Facebook’s news ban with an ad sending users to its app. ABC News currently sits at No. 2 in the App Store’s overall app rankings in Australia, according to the analytics firm App Annie, and No. 1 in the news app charts. The app was also briefly No. 1 overall, ahead of Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and the Facebook app itself.
Facebook gets ban in Australia
Facebook’s ban was in response to an expansive Australian regulatory measure. It will force tech platforms to pay Australian media companies for the content users share. Also from the platforms it earns ad revenue from. Facebook took issue with the change and prohibited Australian news and media organizations from sharing news posts, and Australian users from seeing news from international sources as well. The ban also seems to accidentally wipe out the posts from government pages and some other sites.
Facebook’s ban dramatically shrunk the audience for some Australian news outlets. But ABC News responded by adding a banner to its home page. “Get the latest news and live notifications with the ABC News app,” it reads. Since then, the app has risen from the high 400s to its current spot at No. 2.
