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'You won't be able to escape' Alan Jones

Jack GramenzAAP
Alan Jones announces his new digital broadcasting outlet in "the world young people access".
Camera IconAlan Jones announces his new digital broadcasting outlet in "the world young people access". Credit: AAP

You do not have to agree with everything Alan Jones says, but you will have to get used to hearing it.

"I'll be everywhere, you won't be able to escape me," Mr Jones said on Friday morning, announcing his return to the airwaves, in a manner of speaking.

While his broadcast career appears over, the veteran shock-jock is not retiring or running for politics despite being approached by, in his words, "every political party".

Instead he will host a new online show - Alan Jones: Direct to the People.

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The announcement was made in front of a wall bearing the logo for a company called Australian Digital Holdings, registered on November 25.

Former ABC chair Maurice Newman is chair of the new company, which he says "believes that this program will receive millions of viewers and readers here and overseas".

Mr Jones says his new strategy - similar to that used by independent podcasters, vloggers, bloggers, and others on the internet for several years - is "the tomorrow of media" and "has never been done in Australia before".

"This is the world of tomorrow," Mr Jones said. "This is the world young people access."

Those young people will have to wait until Monday night for Mr Jones' first show, for which the theme will be that "Australia is not the Australia we want it to be".

Young viewers could include Mr Jones' 24-year-old protege Jake Thrupp, who recently edited a book of essays featuring "political essays by prominent centre-right thinkers", including Mr Newman and Mr Jones.

Mr Thrupp last month told Nine newspapers "something big is coming" for Mr Jones and that he wouldn't be retiring just yet.

Mr Newman says Australian Digital Holdings plans to welcome "other well known faces" in the next six months.

Following the end of his Sky News contract and his column in Sydney's Daily Telegraph, Mr Jones opted not to pursue other options with traditional media outlets .

He did not want his views influenced or interfered with, which will not be happening on his new show, he says.

"This is a freedom which I will appreciate and will be exercised responsibly," Mr Jones says.

No stranger to a lawsuit, Mr Jones says "we've got the best legal minds" behind Australian Digital Holdings, but he will - of course - "be saying what Alan Jones thinks".

It remains to be seen how Mr Jones' new-found freedom will be met by regulators and audiences.

While previously under the watchful eye of the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which most notably accused Mr Jones of inciting violence in the lead up to the Cronulla riots, it's unclear how much authority it will have over him in his new role.

Posting his content on Facebook, Google's YouTube and his website could bring him under the expanding powers of the eSafety Commissioner that can order websites to remove content.

Those two tech titans also have their own policies about what content can appear on their platforms, but these are not always immediately or effectively enforced.

YouTube slapped a week long ban on Sky News' account earlier this year over multiple offending videos, but the company did not say whether any of them were from Mr Jones' program.

Groups that previously targeted his programs with advertiser boycotts could face an uphill battle as well.

One of those groups, known as MFW, said "all we want to know is whether Alan Jones' new digital platforms will have advertisers".

They will, but getting those advertisers to pull their funding will be a lot more difficult, and that might be the point.

"In the medium that we are entering, we are not responsible for the advertising," Mr Jones said on Friday.

"That's all determined by the people whose platforms we appear on."

Advertisers instead buy ads through Google and Facebook and "they decide what advertising is appropriated to my program", Mr Jones says.

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