Please: "Granola group" is a bit clunky. How about the "Crunchy Granola Suite"?

Is South Park actually pushing a right-wing agenda, or is it just its lefty viewers arcing up about any episode that isn’t anti-war/anti-Fox/anti-SUV?

I think it's pretty clear they are. Matt Stone is actually a registered Republican, Trey Parker a registered Libertarian. They are on record as saying that hate "liberals" more than Republicans.

Their style of balance is like Fox News - very misleading. It is funny when they aren't doing their political schtick, though.

Re: Pirate Master. Just had a bit of a look. You have it all wrong. Its not Reality TV at all. its a Real Life D&D Adventure. :D

I have Foxtel satellite so don't get Seven and Ten via Foxtel so I rarely watch either. I have to connect my Digital STB to watch Seven and Ten and it is too much effort.

Oh man, that Opera guys was amazing, thanks for that fourthof5.

Re: South Park...I reckon they are pretty fair, the election, Douche vs Turd Sandwich was a great example of that.

Oh, too, what is this Sassame street you speak of? ;)

I too rarely watch 7 or 10 on Foxtel because of the lack of EPG.

Great Ep.

Brittan's got talent opera guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0dzZTPWrSM

PBL owned most of 9 and 25% of Foxtel back then. To 7 and 10, giving Foxtel an inch would have meant giving 9 a mile, or cutting off their nose to spite their face, or something. Now that PBL Media and not PBL (confusingly) controls 9, though, all this could change very quickly.

12 Mbit/s is a respectable speed for most things, but in 2009 terms it's not 'very fast,' as Howard would have us believe. That American professor bloke in your link makes a good point about future-proofing, but going to 1 Gb capacity now would be prohibitively expensive, not to mention completely unjustifiable.

South Korea has 100 Mbit/s FTTP (which I think is what this feller is proposing) but it's a small, tech-riddled country with a population that jumps at this stuff. Australia's no gadget slouch, but it doesn't have a market that is crying out for impossible speeds, nor will it in the near future. ADSL1 is still a novelty to many of us.

Yay for Tourette's!

Here we go... whinge whinge whinge whinge about "broadband" speeds again... and when you get 12Mbps you'll be wanting 1Gb - never bloody satisfied...

Yes, Adam D - John Howard, the man who gave name to the Non-Core Promise(TM), elevating it to new heights. Another countryman.
...

I have some friends (believe it or not) with Foxtel who don't even consider ch 7 or 10 because there is no EPG. I agree that Nine would be mad to give it up, but why is it that 7 and 10 have never signed up? Surely the expense is commercially valuable, particularly for 7 - it seems that the growing market of pay tv is still being largely ignored.

Nigel P: This is why it's pointless bothering with anything Howard announces. His track record of keeping election promises is appalling by any standard.

If 50-year-old fringe-dwellers demanded proper broadband, we'd have it by now. Technology is the domain of yoof, and yoof don't keep Howard in office. AM radio does. Mabel doesn't use the internet because it's full of shonky businessmen and terrorists.

Meanwhile Coonan's pushing the digital television barrow (a) because she has to, it's in her performance review; (b) because Australians need to be forced to take up digital (clearly they hate new technology); (c) on the pretence that free-to-air's even going to be relevant in 10 years. Actually, it will, because by 2017 we STILL won't have proper broadband.

But let's say for argument's sake that Howard's broadband plan goes ahead. $1.8 billion for a consortium to build a 'very fast' 12 Mbit/s service, at no cost to the taxpayer. Looks nice on paper, until you realise the rest of the money has to come from the consumer, at prices that only some can afford. The ALP's proposal is a bit flaccid, but at least it spreads the cost and doesn't expand the rich/poor gulf.

Not to mention that 12 Mbit/s is arguably rubbish when it comes to streaming SD content, let alone HD. 12 Mbit/s is roughly 1.5 Mbytes/s before overhead, which is what I get now anyway.

Is it just coincidence that Liberal technology ministers always look like Thunderbirds? Coonan, Alston, Stockdale...

Ah :)

Adam - do a search here on either South Park or Family Guy. All your questions will be answered.

Is South Park actually pushing a right-wing agenda, or is it just its lefty viewers arcing up about any episode that isn't anti-war/anti-Fox/anti-SUV?

I've not seen South Park in a few years (and, for the record, Howard's turned me into a horribly biased lefty), but my memories of it are that it was always reasonably balanced: not toeing any particular line, rather taking a position outside the left-right spectrum and just standing up to anything they didn't like. Is that accurate?

To be honest Mike - I have never actually seen any of The View. My comment was based on the general vibe coming out from the media circus surrounding her departure.

You think Rosie ruined The View? She made it watchable! Before and now she has left it is boring with 4 women talking about American Idol....

I like South Park but it definitely has a right wing bend to it. They are very much Libertarians (Republicans + Drugs = Libertarians) and that shines through. I prefer episodes that are the boys just being boys (more extreme). One of my favourites was from this last season "Cartman Sucks".

That was hilarious, and I don't think the messages are that smartly included into the show. I still like it but I don't like the preachy episodes much at all. They just aren't funny. I am a fan of Family Guy as its simply a funny show with no message, the cutaways are great in my opinion as to me they are like sketches within the show. Allowing it to be much more free form.

With Government funding of broadband. I remember being promised last election that there would be $50mil of funding for the metro area blackspots. However only $250,000 of this was spent before it closed down, and guess what, that was only for investigative purposes.

Simple people tuned into Futurama expecting The Simpsons, decided they didn't like it because it wasn't The Simpsons, and then they complained that Fry/Bender was too much like Homer. This really gets up my arse.

Futurama was obviously not supposed to be The Simpsons, otherwise it would have been The Simpsons. The characters are different, the humour's different, the topicality's different, the stories are different, the emotional involvement is different. Yes the character design is similar, but that's where it ends. It's hell trying to explain this to people.

For what it's worth, Futurama was loads funnier than any Simpsons from those years.

granola groupy got sleepy, but im finished listenting now:)