Thanks to our European correspondant for putting me onto this.

A newsreader refusing to read a Paris Hilton story.

Seven just announced the second half line up which includes the new series of Kath & Kim and this interesting bit of news:

Seven’s Director of Programming and Production, Tim Worner said: “From the feedback we’ve been getting from fansites and blogs, the message has been very clear - now from Seven we’re sending a message back - the waiting is over.”
“We’ll be running Prison Break and Heroes as close to their US telecast dates as practically possible.
“Sure, we have to change the way we take delivery of the materials but it’s more than that - we have to change the way we think and the way we sell these shows and at Seven we’ve shown we can do that.”

Has somebody hit them on the head and knocked some sense into them?

IceTV made its way into the Boxcutters news a lot in the past and this week Marc Edwards from the electronic program guide company comes in to tell us all about EPGs, PVRs and the stoush with Channel 9.

In a controversial Golden Age of Television we look at Six Feet Under.

Presents abound in I Don’t Buy It and there’s some Letters to Boxcutters as well as the regular looks at news, ratings and a small helping of Pork.

It’s episode 91, divisible by 7:

Let us know what you think.

In the typical way of Telstra, Australia’s former public telecommunications organisation is proposing rolling out infrastructure that is already outdated in other countries. While they try to sell the dream of Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) technology as the latest, greatest internet connectivity, countries including Japan and the US are running the fibre-optic cables right up to the front door of users, giving massively more bandwidth than is possible through FTTN.

From The Age’s Business Day, here are a few interesting tidbits on Telstra’s anti-competitive assholery:

PHIL Burgess has again shown that he is not across the facts of broadband in this country, or continues to deliberately distort facts and reality to the point of completely misrepresenting the situation.
….
More recently, Telstra executives said the company would not give anyone else the information needed to build a fibre network. Then they said that Telstra had locked up the contractors that can build a fibre network. And there have been threats of suing the Government, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the G9 companies if they were granted access to the copper sub-loop to interconnect their network.
….
But why does that not bother Burgess and his fellow Telstra executives? To people in the telecommunications industry it is clear. The purpose of Telstra’s FTTN scheme is to strand and torch the investments of its competitors. It is a tactic designed to totally distort competition and restore monopoly. It’s not about delivering broadband benefits to consumers. Telstra’s plan is to remove certainty around infrastructure investment decisions with the end-game of rendering competitive infrastructure redundant and worthless. The plan has no regard for the interests of consumers.
….
Government policy and the work of the ACCC has led to significant deployment of high-speed broadband by a great number of service providers, including Optus, Telstra and Primus. And consumers continue to reap the benefits of an open and competitive industry. Many consumers already have access to high-speed broadband. This is despite Telstra executives choosing not to release high-speed products. Telstra previously advised it had already built a nationwide ADSL2+ network but wouldn’t release it to the public unless the Government changed some of the laws the Telstra executives didn’t like. These laws have been in place a long time and it’s all credit to the Government for not backing down.
….
It is a fact that competition policy delivers benefits to consumers. Telstra was given custodianship of the monopoly network — a national asset — with the clear understanding that competition required access to that national asset. It was also clearly understood that Telstra would provide access to that national asset on fair and reasonable terms.

The idiots are winning. At least they think they are.

Hot on the heels of Jericho and Veronica Mars, there is now a campaign to save dire, unfunny comedy The Class, with an online petition and an urge to send the network - wait for it - ERASERS! Genius.

Never mind the whole ‘how could anyone even watch The Class, let alone want to save it’ question - shows get axed, it’s a fact of life, deal with it. And if you are going to try and save it make sure the show is something worthwhile, not a show that should never have been made in the first place.

Already I have read breathless ‘Lets do a petition’ talk about Studio 60, ‘It worked with Jericho’. Where will it end?

Maybe we can start looking retrospectively at shows. Gee that Suddenly Susan was a great show, maybe we can send the network lazy susans. Or we can send potatoes to save M.A.S.H. Or drugs to get Miami Vice back.

Any suggestions? Come on people, we have the power…

Lots of good stuff

Lots of News

Lots of Jess McGuire (after lots of time with none)

Lots of anger over Telstra and Sopranos spoilsports

Lots of animated Golden Age of Television

A little Sesame

Lots of pork

Lots of fun

Lots of ways:

Lots of feedback.

We all got together over the weekend and had another photo taken.

At last you can see what we really look like.

After the jump you will see, from left: Ross, Brett and Josh.
(more…)

Whoops. I just realised that during Episode 89 I mentioned a recent article published about the Sopranos.

This article appeared in Vanity Fair and not in Variety as slipped through my unfiltered mouth.

Apologies to all involved.

Very interesting article about how Packer selling up his share in Nine will lead to the free to air networks finally taking on Foxtel as a whole.

Maybe TIVO won’t as doomed as we first thought.

Tonight SBS are screening a repeat of Sunday night’s Big Love in the Friday night porn slot and have subtitled it Complete and Uncut. Are we to assume by this that the Sunday night eps are being cut? Very disappointing if they are. I can’t remember anything that would require cutting anyway, even at an 8:30 timeslot, but it was a while ago I watched them and maybe I just didn’t notice.

Also, Alias Season 5 finally makes it to our screens Sunday night. Better late than never I suppose. Worth keeping up with if you are a fan, especially towards the end of the series where things come together (although there is no certainty it will last that long on our screens).