It’s like going to the fights and having a hockey game break out this week on Boxcutters as we tie up the trans-Pacific phone lines, talking with Peter Campbell (Director of FOXTEL Sport and Olympic Games) and Giaan Rooney (former Australian Olympian and Channel 9 Winter Olympics 2010 commentator) live and direct from Vancouver, BC, Canada.

As we battle with international time-zones, we have some suddenly curtailed news, one thing to watch this week, some updates to things we’ve covered in the last week or two and some hilarious reality gossip.

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Send us all your winter olympiad thoughts by sending us email or send us an SMS on 0458 288 837 (0458 CUTTER). And don’t forget to invite all your Facebook friends to become Boxcutters fans.

Earlier today we received a barrage of text messages from Alex Boxcutter complaining about the poor Winter Olympics coverage on Channel 9:

No aussies in event means 9 don’t think we care. God forbid we’d enjoy something other than the summer swimming. Fucking disgaceful! I wish i had fox!
-Alex b

On Twitter we saw @mollyfud hitting his head on a virtual brick wall with anger.

The other night I saw what was neither worthy of being called an advertisement nor a faux-Getaway piece about shopping in one particular street in Vancouver.

So, tell us. Have you been trying to watch the Winter Olympics on TV? Have you been happy what Channel 9 have provided in terms of coverage? Has anybody out there bought the Foxtel package for the duration?

Let us know in the comments or through the contact form.

We’ll try to get some answers from Channel 9 in the meantime.

We have a week full of broken rules of time and finance with:

Tom Elliott inventing the flux capacitor giving us some rational explanations for the asset writedowns and massive profit downgrade at 7 and how hard 9 and 10’s parent companies are doing it;

a preview of Flash Forward, coming to our screens on the 7 network after the ultimate conclusion of Lost; and

The Lost Room from the SciFi Channel in Things You May Have Missed.

Pick up your very own copy of The Lost Room on DVD from Amazon.

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I really love what the free to air networks have done with digital television. The offering from Channel 9, Go!, is a remarkable piece of television development.

Remember when networks didn’t know how to fill their entire schedule so they’d put old, cheap or seemingly random programmes on at dead times? My Two Dads at 4pm, Newhart whenever it rained at the cricket, and Thrillseekers at midday on Saturday were all old Channel 9 staples.

I don’t think they ever thought people were watching their station at these times. Either that or Kerry Packer really loved an afternoon of stuntmen jumping cars over canyons.

One of the ingenious things about Go! is that you can watch their entire programming for a day depending on whether you wake up in the morning or the afternoon. They’ve really catered this one to the lazy. Despite the exclamation mark in the title, Go! does not seem to be an imperative. In fact, it’s the name I’d give to a new designer drug that made you feel like you were having a good time while really the whole world was passing you by.

Here’s a taste of what they’ve launched with: The Nanny, Just Shoot Me, Entertainment Tonight, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and Australia’s Funniest Home Videos. All of those shows are available TWICE A DAY. In case you miss an episode of the Nanny you can catch it again eight and a half hours later!

I think what happened is they couldn’t fit the entire title, “Go Into A Vegetative State!”, on the screen.

Really, this was the laziest thing I’ve seen come out of the Free To Air networks for some time. Somebody got paid for coming up with that programming schedule, that title, that media release that came to my inbox. Everybody involved should be ashamed.

James Talia talks to us about news anchoring. We look at Torchwood: Children of Earth. Woo, says Brett Cropley.

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You can buy Torchwood – Children of Earth on DVD and make your own mind up.
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Too hot to mention, too cold to hold. Called the Boxcutters and in control.

This episode of Boxcutters has nothing to do with Ghost Busters 2 but we do talk about Parks and Recreation and other things already mentioned in the title of this episode.

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If you want to get more of a taste, check out some show-note-action after the jump.
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James Talia comes in to talk to us about the world of network news and the changes therein. Also, we review the second season of season 2 of Ashes To Ashes and discuss this week’s Eurovision song contest.

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You can help support Boxcutters by buying yourself something pretty – like the book Nul Points that John mentioned in this week’s show – from the You Do Buy It stores.

Also, we’ve got new t-shirts, t-shirts, t-shirts!
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In a ruling this morning, the High Court of Australia found in favour of IceTV in its appeal over a decision that said the EPG provider was involved in copyright infringement.

The Nine Network originally alleged that IceTV was reproducing a literary work when it published a version of the programming schedule for the network. Since then the case has been playing court tennis with decisions and appeals, a lot of waiting and potentially the chance that Goliath would indeed crush David under a giant sandal.

In a brief interview via Twitter, IceTV said that this decision could possibly open up the market to new players in the EPG space but pointed out that “EPGs are still copyrightable. [The] High Court Ruling didn’t change that.”

The Court’s conclusion was brief: “Any reproduction of the time and title information in the IceGuide was not a reproduction of a substantial part of any of the Weekly Schedules (or the Nine Database).” IceTV were awarded costs.

Read the High Court’s judgement to get into the nitty gritty of the decision.

James Talia joins us to talk about the way television news covered the Victorian bushfires and we look at the new Joss Whedon show, Dollhouse.

There’s also some letters to Boxcutters and all the news we could fit into the rest of the show. It’s good. Listen to it.

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Things we mention:

• The Freeview parody we talk about.
• The heartbreaking moment where Tony Jones reports on Brian Naylor’s death.

Gillian Bartlett and Donna Lyon from Bam Boom! Entertainment join us to talk about their very unique television jobs. Also there’s a review of the new Underbelly season premier, and the new US show Lie to Me. Also we look at coverage of the Victorian bushfires in a special Raywatch.

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