It's Television: Dissected
TV News, Reviews and Interviews
Further to our discussion last week about useless statistics and whether or not people are aware of when the analogue signal in their area will be switched off.
Here’s a map that tells you non-specific information. Click on it and see for yourself.
If you navigate through it, you’ll see that there’s a definite date for Mildura and NONE for anywhere else.
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Australia’s former public telecommunications organisation is proposing rolling out infrastructure that is already outdated in other countries.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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
More cereal news (and thanks to Catbrain for giving us the heads-up in case we missed it)…
Monica Attard said at the end of last year’s series of Media Watch that they’d be back this year just as unforgiving as ever.
ABC’S Media Watch will give its victims a right of reply on air — if they dare.
The program that is loved by the public and loathed by the media returns on Monday.
Presenter Monica Attard said yesterday that invitations had been sent to seven or eight people whose work will be featured on the program, offering them a right of reply on air. Correspondence from journalists and news organisations targeted by the program is posted on the Media Watch website.
The revised format comes ahead of next month’s implementation of new editorial policies at the ABC that emphasise impartiality and are intended to ensure that listeners and viewers received a broad range of views on issues.
For as long as I can remember, Media Watch has shown correspondence, trying to follow up with the offending party as to whether it had been a mistake, giving them an opportunity to recant or reinforce their stated views.
I can see this turning out to be another opportunity for repeat offenders such as Andrew Bolt to get their head on-air, ignore the matter at hand and continue spouting their crap. Yeah, I can see why they should have that additional exposure in the name of fairness and balance. NOT!
I guess all will be revealed this Monday night when Media Watch returns.
I saw the latest Hyundai ad last night and quite liked it. This morning, reading the paper over my Weeties, I find out my pleasure will be no more.
AUSTRALIA’S advertising watchdog has yanked a television ad for a car off the air after viewers voiced fears that it might encourage toddlers to jump behind the wheel of the family car.
The Advertising Standards Bureau yesterday told Hyundai to pull its “Next Generation” ad, which shows a toddler getting behind the wheel of a Santa Fe four-wheel-drive, putting on a seatbelt and picking up another child hitchhiking along the road.
The board said it had received more than 80 complaints about the ad. Several weeks ago, Hyundai had voluntarily moved it to a later time slot to appease viewers concerned about its effect on young children.
But the bureau said the ad did not comply with the code that governs vehicle advertising.
“The board certainly acknowledged that the notion of a toddler driving a car was unrealistic and fanciful, but under the (code of practice), fantasy cannot be used when it contradicts, circumvents or undermines the code,” bureau chief executive Mark Jeanes said. “Many of the complaints were from parents concerned that the advertisement would encourage copy-cat behaviour in young children and might lead to accidents.”
Hyundai spokesman Richard Power said yesterday that the company was disappointed with the ruling, but it would “not query the referee’s decision”.
“Hyundai maintains the ad is patently aimed at adults and its blatant fantasy is the foil for the literal liberties taken in the driving sequences,” he said.
So sit your under-5s here to let them absorb the message the wowsers don’t want them to hear.
The Age reported yesterday that Channel 9 has “backed down” from using Outrageous Fortune as local content. It’s an interesting choice in rhetoric about 9 given they have always claimed they never needed Outrageous Fortune to reach their quota of local content.
(According to the artical the decision to show Outrageous Fortune as local content “angered Australian actors”. Well I guess that fits, actors are the most important people in the industry, if not the world)
Mind you The Age is also reporting that CBS is shooting a pilot based on David Lynch’s ‘Wild At Heart’. As fun and as short lived as that would be, the series is actually based on the twee British family drama of the same name about a vet who drags his family off to Africa which screened here on 10 recently. One of a very large number of British remakes on the cards, including Blackpool and Footballers Wives.
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