The offering was never great. We had two pay TV providers to start with, Foxtel and Austar. I think one bought the other or devoured it or assimilated it or something and now we have one, Foxtel, and, I can only assume, at least one satellite in geostationary orbit currently submitting its CV to TV companies and intelligence agencies in our part of the planet.
And people don't buy it. They offer introductory offers. And we don't buy it. They offer to give us the dish and set top box. And we don't buy it. They show as tantalising glimpses of the latest movies. And we don't buy it. Why? Because we can read TV guides. It's the same 3 movies over and over again for a week. And, here's the real kicker, you still get ads. You pay for the damn thing and they still feel the need to fund themselves by showing us ads. So I pay for the privilege of watching ads? I can get that for free on YouTube - and I get to skip after 5 seconds. Unless it's one of those damn 15 second ones! I refuse to buy their stuff, just on principle. Bastards!
I read an article the other day that says Australians are amongst the biggest users of illegally downloaded media on the planet. And they wonder why.
Not that our free-to-air TV offering is anything great either.
I'll show my age and open the next paragraph with the line "When I was a kid".
When I was a kid in regional Australia, we had two TV stations: the ABC (our equivalent of the BBC for my international audience) and a local or regional commercial station. We were awed by our city cousins who, we heard from whispered voices in dark corners, had access to five stations.
Now the ABC is, and was, a fine national institution and I was brought up on it: David Attenborough documentaries, Play School, Sesame Street and the kind of news that has a shelf life longer than a new chip flavour.
That's right. Lay off on the new flavours. None of them are any good. Just stick with the basic six. Honey prawn barbecue does not go well with beer! And wasabi !? What were you thinking ?
The local station was dreadful; composed, as it was, of an amalgam of whatever they could afford to buy from the big metropolitan networks, local news and advertisements for stock sales and church services. It was an absolute joke but it was a local station - you expected what you got.
Now we have national digital TV, free-to-air. Hurrah. Big banner ads. A slightly confusing marketing strategy that seems to suggest that there's a whole new station out there called FreeView (there isn't, it's just all the free to air stations banding together to advertise against Murdoch) and a choice of more than almost twenty - you heard me right (sic) - stations.
And I, foolish, naive man that I am, expected great things.
And I got my local TV station back- spread across the airwaves like the stain you so foolishly rubbed to get out of your furniture.
At least a third of the stations are wall-to-wall advertising. They're called exciting things like "Gold" or "Aspire" but they're 30 minute commercials for vacuum cleaners, food processors and exercise machines. That's it, by the way, those three products. They have been advertorialing them for as long as I've been alive and the local tip (dump, if you're an American) is as full of the discarded skeletons as ever. That's what those stations do - generate employment for tip staff.
Most of the other stations also run advertising - increasing in volume and duration and decreasing in quality as the movie goes on.
So, as far as I can tell, the overwhelming majority of the digital TV available to me is, in fact, advertising. Statistically, I think it's for (in descending order) vacuum cleaners, appliance stores offering never to be repeated offers on 50 month interest free terms that will be repeated this time next week and rug warehouses. Cars run a close fourth.
At the end of the day, I put my children to bed, I pour myself a glass of something red and kick back to enjoy ... advertising?
By the way, is there anyone actually watching those advertorial channels? Really? At the end of the day, you can't think of ANYTHING better to do than to watch people using food processors for half an hour at a time? You don't have internet access? Knitting to do? Toilets to clean? A revolver with just one chamber loaded? Who on earth watches this stuff?
That's it! I've had enough! My mission now is to cull all the stuff that's wasting my time. If you fall into any one of the following categories, your broadcasting licence is hereby revoked and your station will be closed:
1. Your entire programming is advertising - that takes out 5 stations straight away.
2. You are a direct mirror of another station - that takes out two more.
3. You specialise in replays - I think they're called "encore presentations" these days - of stuff your big brother station ran. - two more
4. Most of your content is movies or series made before the millennium - three disappear into the mists of history.
5. You've shown a Police Academy movie in the last twelve months - another one
6. Nothing you show cost more than $50,000 an episode to make - two more bite the dust.
In fact, once we cut the crap, I think we're back to where we started in the first place: a nationally funded broadcast channel or 4 and one commercial station specialising in MASH reruns. The rest is like those figure 8 polystyrene things you get in Amazon packages; they fill up space, sure, but it's a book, how much padding does it need?
What will we do with all that free bandwidth? I don't know. Make it available to the emergency services? A distress channel for prime ministers drowning in an ocean of their own incompetence? A way to broadcast your anger directly to drivers of other vehicles? Oooh, that's tempting.
For all I care, broadcast the test pattern - at least that had honesty of purpose.
Love it. Well said
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