Stephen Conroy, Senator, the Honourable, and giving NITV the once over ...

(Above: a screen grab of NITV's home page. Go here for more).

It's the usual wretched, some would say tragic, style here at loon pond to take some bleating commentariat commentator's scribbles, hold them up to the light and mock them loudly, and often unfairly.

As Jon Stewart likes to say, fair and balanced is the kind of adjective The Australian might like to use about itself, it being close kissing cousin to other fair and balanced news services, but if that's fair and balanced, give me rhetorical bile.

But just for the moment, for today, the pond would like to hold a brief burial service for NITV, and channel 44, which as of midnight tonight will disappear from the free to air Sydney airwaves.

It's not the end of the world. After all black voices have been marginalised since whites arrived with pen and paper and rulers to provide a decent margin. NITV will continue to be carried on pay TV and be available in regional areas ...

But hang on, Sydney is where NITV's largest potential indigenous audience hangs out. And NITV, in case you've never caught up with it, is largely funded by the federal and other governments. Yep, only a little while ago, the Feds announced another $15 million to keep the show on air for another year (NITV secures another $15m in funding from Government).

After splashing that kind of cash, what better way to follow it up than to take NITV off free to air in Sydney? You know, on the Fawlty Towers principle that, just as hotels run most efficiently without guests, so broadcasters work well by not having a maximal audience potential.

That follows rumours the Government was planning to fold NITV into the ABC's indigenous unit, roundly denied by all concerned. (Influence attack to 'save NITV').

The mainstream media has consistently and studiously ignored NITV and its Sydney presence - except when the politics of funding gets compelling - so it's no wonder the d'oh performance of a government content to provide funding to a broadcaster which then perforce operates behind a paywall has never really been questioned.

Whenever you read about the channel 44 narrowcast trial, it's always dubbed 'successful' and that's why it's being stopped. Yep, after a successful trial, the one thing you must never do is actually continue it. If it was a failed experiment, well maybe you could keep it running for an eternity ... sssh, don't mention the pink batts affair ...

Now suddenly we return to the proposition that indigenous viewers in Sydney (and others who might happen to be interested) have to fork over a subscription to pay TV to cop a gander at a taxpayer subsidised broadcaster. A rough equivalent would be running SBS or ABC through Foxtel.

But then it's only black voices, so what does it matter. Bring me the paper with that very wide margin, I feel like a little more marginalization.

NITV isn't the greatest broadcaster in the world, but I say without condescension that it's sometimes surprised me with the material to hand. Sure there's reams of seemingly endless repeats, and very parochial material, but hey it's the business of a broadcaster to reflect and relate to a community, and football in the Northern Territory can't expect a huge audience.

The reason that I offer no condescension is that the channel's being run on the smell of an oily rag, but it hit on a style, and it keeps to a schedule and it still manages to offer up plenty of content, no matter the often musty air surrounding said content.

It takes a lot of hard cash to generate new audio visual content, and keep fresh programming alive. Hey, if the ABC and SBS are saturated with repeats (or wall to wall foreign news services in repeater station mode), imagine how hard it must be for a start-up service like NITV.

And then there's the usual political tensions to reconcile - you haven't experienced politics until you've experienced black politics - but every so often a new item with a fresh perspective will turn up, or an old documentary or drama will pop up from nowhere (or from Ronin or individual film-makers happy to help out), and make for interesting viewing up against the monotony of mainstream free to air predictability (if I catch a glimpse of Patricia Arquette whispering and whining with ghosts one more time, I swear I'll scream, while the mannerisms of David Caruso are now so extreme, screenings of CSI Miamia should carry a warning: viewing can be accompanied by physical nausea).

Where else are you going to see the mini-series Women of the Sun? SBS? Or old documentaries about aboriginal people funded by the FFC way back when?

Not your cup of tea? Fine. Keep dribbling over Master Chef.

Politicians like to blather about diversity, but when it comes to actual diversity, that's a different matter. It feels quite weird that Senator Conroy and his bureaucratic hordes couldn't manage a smooth transition from experimental trial to continued FTA delivery for NITV in Sydney (and other metropolitan areas which didn't get 44).

In terms of the billions thrown around by government and pissed against the wall - sssh, let's not go into the pink batt saga all over again - keeping NITV on in free to air in Sydney, and extending it to other urban areas, would have amounted to ant crap up against the usual elephant turds government keeps dropping everywhere.

As part of the fall out, devotees will lose other aspects of the 40/44 service, including the Australian Christian channel and Teacher television, and the upper and lower houses of federal parliament.

Heck I'll lose the Expo channel without having once purchased a mop, a fitness machine, a batch of Time Life records of country music, a decent angle grinder, or been compelled by Stewart Faichney flogging the little nibbler when he's not writing bad scripts for Paul Hogan, or been seduced by all the wonderful variants on George Foreman's fat free gorilla.

Sure you can read about it online, or get it on pay, but a free to air way to reduce your mind to a sausage sizzle? Priceless ... and so much more surreal than David Caruso.

Again it's no big deal in the grand scheme of things. You can still pick up parliamentarians yammering and blathering online, and you can also find the Christians there, and of course you can buy crap in any two dollar store of your choice.

Now it might seem strange that this determinedly atheist pond gives a toss about the Christians having access to free to air, but every so often it was fun to channel hop and pick up some lost memory of an antipodean Elmer Gantry doing their thing ... and marvelling at it. Somehow it made free to air actually sound diverse and full of oddities, a bit like cruising in the south of the United States and seeing what might earn a television signal there.

The end result? A diminution of diversity, a loss of voices from the airwaves, and a department content to talk the walk, while sending black television back to pay TV.

Of all the many reasons that I can drum up to dislike the obtuse, let's build a $44 billion NBN and then censor it, Senator Conroy, I have to say this casual indifference to NITV's signal is surprisingly the most offensive.

It's just another kicking of sand in the face of urban aboriginal people ...

Heck no, hang on a second, it's a kicking of sand in the faces of anyone interested in alternative voices having access to free to air television.

Well vale NITV, it was nice catching black faces on the screen every now and then, but sad to say, I'd rather have all my teeth extracted than fork over cash to Chairman Rupert's cable service, especially when the government has been using taxpayer dollars to fund the channel.

By the way, here's the note on the digital 44 home page:

This site supports Digital FORTY FOUR, the world’s first Digital Terrestrial TV service dedicated to datacasting and open narrowcasting. Digital FORTY FOUR is broadcast exclusively to over 3.8 million people in Sydney, Australia's biggest city and carries a number of channels from news to shopping.

Following a recent decision by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) these trial services will end on 30 April 2010. Viewers with strong views about this decision should contact ACMA directly or contact Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

Well here's my note to ACMA and Senator the Honourable Stephen Conroy, and I regret to say, it's a strong view, a bit like Charlton Heston confronted with dangerous apes.

You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you, God damn you all to hell ...

(Below: get your button here).