Elisabeth Murdoch and profit without porpoise ...

(Above: a late nineteen sixties Siemens teleprinter, found at Brisbane's living heritage network).

It would be remiss of the pond to head into the weekend without mentioning Elisabeth Murdoch's fine flurry at the MacTaggart lecture.

In its own inimitable way, Fairfax covered her speech by recycling Dan Sabbagh's Humanity over profit: Elisabeth Murdoch attacks family in speech.

That would be Fairfax, still waking up to the way the world is wired.

At what point will they realise that in the new-fangled world of the intertubes, the punters can just trot off to read the piece at The Guardian under its original header Elisabeth Murdoch rounds on brother in MacTaggart lecture?

It reminds the pond of the good old days, when local newspapers were hooked up via teleprinters to their British masters.

One rag, of the pond's intimate acquaintance, could fill up half the paper with recycled bits from The Observer, and the other half with communications from its masters on North Terrace.

Sob, but the good old days are gone, and so if you hare off to The Guardian online, not only do you get Sabbagh, but you get the full text of Murdoch's MacTaggart lecture here, and you get Lisa O'Carroll explaining how Elisabeth Murdoch seeks to distance herself from family's woes, and you get Greg Dyke delivering yet another broadside at the family (and the Daily Mail) in Murdochs and Daily Mail are 'damaged goods' after Leveson, says Dyke, and if that's not enough for you - there will be tests after all this assigned reading - you get a Guardian editorial, Murdoch shows off liberal sympathies.

Frankly after this barrage, there's not much for the pond to add.

It is piquant to compare and contrast Elisabeth's lecture with that of her brother at the same venue in 2009, when the war on the BBC was going full steam ahead, but again The Guardian has got that covered with coverage that contains not just the full text of the failed Murdoch's speech, but the BBC Trust's response (you can find both of them here).

And you get bonus English comments below the fold in relation to James' petulant, childish outburst, vainglorious, which was then, and now even more clearly, the work of a petulant peacock that would one day lose its tail feathers:

So, another self-serving speech by a Murdoch with an attack on the BBC. Who could have guessed?
It's like one of those Doctor Who's where James will turn out to be the Master with lots of overcomplicated schemes to take over the Interwebs.

Damn you Murdochians, how dare you attack the home of the good Doctor.

Well Elisabeth has learned that lesson well, praising the BBC, contradicting her brother, talking of values, and decrying his emphasis on profit:

"Profit without purpose is a recipe for disaster."

Run that one around in the mouth, savour the after-taste as you would a good red. Sure when you break it down it doesn't quite add up. It might sound just as well as if it were profit without porpoise, because "purpose" needs a modifier to make the point. Perhaps profit without pious pieties of porpoise?

Never mind, could we work up a variation for The Australian and Kim Williams' benefit?

A profitless rag with only malicious crusading malevolent purpose is a recipe for disaster ...

It has to be said that the pond regards the output of Elisabeth Murdoch's production company Shine has - in Australia and elsewhere - lowered the collective television audience's IQ by at least ten points, a phenomenal achievement considering the valiant efforts of other producers and the entire Ten network to reduce it to zero.

But at least her role as a producer of content means she's aware that the BBC is a handy market for her product, and she's willing to embrace creative types who look askance at Rupert:

There was even praise for another former MacTaggart lecturer, the late Dennis Potter, who famously named the cancer that killed him "Rupert". She said she was "firmly with" the television playwright who said "the job of television is to make hearts pound" – a vision of the medium whose core purpose is "to form human connections" as opposed to a vehicle for the exercise of raw political power.

Ah well, if The Shire, Wife Swap, WAG Nation, Australia's Next Top Model and Dating in the Dark (all stunning, as in stunned mullet Shine Australia productions, read about them here) are all about human connections, it's time for the pond to turn into a dalek and run about shouting "exterminate, exterminate".

If that's the sort of product designed to make hearts pound, then the pond would prefer to pound heads.

Meanwhile, questions will linger.

Is Elisabeth playing a long game to get to the top of News?

Will the local brigade of rampant chauvinist ABC bashers in News Ltd sense there might be a changing of the guard, and the rush of the tide going out on the old order? Will the triumphalist ABC bashing subside?

Perhaps wisely, The Guardian wasn't having any of Murdoch's beguiling words and conciliatory stance, on the basis that she remains a Murdoch, and within the tent:

To compare the siblings' speeches was like one of those cop-pairings: Good Murdoch, Bad Murdoch. But Murdochs nonetheless. As Ms Murdoch admitted, throughout her career she had been helped and bankrolled by her father. And aided by her surname. She is the third member of her close family to be given this platform, the most prestigious lecture in British broadcasting. What better demonstration of the Murdochs' dominance in British media? One of the conclusions of the phone-hacking scandal is how desperately the media industry needs greater plurality – whereas up until the hacking scandal it was heading the opposite way. The answer to that conundrum lies not in speeches about values, but in structural reforms. Those will start not in a media gathering, but with Lord Justice Leveson.

Still, it's a measure of how things have changed in the UK - would-be Emperor James departed, and a new possible Empress making speeches - and how in due course those changes will wash up on Australia's shores, and not just via a teleprinter or Fairfax regurgitating a Guardian story.

In a market that's becoming ever more limited, there's very limited upside in alienating a substantial swathe of potential readers.

Will The Australian ever get back to the glory days, when an editor like Adrian Deamer could write an editorial criticising the Springbok tour of Australia? (and got sacked by Murdoch for his troubles, as noted in Deamer's wiki here).

The point, as Gina Rinehart is only just discovering, is that acquiring shares in the media to deliver ideology is an uncertain and bad business model. (Rinehart tries to sell shares after Fairfax $2.7 b slump).

Rinehart hasn't done anything to help the Ten network as it spirals down into the depths, with I Will Survive the latest dire outing to reveal how board and management are out of tune with the times, and now the network Mott-less (Ten's programming chief David Mott departs - though it should have been the gormless board and Lachlan Murdoch that first departed, which only goes to show the benefit of power, lineage and money over talent).

Whatever Rinehart had in vague mind in relation to Fairfax - perhaps turning it into a new front for like-minded Andrew Bolts - it was silly and redundant, since the raving ratbag loony market is well enough catered for by the dominant Murdoch press.

Who knows if the Murdochs down under will come to understand the dangers of zealotry and crusades, but all things must pass, even Rupert Murdoch, and his desire to elevate Paul Ryan to the vice-presidency so the Republican war on women can continue to roll out (who knows what Elisabeth thinks about this).

And the current braying, crusading, alienating regime of The Australian will also one day discover the revolving door.

So the pond will settle for the sound of a conciliatory note in the air in Elisabeth Murdoch's speech.

It's just a straw in the breeze, but the pond will always settle for a straw as a way to access a milkshake ...

(Below: and it being a kind of Guardian day, who could pass up Steve Bell on Rupert? More Bell and others at The Guardian's comment page, here).