(Above: bear with us. We're just trying to crack the Guinness Book of Records for the most Scott "speaking in tongues" Morrison cartoons in a row. More Kudelka here).
The latest is David Penberthy, fresh out of the Sunday Mail - oh Adelaide, you and your aunts on the verandah - and he works himself up into a fine old lather of righteous indignation with Take this as a comment, but I'm paying for stuff on the ABC that I hate.
Penberthy spends much of his piece berating Q and A, and who can argue with that.
But then comes to the standard Murdochian whinge and moan:
But the fundamental difference between commercial media and public media is that commercial media is all about customer choice. You decide whether you want to pay for commercial media by subscribing or tuning in.
Which is only half-right.
Sadly there's bugger all choice in the matter for the pond.
Whether the pond likes it or not, the pond is paying the marketing/advertising budget of many, many combines and rackets each time it shops at a supermarket.
Oh sure it's only a tithe of a few cents here, and a few cents there, but you know what they say about saving the pennies so the pounds can look after themselves ... especially when you've got some 22 million people to tithe ...
It's not just about tuning in (forget the subscribing, who on earth would subscribe to Foxtel, and then enjoy the barrage of relentless advertising).
Yep, you pay for the bloody marketing departments, for the ads to be made, and for the cost of the ads to be aired, whether you watch the bloody things or not, and reward them with ratings and demographics and such like.
And so indirectly, whether you like it or not, you're paying for the rantings of the parrot, assorted other shock jocks, and god help the pond, any of the national gormless advertisers who drop a little bit of money into the fucking Sunday Mail and fucking Penbo's pocket, and then just add a few cents on to the cost of the cornflakes ... or whatever other useless bit of processed crap it is ...
The size of the market, guaranteed to inflict untold suffering and pain on eyeballs and eardrums, even when offering a little humour for the Gruen team?
$12.4 fucking billion in 2011, or so the reptiles at the lizard Oz assure us in Australian advertising market growth smashes forecasts, as the bastards get everyone coming and going ...
Why is it that the commentariat is always moaning about the ABC?
Well a lot of them can't stand the bloody advertising.
Most of their anecdotes turn on what they've heard on the ABC.
Like Hendo. He's always on about the ABC. He talks of little else, unless it's sectarianism and the joys of Catholicism.
Like Penbo:
A good mate of mine at work recently drew the short straw and agreed to a series of interviews on the ABC where he valiantly tried to explain our company's decision to charge a small weekly amount for full access to online content.
I was driving home and caught the end of his interview, after which the radio host said: "We of course at the ABC will always be free", before throwing the lines open to people who probably send questions in to Q and A who were in passionate agreement with one another.
Maybe he only watches the commercial stations and maybe he only listens to commercial radio except when his mate draws the short end of the straw. Maybe that explains why he writes moaning bile for the Sunday Mail.
Maybe he can explain why the fuck he went on to Q and A, and so tormented the nation. Or did he get his panellist CV on to the show's website, and then never showed up? Seeing as how:
I am not sure if there is a hell or not.
If there is, I am pretty sure it involves being locked in a room for all eternity with all the light beer you can drink, Samantha Fox's 1986 dance hit Touch Me playing on a loop in the background, and worst of all, the only people for company being the panellists from the ABC program Q and A.
Amen bro.
Oh wait, I see you wrote 'audience' instead of 'panellists', but we think the par works just as well ...
Now how to toss in a bit of bitterness and resentment and a dash of righteousness:
...The thing which irks me about the ABC is not the question of bias, but the unchecked expenditure of public money.
As someone who quite deliberately has only ever worked in commercial media - and for news organisations which now rightly charge online subscriptions to cover the vast cost of producing content - it strikes me as hysterical that the ABC has convinced itself that it's a free news organisation.
There you go, sullen resentment together with righteousness about only ever working in commercial media.
Sheesh, like that's a badge of honour and glory.
Naturally there's whinging and moaning about how much executives get at the ABC, because someone in the place isn't like that penny-pinching, tightwad bastard Uncle Scrooge McMurdoch.
Oh he seems like such a nice, carefree Scrooge.
But do go on, sock it to 'em Penbo:
Free? It's free all right.
It's free if you ignore the billion-plus dollars it bludges off the taxpayer, with an executive salary bill that has grown unchecked in record time.
Actually, technically, a bludger lives off immoral earnings, a pimp living off the earnings of a harlot. Money for nothing and your chicks for free, and all you need is muscle for brain.
People working in the ABC actually make programs. You might not like all of them - the pond can certainly live without Q and A, which these days is a reliable showcase for Murdoch crazies, but at least these bludgers are better than the pimps pimping for Murdoch.
That just allows the chairman to build up an even bigger crazed, psychotic and profoundly destructive empire, in the way that working for Singo sees him piss money against the wall on horses.
Sheesh, it's not like you can ping the ABC for Faux Noise, Roger Ailes, Bill Orally, Glenn Beck, the Tea Party, and all the rest of the circus that almost helped take the United States and the rest of the world to a fiscal meltdown these last few weeks ...
A man who, it turns out, is getting weirder and more environmentally destructive by the day, while fondly cultivating the delusion that billionaires are down wit' the masses:
But do go on, Penbo, as you wrap up your shilling for Rupert:
Nice work if you can get it, as the song says, and in Australia it seems that you can get it all the time. And whether you like the programs or not, the national broadcaster should at least stop pretending that they don't cost a cent to make, and thank us for underwriting their entire existence.
Uh huh. Provided you at least stop pretending that everyone not only pays by subscribing and tuning in, but also pays by double dipping and paying for all the bloody advertising, and thanks to that, is gouged not once twice.
And with no thanks from the reptiles for underwriting their entire existence over and over again ...
Compared to the $12 billion plus and all the other costs, an advertising-free moment on the ABC at a mere billion seems reasonable to the pond.
The funniest thing in all this?
Well back in February 2013 Penbo got hitched to federal Labor MP Kate Ellis.
The pond would love to be a fly on the wall when it gets down to political discussions.
You know:
... jeez you bloody socialist pinko pervert ABC lovers are ruining the country ... bankrupting us while I have go go off and work for Rupert and do hard day at mill, and happy t'do't, unlike those bludgers traipsing about like hippies ...
Yes David ...
Well what else could you say?
Meanwhile, as predicted, we can expect the long conga line of ABC bashers to grow in Rupert land.
The ideal, as posed by the Bolter to Tony Abbott, and devoutly pursued by the IPA, is complete privatisation, but the empire will settling for slashing of budgets and degutting of the corporation, and assorted attempts to improve the 'culture' by imposing ideologues like Jonathan Shier to the board and to management, and ensuring that ratbags of the commentariat kind are employed to roam the airwaves in a pitiful attempt to imitate what is already supplied in abundance in the marketplace ... while refugees from the marketplace clutch to their RN, where an asterisk is a splendid result, and their ABC FM where they can listen to exotic outings like Syzmanowski's King Norman ...
For the grinding down to happen, what's needed is ongoing sniping of the Penbo kind, which despite its posturing isn't really a call for careful regulation, interesting programming and monitoring of the corporation's budget, but rather disdain for the whole notion of a public broadcaster ...
Well bugger it Penbo, kindly allow the pond to take your disdain, double it and throw it back at the Murdoch empire ... and so long as it encourages 'teh crazy', we'll be making sure not a dollar goes its way ...
Think about it this way. The hideous Q and A is like an ocean of sanity up against the reptiles scribbling furiously for the opinion pages of the lizard Oz ...
Think about it ...
The first shot was fired in this penultimate war against the ABC after Conroy paraded his Six Bills, on March 13 this year. The saga of "media reform" is nicely packaged in 'Media reform: in shallows and miseries' from Rhonda Jolly at Parliamentary Library. Even Margaret Simons was stirred to comment "All in all, after all the work and controversy, this is about as minimalist a response as it is possible to get, though perhaps more than one would expect in an election year. Most people expected Conroy to do nothing, given the forthcoming election." Bob Carr reckoned the timing of the Bills asked for big trouble.
ReplyDeleteRetribution will be dragged out, slowly and remorselessly. Barrie Cassidy's wicket was only the first to fall. I won't be surprised if, in a year's time, all that's left of the ABC is re-runs of Coast and Ja'mie.
No, the forces of darkness won't be satisfied until the rights are restored of tobacco corporations to market their poison however they bloody-well like, and the smoking rate of 13-year-olds is back to 30%.
As the commercial broadcasters "Free -To-Air" are using public frequency, maybe we should only issue licences for a 5 year tenure and then hold an auction and sell off to the highest bidder. Portion of the resultant income could then fund the ABC.
ReplyDeletePond, you are correct, each time I purchase my daily essentials I am funding TV and Radio meterial in which I have no interest.
I think Trevor is right,Barrie Cassidy's is the first wicket to fall and the great lizard empire smells blood. One can only fear for the future of Oz. Would love to have been a fly on the wall at Kirribilli.
ReplyDeleteAlso,I believe The Great Toad Rupert is quite involved with fracking on the Syrian border with a couple of other toads by the names of Cheney and Rothschild,so one can expect the murdochian lackey's will be doing much furious scribbling on the wonders of frackers as there is a reasonably strong amount of opposition (as in England) to this filthy industrial style vandalism.
The BBC is coming in for a kicking too in the UK at the moment.
ReplyDeleteIt must be in the air!
Something bad is going to happen to our Aunty. I feel it in my waters. What does that mean Dot? A Southern lady of your perspicacity would know about 'the waters'.
Anyway this lot will not leave the ABC untended. They are by nature dismantlers and wreckers and best owners of favours.
Correction
ReplyDeletebestowers of favours
Although
They do own the best favours