In which the pond wastes time with Weisser, but at least that allows a few palpable hits on Foxtel ...

Rebecca Weisser offering advice on creative input? 

Why the pond has a pet budgie that might prove just as useful for a befuddled ABC commissioning editor reaching out to the local industry, at least as listening to a reptile of the Weisser kind ...

Go on budgie, pitch your proposal here,  while the pond listens to the Weisser ...

Yep, it's the clueless talking to the blind. It's probably news to the Weisser that free to air is in trouble, but then so is subscription television of the Foxtel kind ...

The days of sitting down to watch a Sunday night movie, or tuning in to a regular slot have been gone so long, the pond doubts they ever existed.

Why the ABC should be expected to be exempt from this decline is one of the finer arcane Weisser mysteries.

Don't take the pond's word that there's been a decline and that everyone's in trouble ... just google and you might land on Roy Morgan here ...

Of course it's not just FTA that's in trouble ...

That can be googled and found at the AFR, including this delectable set of figures:

       

Why would anyone pay thirty bucks for a basic useless Foxtel package when they could pick up Netflix for a much more competitive monthly price, or even just cherry pick the catch-up TV offerings that now litter the intertubes (about the only useful part of SBS is its movie list)?

It reminds the pond of that old quote, by Einstein - or was it Gandhi or Richard Nixon? - "physician and Weisser heal thyself" - as the awesome power to the full to overflowing intertubes to inform and entertain becomes more pronounced by the day ...

The notion that there's an easy fix in this fractured and still fracturing environment, is as silly as the Weisser ...

Somehow the Weisser thinks that the private sector does it better ...

It's impossible to summarise the stupidities in all this - as if for example, others give away their stock footage, while the ABC charges a fortune, or the bizarre notion that pay TV creates thousands of hours of original Australian content. Strip out filming sports live, and Foxtel has been one of the most useless and recalcitrant contributor to Australian content from the moment it was born.

It had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to help fund Australian drama and documentaries, on the basis that this was the job of others, and besides it didn't serve their business model, which was to regurgitate sport and international content while charging exorbitant prices ... (trust the pond, we knew something about this back in the day).

Well that golden egg has squawked its last for the cackling geese.

Then there's the notion that anyone who has worked for the ABC is somehow tainted. Uh huh. So anybody who's worked for Murdoch or made a living as a useless twit copping money from a place like the CIS (or the IPA or the rest of the brain drainers) should also be disqualified in the quest for the "genuinely independent"?

The pond often wonders what would happen if the reptiles succeeded in their ambition to make over the ABC in the model of the lizard Oz and Foxtel, with the same content and the same peculiar hard right nonsense. 

What need then to pay for either the reptiles' lizard Oz or the televisual reptiles at Sky, contentedly grazing on their taxpayer hot rock, apparently because all the tax breaks and tax evasions they currently indulge in wasn't sugary enough for them.

Well the pond is proud to boast that it still hasn't turned on Foxtel, though it did catch up with this fragrant story of suffering, which helps explain why so much cable cutting is going on ...

Things being what they are, the pond suggests googling for the full version of this tale of woe and suffering - it must have been a most peculiar experience to have a movie channel disappear while half way through a movie ... though the consequences were inevitable ...

Well indeed, and without boasting, the pond has thousands of hours of back catalogue which it can't possibly hope to watch before shuffling off the mortal coil ...

It's never had any need of a classic movies channel, and come the day that major sports manage to hook up with followers directly online, both the FTA and the pay models are going to take a further pounding. Some still fancy that day might never come, but then some also think there's still a good career driving vehicles, not realising a robot is already tapping them on the shoulder ...

But as the pond has admitted with a deep sense of shame and guilt, it did get tangled up in the shocking padding of Foxtel subscriber lists, courtesy an offer by Telstra to pay the pond to take Foxtel, so that it might boast of improved subscriptions ...

How did that attempt to put a gloss and lipstick on the pig of cable cutting work out?

Yep, this story came in another part of the lizard Oz, one apparently the deluded Weisser doesn't frequent in her celebration of the joys of pay TV ...

FTA, pay, they're both in trouble, and Australian content doesn't come cheap, at least if you want to do it well.

Weisser's complaint about the number of people working on Media Watch is the same fuckwitted nonsense that is talked about how it's possible to fling together a documentary for two and sixpence, and drama for no more than ten shillings the hour ...

Sure, if you don't mind copping lots of law suits (in the case of Media Watch) or you want to look like the cast was dressed using a credit card at K-Mart, with the props scored on a "take it back" basis from Aldi (oh the tales the pond could tell) ...

Never mind, the pond is grateful for the chance to sound off thanks to the Weisser. It isn't going to make the pond return to watching FTA or Australian drama - the power of the logarithms and the lure of the Donald is too strong at the moment - and as the ABC has become "their ABC", the pond has left it behind as well ...

It doesn't mean that everything is doomed, it just means that back catalogue is now lost to the world and that the money and eyeballs available for conventional television, private and public, will continue to come under pressure ...

What to do, what to do?

Well the pond guarantees that anyone who thinks Weisser has the answer will probably end up sounding just as silly and deluded.

Fortunately, there are other industries with fine business models, as celebrated by Rowe here ... you know, the one where you ship it all offshore, then moan how there's not enough for the local market ... though it seems that the AFR hasn't woken up to the wisdom of doing a decent gallery format so that Rowe might become the loss leader they need to generate the clicks ...