In which the pond tries to revive its spirits with a hit of Major Mitchell ...

Perhaps the always reliable Major Mitchell would ease the pond's depression and give Malware something of a bounce ... even a dead cat can have her day ...

After all, there was a nicely ironic juxtaposition in the digital edition of the lizard Oz ...

Almost a weird caricature of a gross cliché, this fixation of the reptiles with the ABC ... 

And look, there below the Crabb was the crabby Major, always ready and willing to carry on with his crabbiness ... squealing and moaning and whining and whinging ...

Well yes, the local reptiles shamelessly repeat stories from stablemates such as the WSJ and The Times and the Major can't be found blathering about the disrepute involved in getting into bed with a major American newspaper that has been corrupted by the Chairman Rupert touch, or the cuckoos of England who have suffered the same fate ...

Almost every news organisation has a taint somewhere in the genetic make-up, and Al Jazeera isn't as nearly as appalling as RT, and besides there are the long night hours to fill in, and the BBC used to be the supplier, and still is for chunks of radio, but isn't as willing as it used to be, and frankly PBS and the Canadians just don't cut it ... though even they keep bobbing up in odd places, while poor old Norman Swan has to keep reminding the Canucks he's coming to them from the land down under ...

The reality is, in straitened times, everybody wants to get into bed with everybody, and it's only the losers that get agitated about the results of the swirling game of musical chairs ... like the dropkicks wanting to put the kibosh on CBS, apparently unaware of the dire alternative threat of the Chairman and his brood getting hold of Ten ...

The trouble of course with the reptiles is that they're so eccentric, and such a monoculture that nobody much wants to get into bed with them, in much the same way as the share structure at News Corp has made the entire organisation a poisoned pill in the marketplace under the family that runs the show like dictators, with an increasing capacity for making strategic mistakes ...

That's why cable is getting eaten for lunch by the likes of Netflix, as despite the best attempts of the Chairman to destroy the NBN, cable cutting is all the go, and people dine online for their product ...

Never mind, the ABC is the thing on which the reptiles most fixate, so a little more fixation from the Major please ... as the paranoia and the failing, flailing business model shows its nervous slip ...

Here's the thing. When it comes to financing drama, the ABC, Screen Australia (and before it the FFC) has welcomed almost anyone it could find with a little loose change and ready to join the joint venture ... including, gasp, Foxtel ...

As for Swisse, the Major is right to be indignant. The pond itself has often wondered where the revenue goes from the ads which always turn up before the JJJ Like a Version clip on YouTube ... the pond trained its logarithms to deliver the clips on a Frdiay, but nothing can stop the ads that go with the clips ...

As for the outrageous Swisse, the pond would be pleased to leave ethics to the private sector, knowing that News Corp would never form crass partnerships or ruthlessly sell heaps of pandering wellness shit to the country ...

Oh dear, if the pond hadn't picked up all the crappy News Corp papers on the weekend, it probably wouldn't have remembered all the wellness shit that it packages for Chemist Warehouse, even as the HUN and other Murdochian papers routinely run stories of the Most vitamins a waste of money for the 'worried well' kind ...

In the usual way, the pond would have provided a link to that story, but because of the Murdochian paywall, what's the point? They don't want to be a part of the conversation, they want people to pay to absorb a Murdochian lecture in hypocrisy ...

The pond might also have run a page of vitamin ads, but luckily it turfed all that crap early in the sort ...

You see, the pond usually sifts through and immediately turfs out without a glance the News Corp supplements, including cars, sport, yadda yadda ... and especially Chemist Warehouse sort of tree-killer pandering ersatz advertising supplements flogging crap in the guise of being chemists ...before getting to the mind-fucking opinion pages ...

No reason to poison the body as well as the mind, but that's what desperate Murdochians want the pond to do as they try to sustain a failing, flailing business model ...

Package useless wellness crap then whine at the way the ABC peddles wellness crap ...

How desperate can it get? Yep, the reptiles are seeking to export their product to the Chinese market, as explained by the risible "prestige" brand here ...

No doubt somewhere in China there's a columnist moaning and whining about how unfair it is to have to compete with the scintillating insights of the Major ...

Never fear, Chinese columnist, the Major's a real lightweight when it comes to this multicultural caper ...

Yep whining Chinese columnist, all the Major wants is access to government funding, so that a hundred select of the brightest News Corps minds might be given funding. Call it a "big data resource" if you like, but as any diligent reader of the Caterist knows, what it means is "show me the money, and please, make it cash in the paw ..."

And as an aside, might the pond just note that years ago News Corp and Foxtel had the opportunity to explore alternative business models, but remained fixated on monthly outrageous charges, set top boxes and old school cable connections, and now discover that their blinkered thinking has set them adrift in the age of the intertubes that the Chairman so valiantly attempted to destroy, or at least mutilate, hinder and slow down ...

How quaint to read about the dire threat of SBS running a few hundred shows online ... when the real dire threat came from the people in charge of strategy and policy within News Corp ...

Never mind, that's the way it goes with dinosaurs and with the Major and all the other Murdochians clinging to ancient technology and moaning that it's all the ABC's fault ...

And what do you know, others seem to be in love with innovative technology of the antique kind, with more Papish pleasures at antique devices to be found here ... 

And now might the pond humbly suggest a few more branding ideas for the Major and his merry band of Murdochians ...