The pond won't reprise The Weekly Beast compiled by the venerable Meade this week - the high comedy begins in the headline Linda Reynolds praises 'fair and balanced' Albechtsen ...
Who knew Reynolds abided on Planet Janet with Dame Slap, in a land far above the faraway tree? The notion that Dame Slap is fair and balanced in the Faux Noise style was a real thigh slapper ...
There was also a funny yarn about a Killer Creighton failure which the pond will leave to the tasty Meade, and more, and then as the pond looked at other news, there was another story that sent the pulse racing ...
Be still beating heart, and yet in the Nine rags version of the events, (paywall) there was a splendid graph with a couple of downward curves ...
Could it be, could at last the empire be dismantled, and best of all, by the forces within?
Oh sweet joy, News Corp finally confronts the grim reality of Foxtel ... (AFR paywall)
There is a long list of challenges and headwinds facing Foxtel. Come next year, it is all but certain it will lose valuable HBO content as its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, launches its own Max streaming platform down under. Succession, The Last of Us, Game of Thrones – gone.
Against powerful entertainment streaming players – Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video – Binge was always going to struggle.
Without local consolidation, its days must be numbered.
Growth has plateaued for both Kayo and Binge, and high-margin residential subscriptions are still dropping at more than 10 per cent each year.
Patrick Delany, who has been exploring an exit after six years doing an admirable job reshaping Foxtel for the streaming era, has changed his own language around Foxtel. It was once a stable, value-creating subscription business; he now describes it as a company that “monetises rights” and is “squeezing” set-top box customers.
The trouble is, the cost of those sports rights is increasing rapidly – Foxtel and Seven West Media will pay $4.5 billion for the AFL, and $1.5 billion for the Cricket from 2025. There will be less and less money to pay for them every year without significant price hikes at Kayo.
In the face of this, Foxtel has spent $77 million launching Hubbl, a confusing answer to a question no-one was really asking. The numbers circulating of how many Hubbl units have been selling at major retailers are, to put it mildly, rough.
Industry observers are now speculating wildly about which company could potentially buy Foxtel. US giant Comcast is always near the top of the list. It owns Sky in the UK and NBCUniversal in the US, among other assets. However, sources with knowledge of Comcast’s thoughts say it’s unlikely they would be interested.
Nine Entertainment (which owns The Australian Financial Review and streaming platform Stan) and Seven likely wouldn’t have the money, especially with share prices near lows reached during the COVID-19 pandemic. Telstra has spent money buying a Foxtel rival, Fetch, instead of backing the product in which it owns a direct stake.
Angus Aitken, a broker close to News Corp and the Murdoch family, has put Platinum Equity up as the potential buyer. Platinum Equity specialises in structurally changed companies, and could run Foxtel for cash for years.
Meanwhile, Foxtel has been in a hole of debt, much of it at the hands of its own shareholders. It owes News Corp almost $600 million, CFO Susan Panuccio told analysts. That credit facility carries more than 7 per cent interest. Telstra, meanwhile, was taking 12.14 per cent interest on $96 million as of March 31.
Foxtel was worth $2 billion just a few years ago. We may see what News Corp is willing to sell it for now.
Against powerful entertainment streaming players – Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video – Binge was always going to struggle.
Without local consolidation, its days must be numbered.
Growth has plateaued for both Kayo and Binge, and high-margin residential subscriptions are still dropping at more than 10 per cent each year.
Patrick Delany, who has been exploring an exit after six years doing an admirable job reshaping Foxtel for the streaming era, has changed his own language around Foxtel. It was once a stable, value-creating subscription business; he now describes it as a company that “monetises rights” and is “squeezing” set-top box customers.
The trouble is, the cost of those sports rights is increasing rapidly – Foxtel and Seven West Media will pay $4.5 billion for the AFL, and $1.5 billion for the Cricket from 2025. There will be less and less money to pay for them every year without significant price hikes at Kayo.
In the face of this, Foxtel has spent $77 million launching Hubbl, a confusing answer to a question no-one was really asking. The numbers circulating of how many Hubbl units have been selling at major retailers are, to put it mildly, rough.
Industry observers are now speculating wildly about which company could potentially buy Foxtel. US giant Comcast is always near the top of the list. It owns Sky in the UK and NBCUniversal in the US, among other assets. However, sources with knowledge of Comcast’s thoughts say it’s unlikely they would be interested.
Nine Entertainment (which owns The Australian Financial Review and streaming platform Stan) and Seven likely wouldn’t have the money, especially with share prices near lows reached during the COVID-19 pandemic. Telstra has spent money buying a Foxtel rival, Fetch, instead of backing the product in which it owns a direct stake.
Angus Aitken, a broker close to News Corp and the Murdoch family, has put Platinum Equity up as the potential buyer. Platinum Equity specialises in structurally changed companies, and could run Foxtel for cash for years.
Meanwhile, Foxtel has been in a hole of debt, much of it at the hands of its own shareholders. It owes News Corp almost $600 million, CFO Susan Panuccio told analysts. That credit facility carries more than 7 per cent interest. Telstra, meanwhile, was taking 12.14 per cent interest on $96 million as of March 31.
Foxtel was worth $2 billion just a few years ago. We may see what News Corp is willing to sell it for now.
It put the pond in an exceptionally good mood this morning and able to cope with anything the reptiles might throw at the wall in hope of making something, anything stick ...
What they did throw at the wall was a Ginsbergian Howl of despair and bewilderment from the dog botherer that added to the pond's almost hysterical sense of delight ...
There were many more fitting and suitable images out there ...
In that spirit, there's no need to argue with the yelling, or even the clouds ... just sup on the dog botherer's Ginsbergian Howl and drink deep of his tears ...
Indeed, indeed ...
...Chris Kenny is my dad. On one of the Sky News political analysis programs he hosts, he has replied to the Chaser joke, lamenting that if his children were ever to Google his name in the future, this is the kind of filth we would stumble across.
Heaven forbid.
Kenny is a staunchly neo-conservative, anti-progress, anti-worker defender of the status quo. He is an unrelenting apologist for the Liberal Party. He was one of Alexander Downer’s senior advisers at the time of the Iraq War. He’s been known to argue for stubborn, sightless inaction on climate change. He spits at anyone concerned with such trivialities as gender equality, environmental issues or labour rights from his Twitter account on a daily basis. Recently, he characterised criticism of the lack of women in Tony Abbott’s Cabinet as a continuation of the Left’s “gender wars”. He is a regular and fervent participant in The Australian’s numerous ongoing bully campaigns against those who question its editorial practices and ideological biases. The profoundly irresponsible, dishonest, hate-filled anti-multiculturalist Andrew Bolt has recently referred to Kenny on his blog as “a friend”.
And it’s a jokey picture of a bestial embrace that I should be afraid of discovering online?
Like clockwork, and in the unlikely company of the ABC’s Media Watch, the Murdoch newspapers have taken up the question of just how this image could possibly have been allowed to go to air. In what is perhaps the most idiotic contribution, The Australian’s ‘Cut And Paste’ section has asked whether prominent feminist Anne Summers is as offended by this joke as she was by the sexual vilification of former PM Julia Gillard. To equate the two things is a ridiculous move, typical of the desperate, flat-earth refusal in some corners of liberalism to acknowledge the existence of gender politics. Involving Summers in this episode for no sound reason is transparent ideological sniping.
In the Daily Telegraph, the always yawn-inducing Tim Blair suggested that Kenny would be treated much more kindly by the public broadcaster if he were an Islamic terrorist — flogging an excruciatingly worn out, tired slur. In the Herald Sun, populist torch-bearer Bolt has demanded to know why ABC managing director Mark Scott has allowed this deterioration of standards to occur on his watch. Standards in media and cultural sensitivity, of course, being Bolt’s twin areas of expertise.
‘The Left’ is often characterised by those who appoint themselves as its opponents as lacking a sense of humour, too ‘politically correct’ and too self-righteous to lighten up and take a joke. No doubt Kenny, Bolt and Blair would argue that the difference in this case is that tax-payers fund the ABC, and should not have to hand over their hard-earned cash for this type of trash.
And I tend to agree. Let’s see the ABC give back every cent of what it cost them to use Photoshop for thirty seconds. Maybe I’ll spend the spare change on a bus to go see the Great Barrier Reef before it, like the Chaser’s dog, is completely fucked in the arse.
Another howl of pain, with Liam apparently unaware that the Riddster and Lloydie of the Amazon are taking most excellent care of the reef ... a
And now back to that other Howl ...
Indeed, indeed ...
Of course you could indulge in the original Howl ... (some browsers might chuck a fit)
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo...
And so on and on, but in its own way this effort by the dog botherer is just as splendiferous ...
Well yes, yes, indeed, indeed ... the organic over the digital, the ancient typewriter over the keyboard ...
Truth to tell the pond regretted that there was just one gobbet to go ... you don't get despairing reptile howls like this every day of the week ...
And then it was done, and the pond could handle the dog botherer in moods like this ...the Foxtel of lizard Oz columnists ...
Then, with the pond deciding to take it easy this day, there was only the swishing Switzer's take on the US to wash down the dog botherer's tears ...
There was a lot of visual padding to accompany the endless distracting links and feeble reliance on Fawlty Towers jokes, which had some relevance back in the twentieth century ...
Again it was simply a matter of enjoying the swishing Switzer's hysterical meltdown ... with the pond able to provide its own illustrations ...
For those wondering why the pond never bothers clicking on the links, remember once you book into the lizard Oz, you can never leave, and the link atop that gobbet led to this ...
Dear sweet long absent lord, why on earth would the pond bother clicking on that sort of link - is there no escaping the lizard Oz hellhound known as "Ned" always asking questions?
Like: What does the next 60 years of Foxtel foretell ...
If the pond kept clicking on useful links, it would find cartoons out there in abundance ...
All the swishing Switzer is good for is a little padding between the 'toons... a bit like the newspaper we used to shove in the cracks in the weatherboards to keep out the wind, though some might also recall the harsh grating effect of that sort of paper when deployed in the outdoor dunny ... which is also roughly the effect of the swishing Switzer on the eyeballs ...
Enough with the unease ... enjoy the comedy ...
The swishing Switzer did his best to drum up saucy doubts and fears ...
If the pond wanted saucy doubts and fears, it would have resorted to a funny joke about three men going into a Barr ...
Or a Luckovich ...
That last one deserves an explanation, provided by a story in Vanity Fair ... Eric Lutz's The Clarence Thomas Saga Won't Stop ...
Talk about banana republics. Gorsuch is such a dill ...
And yet what fun in the blather about the likes of Judge Cannon handing out justice to the mango Mussolini, as "ferociously independent judges" are wont to do ... while Justice Thomas romps with the billionaires...
Talk about good times, talk about laughs ... and again the pond was left regretting that it was the last gobbet ...
Why do these reptiles always end just asking questions?
Are they always completely clueless?
Okay, okay, the swishing Switzer has always been clueless, but the pond is completely jack of this JAQ routine ... it gets the pond asking its own questions, like why does it enjoy this day in, day out drivel fest?
It's deeply weird, though perhaps not as weird as other weirdnesses ...
And now as a break from couches and Maga cinematic madness, a different sort of 'toon ...
That’s a magnificent spew from the Botherer. Either he’s had an exceptionally bad week - perhaps worried at the implications of a Foxtel sale for the future of “The Kenny Report” - or he simply decided it was time for a Greatest Hits compilation (Deluxe Edition). Doggy must have exceptional touch-typing skills to compose such an epic while staring into a mirror. Still I wonder - what _will_ the wheel do for France?
ReplyDeleteIt will enable religious nuts to break people on them.
DeleteOh my, from the Boverer: "Schools are encouraging staff and students to indulge teenagers who choose to identify as cats." Do they ? Do they really ? How wonderful of the Boverer to inform us of that without ever tendering any evidence for thinking that it might be true. But then, that's just high "merit"[Henry Ergas] journalism, isn't it.
ReplyDeleteAnd then we have: "The story of our nation, perhaps the world's most peaceful and inclusive settlement and colonisation project...". Oh wau, we are all living in a "project" (still imperfect). But wait: "Just this week the prime Minister told indigenous Australians that after two centuries of dispossession and disadvantage...". So, just two centuries of dispossession and disadvantage while living in the world's most peaceful and inclusive settlement.
The Doggy Bov really has driven over the cliff at top speed this time, hasn't he.
Enough time wasted on reptile insanity already. But wait: "Since the Enlightenment the positive developments in knowledge, education, technology and prosperity in Western countries has been staggering." Has it ?
"In simple terms, the Enlightenment was a period in history, occurring roughly between the late-16th and 18th century, that completely transformed western culture. People began to reconsider and question the long-established monarchies, religious institutions, social systems and hierarchies that had dictated their way of life for so long.
Ideas of liberty, reason and religious tolerance soon traversed Europe, creating social upheaval, revolution and change..."
Incredible. But where was that Judeo-Christian Tradition while all this was going on ? Just consider:
"One of the earliest achievements of the Enlightenment lay in establishment of the laws of scientific investigation. There grew a realisation of the importance of scrutiny and experimentation within the field. Previously unquestioned theories were now challenged and new theories had to be proven with actual evidence."
Proven with actual evidence ? We'll all rot in Hell for eternity for speaking, and believing, that heresy.
https://www.historyhit.com/what-was-the-enlightenment/
But anyway: "Debate is being polluted by falsehoods, fake news, il-informed opinion, prejudice masquerading as reality, and the triumph of emotionalism and feelings over facts and reality." [And don't forget 'identity politics, too]
So really, the Bov does understand perfectly the organisation he works for and he will continue to 'project' that understanding away from himself and the other fellow-travellers, and onto the world outside. As is the reptile wont. Plus ca change ...
From memory, GB, that “encouraging teens to identify as cats” story is one of those popular myths that has been widely cited by conservatives and various assorted nut jobs in recent years. The fact that no specific cases, or supporting evidence, have ever been identified has done nothing to reduce the “anti-woke” brigade’s enthusiasm for the yarn. The Dog Botherer is either deliberately spreading bullshit or is more gullible than I had previously assumed.
DeleteOr both ? Spreading bullshit and more gullible ? I guess it's a bit like the 'Howard defence': if I really and sincerely believe it, then it isn't a lie (ie it's mis- rather than dis-information).
DeleteBut oh, the incredible bullshat that reptiles and wingnuts 'truly believe'. It never ends.
Hmmm. I did reply, Anony, but it just disappeared. Anyway, it was sort of like this:
DeleteYair, both bullshit spreading and gullible, I reckon, as the reptiles and wingnuts always are. But then it's kinda like the 'Howard defence': if one really and truly believes, then it isn't lying, it's mis- rather than dis-information.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jun/23/child-identifying-as-cat-controversy-from-a-tiktok-video-to-media-frenzy
DeleteThe Bov’s - “they would act like this”, everyone else - “he would believe this”.
Switzer: "The left's venomous hatred of Donald Trump..." No, no, Switzy, mate, it's just rational revulsion at a nasty, criminal-minded arsehole who, thanks to the likes of thee, was once President of the USA. A madness that no sensible and rational person wants to ever see repeated.
ReplyDeleteThey [the raving 'Right'] are just going to continue ignoring any and all of the obvious truths about Trump forever, aren't they.
And some more Switzy (sort of): "...what Henry Kissinger thought of the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s: it's too bad both sides can't lose." But then, both sides did lose, in their own respective ways, of course. Just like both sides of the USA-Iraq war just a little while later. And they took others along with them too, like "the world's most peaceful and inclusive settlement and colonisation project".
DeleteYeah, more "projection", from Ned this time: "...our lives and communities cannot progress without viable democratic systems". Tell that to the Chinese, mate. And tell it to our own ancestors who had to actually progress from religious feudalist autocracy to democracy - if we had to manage to progress to democracy, however did we manage it without democracy to start from ? And yes, we do all still remember the Peterloo Massacre, don't we.
ReplyDeleteNow correct me if I'm wrong, but Xi Jinping has certainly less that half a century to remain in feudal ownership of China. So tell us, what will China be like in 100 years, 1000 years, 10,000 years ? Still owned and operated by the descendants of Xi d'you reckon ? And how about the USA ? Still owned by the descendants of Murdoch and Trump ?
And indeed "What does the next 60 years of the Australian newspaper "foretell ? Only that 60 years is more than enough for some things to disappear entirely.
I would have thought that democracy was a bit of an exception. Even where a society claims to be democratic it is often some sort of autocracy, oligarchy or plutocracy with a democratic facade.
DeleteJust a comment on a grate American:
ReplyDelete"Trump has gotten to the point where he doesn't just forget a thing or two. That happens to all us oldsters. He literally invents entire incidents in his mind and believes they're real. I don't think he even knows he's doing it. Can you imagine what he's going to be like four years from now?"
Yair, probably very much like he is now only worse.
https://jabberwocking.com/donald-trump-is-hallucinating-things/
But can you even imagine how he is now ? Most Americans don't seem to be able to. Especially all those "meritorious" journalists.
There ya go !
Deletehttps://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2024/08/horrible-agenda.jpg
I was having a lunchtime conversation with an ex-colleague mate recently in which I stated that : "I have two vocabularies: the words I know and use in conversation and writing, and those I just know the meaning of but never actually use myself. And I just encountered one of them: tergiversation.
ReplyDeleteSo, hail Trump, the Great Tergiversator !"
[Tergiversation: the act of making statements that deliberately hide the truth or that avoid answering a question directly]
DP, what might happen to Fox?
ReplyDeleteUncle Fox-X!
Chad, you (and plenty of others) might enjoy this:
ReplyDeletehttps://clubtroppo.com.au/2024/07/13/john-quiggin-and-the-overton-gradient/#more-37141
An object lesson in adopting and passionately defending arbitrary and unvalidated economic targets. But then, economics has never been even remotely a science, has it, so no evidence-based verification is ever needed.
GB - I have come to this a little late in the day, but I know you return here at unusual hours. Thank you for putting up John Quiggin's comments. They are part of the reason why I went into tedious extract from the Reserve Bank Act 1959 yesterday; just reminding folk that 'inflation' does not appear in that Act. Given the people who contributed to the drafting instructions for that legislation, I am sure that was deliberate. After all, that legislation was being prepared just 7 years after Menzies had set (still) our national inflation record for the 20th century of 23.9%
DeleteIncidentally - apropos Nicholas Gruen, leading off the item you link to - Whitlam's great tariff cut, in 1973, which had a salutary effect on inflation at that time, was on the advice of Nicholas' father Fred Gruen, as independent economic adviser to Whitlam. The Reserve Bank, then under governor Sir John Phillips, had nothing to do with that initiative.
Couldn't get my comment published as a reply, so it's posted separately below.
DeleteReptiles seem a bit more shrill than usual.Conti uing employment worries?
ReplyDeleteI was aware of the existence of Fred Gruen - a Dunera boy - and vaguely aware of his role as an economic advisor, especially during the short Whitlam era. Nicholas Gruen was the chap who complimented Henry Ergas on reading a very large number of books and having a very good recall of their contents - though he didn't specify how long that 'very good recall' lasted - weeks, months or years.
ReplyDeleteAs to inflation and the Reserve Bank Act, well it's just wonderful how things are imported somehow into acts in which they never actually appeared. But the whole 'inflation' thing is just a result of misunderstanding money as a real thing, and not as "a social construct underpinned by a complex of social and institutional conventions" as the very same Henry Ergas would like us to understand.
But 4% as an inflation target ? Is inflation just really one of those ways in which significant amounts of money are created every year to accommodate the increase in human population (currently, despite the continuous waging of wars, running at around 75 million per annum).
But hey, maybe it won't be running at 75 million/annum for much longer:
DeleteNations are deploying baby bonuses, subsidised childcare and parental leave to try and reverse a rapidly declining fertility rate – largely to no avail
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/11/global-birthrates-dropping
GB - Our Esteemed Hostess has put up her Sunday observance, so I won't spin this out too much, but your your further observations are relevant to a peculiarly Australian experience in trying to put a number on inflation. It comes from the time of the gold 'rushes' in Victoria, then New South Wales. Up to that time, colonial administrations were trying to bring whitefellas to the country (never mind the recent cant about bringing xian, Briddish, 'civilization' to this place) either as felons or as subsidised migrants. Then - GOLD. Within weeks attraction replaced the legal system, or other financial lures, and whitefella - almost exclusively 'fellas' - crowded every possible ship. Our 'GDP' of that time could have been called the 'Gold Domestic Product' - later reconstructions put gold then at from 50% to 75% of the current concept of GDP.
DeleteLargely anecdotal records suggest one form of inflation going into multiples, if measured by increase in price in basic goods, but - and no economist had a hand in this - while the country produced tons of gold, the great inflow of migrants saw the redistribution of that national income. Not evenly - the common great range of individual shares soon appeared - but the notional amount per capita was not fantastically different from other times through that century.
In short - the great growth in (whitefella) population, soaked up much of those riches, and the nascent nation did not have inflation of the scale of that famous 'banana republic'.
"inflation. It comes from the time of the gold 'rushes' in Victoria, then New South Wales." ... and alcohol rushes inflation.... "Gulgong came into existence after gold was discovered at Red Hill in 1870." ... "During the height of the gold rush in the 1870s, Gulgong had 67 pubs".
DeleteSell shivels, and booze.
Externalities for us.
Gold for a few.
"The New South Wales gold rush caused major social and economic problems. Alcohol abuse was a common problem among the miners, who used the cheaply made spirits to mask the difficult living and working conditions. At one point the government attempted some order of control by banning the sale of alcohol on the diggings. This attempt was unsuccessful.[5]"
"The population of the town reached 20,000 in 1873.[6] The Gulgong gold field was one of the last to be developed as "poor man's diggings", that is by individuals without substantial capital investment. [citation needed]During the height of the gold rush in the 1870s, Gulgong had 67 pubs (it now has four).[8]"
Wikipedia Gulgong
I seem to recall that Threadneedle Street soaked up a 'disproportionate' amount of those gold riches too, thus considerably financing the British financial empire. To the point where, somewhat later, Churchill just couldn't let go of the 'gold standard' even though inflation and other forms of money 'creation' would have required the nominal value of gold to 'inflate' markedly every year.
Delete