It seems all levels of government only put out the welcome mat to larger companies and corporations when trying to stimulate growth in their regions. What’s more, the track record of both the State and Federal departments involved in recent times is woeful in terms of linking actual results achieved from public funds invested to generating real employment or even just propping up these marginal ‘out-of-town’ larger operations for any extended period.
In fact, many local business people tell me trying to attract funds or grants for promising home-grown smaller enterprises is virtually impossible and, given that it is well known in government circles that the SME sector is overwhelmingly the driver for new jobs growth, it makes you wonder why do the relevant statutory bodies persist with this out-dated approach to business development.
To place in context, in our new enlightened and politically correct era of corporate governance, it now appears quiet acceptable, well certainly not a sackable offence anyway, for ministers to be shown up as either incompetent or just not keeping their eye on the ball – even when publicly exposed in a Royal Commission.
And if these same ministers have enough spin doctors at their command they can usually fudge just about anything, from throwing babies overboard to hiding weapons of mass destruction.
Naturally, dishonesty or outright corruption is still a no-no I think - if you can get the mass media to actually expose it - but it should not really surprise anyone at a time when the actions or inactions of our elected political leaders are so suspect that the administrators and bureaucrats, whose job it is to serve them, always choose to take the so-called ‘safe’ option.
When it comes to our misnamed ‘civil servants’ it would seem the old ‘no one gets fired for buying IBM’ syndrome is still at work and thriving here.
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What really killed Channel 9?
My original title for this article was “Do we need 150 new digital channels?” but thought the above version basically meant the same thing, was more timely, and sounded a lot better!
Certainly, the average television consumer (or couch potato like me) does not need anywhere near this sort of number – they probably already have PayTV if they love their sport – and there simply aren’t enough hours left in the day to consume it all!
Well, who would use them and, more to the point, will they attract an economical audience?
I haven’t seen the relevant primary data but I would speculate that a large number would regularly use up to three different channels say, Old Movies, World History and some music genre. Another group would target a single area like extreme sports and a much smaller number of heavy users would use multiple channels for long periods of viewing.
Whether enough eye-balls can be aggregated to deliver an economical audience for all the new channels, only time will tell.
But there are other important and fundamental issues at play here since the new ‘digital’ channels delivered over the internet will be ON DEMAND - not the traditional broadcast format.
This means you will be able to 1) view what you want, and 2) when you want it!
In fact, more people will be able to view a particular program and more than once, i.e. actually grow the total viewing audience number in absolute terms.
And there’s more … you will be able to fast forward over the commercials – which means the whole programming model will have to change, e.g. in future there will be more product placement within the actual programs and there will also be more advertorial formats produced along the lines of DIY shows.
No doubt the purists will protest, but the ‘money v art’ challenge has always been an integral part of the mass media and I don’t see that changing in the foreseeable future.
There is also no doubt that the now years of declining real audiences and the advent of multiple converging and competing delivery platforms will impact all existing media players increasingly in the next few years.
You don’t have to believe me, when young James recently grabbed his birthright stake in Channel 9 and plonked it into casinos he was sending a clear message (for those who chose to see it) that the beginning of the end is nigh for broadcast television as we know it in this country.
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