The day the Packer empire bothers to spend real money creating content, let alone develops an actual export strategy, will be the day ice melts at -1. It's built on government protection not entrepreneurial skill, whether it be protected network or casino monopoly.

For too long the govt has supplied guaranteed profits to TV at the expense of the taxpayer, and demanded almost nothing in return. Instead of Kerry pissing away millions in casinos and at horse races the profits from years of monopoly and oligopoly could have established a much more robust English speaking entertainment industry in this country that earned large export dollars. At the very least more of the profits could have been siphoned off in fees to let the ABC utilise even more of the talent it attracts and fosters.

But then gutless politicians and greedy media magnates go hand in hand in this country.

Incidentally my favoured policy position would not be more channels, this just dilutes the capital available into small doses of lowest common denominator crap. Rather keep three channels but go back to regulating them properly, in terms of content and content and ad mix, plus make them really bid, thus justify themselves, every ten years for a continuation of their licence. And let others bid against them. This would sort out a lot of the problems. Of course creating a transparent process that isolated political interference in the decisions would be hard and require vision. Oh well, not in Australia then.

I hink Charles that the real truth to PBL's strategy in this is the little suffix on your blog there - Nine will probably lose but it will take IceTV to the wall with legal fees.

Essentially bankrupting them by lawyer.

$3 a week seems very expensive! Then again, I am about to get rid of Foxtel including their IQ product and know the addictive nature of a PVR.
Molly

How can you survive the train wreck of Australian TV without your IQ box? I would never watch TV if I couldn't timeshift and I'd certainly never manage to watch my late night motor sport. Oh, hang on, yes I used to manage with 2 tape recorders and lots of cursing, but that was sheer desperation. Now it's all relaxed and super slow motion at will.

cheers, Paul

I'm saving my money to buy a Topfield box. Meanwhile I've stopped watching TV and re-discovered the joy of a good book.

The problems with free to air is that the advertisers are the customers and the viewers are the product sold.

The quality of free to air is getting worse and the networks know it, pressured by the loss of advertising to the internet they will pull any dirty little trick they can to try to secure their product to attract more customers.

I have all but given up on free to air after my favourite programs suffer constant scheduling changes, are held back for weeks or just skipped with no notice.

I think at the top they have weighed up the costs of either getting with the times and embracing new content distribution models or just suing and pressurring the government for tougher anti-competitive regulation.

As with the RIAA and MPAA in America, it looks like the Packer Emipre thinks the latter is the cheaper option at the moment.

You can only stem the tide for so long though