Comments on: Farewell, Analog Television

By: Na

Na — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:41:42 +0000

Well, I’m probably biased anyway. I really can’t stand most of what’s on commercial TV these days, Aussie or not.

By: Kelvin Kao

Kelvin Kao — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:13:00 +0000

I don’t think it was consumer driven. It’s probably the government’s attempt to make better use and organization of radio frequencies and bandwidths. The new channels are nice though.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:54:38 +0000

This doesn’t seem consumer driven to me, so it annoys me. Anyway, it’s all academic for me, since we don’t watch TV of any kind at the house, although I will watch it on the treadmill at the gym,and be reminded why I don’t pay $80 a month for cable! Although, occasionally its entertaining to lose oneself in a program about $35,000 bathroom remodels…

By: Kelvin Kao

Kelvin Kao — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:35:10 +0000

Ah, I see. Thanks for sharing what it’s like in Australia.

By: Na

Na — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:49:17 +0000

Well, most people here think Aussie shows are crap – cause they usually are. It’s a circle; programmers won’t put in the money or time in on new shows (other than the occasional cop dramas or soaps or fad comedy skit show), which end up being lousy or cut before they’re given the chance to get an audience. The audience expects crap, so they don’t watch, meaning low ratings. And no one’s ever going to change the situation until the government gets in and actually increases the quota for Aussie content – and that’s never going to happen. Sadly, under our previous government, things got worse, with much of the independent media outlets being squeezed out and more monopolies allowed.

Luckily, the public access channel creates some interest, and our independent channel, SBS, is basically the ‘for everyone’ channel – it shows news from around the world in different languages, offers ‘world’ movies, has a good track record in investing in locally produced short and big budget films, etc. I’m hoping that with their new digital channel, they’ll improve that record. I think the demand for Aussie stuff is actually quite low though, because audience perception of what we’re capable of is quite low; we haven’t really made a big blockbuster movie that was popular since the early 90s (not including Baz Lurhmann’s ‘Australia’, which really wasn’t made for us but for the overseas/American market). But Aussies have made some really amazing stuff; just not any of it on TV lately.

By: Kelvin Kao

Kelvin Kao — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:35:39 +0000

I wonder what the demand is for locally produced shows. When I look at the Asian language channels here, I can tell that most of the programs are not produced locally. And that’s fine because I think most people want to see what other people are watching on the other side of the earth. So that’s fine, since the demand for locally produced shows are low.

I wonder what it’s like in Australia.

By: Na

Na — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:14:14 +0000

Yeah, but again, programmers don’t really spend the money necessary here. I guess also because digital TV has only been pushed in the last year or so – and with few people actually having digital TVs – there’s been less interest in making actual programming for those channels.

We get all the Law and Order series. Once a week is enough, but even then you’ve got cable showing them too. Who wants to see them three times a day? I’d rather see new Aussie stuff.

By: Kelvin Kao

Kelvin Kao — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:51:57 +0000

News tickers? What a waste!
Well, more channels doesn’t necessarily mean more shows produced. Sometimes it just means the same show will be on three times per day as opposed to once.

By: Na

Na — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:07:41 +0000

Funnily enough, in Australia this will probably nothing. We have three commerical ones, two government (one’s really independent, but receives government funding), plus a public access one. Over the past couple of years, the government ones have added one digital channel each (with the independent one only really launching programming this year; in the past they just ran news tickers). Disappointingly, they’ve just been showing repeats of old or unpopular shows. Although the commercial channels also got digital versions each, they also largely ran “what’s on” tickers. Cable here was introduced ages ago – probably 10 years ago or something. My guess is though, that even with the change to full digital use, programming won’t explode that much. I can’t see the broadcasters here (of which there is a large monopoly of one or two owners) will put more money into new programming.

Here, government regulations state that only a small percentage – something like 10% – of all TV hours need to be Australian-made content. This includes news and current affairs shows. So sadly, I think it just means more of what we’d see on cable, or at the very least a new sports channel or two.

Still, it will be interesting to see what will happen.

By: Kelvin Kao

Kelvin Kao — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:27:08 +0000

Uh, that’s wrong. Cable subscribers should not even notice a transition because the cable providers are really supposed to do that seamlessly.

Hooray for antennas.