The IPA neo barbarians rule OK!

Through their influence and propaganda they have systematically helped to dumb down and degrade every aspect of Oz culture during the Howard years.
Now they want to finish the project by dumbing down the ONLY source of consistently intelligent opinion on OZ radio and TV ---the lowest common denominator will inevitably rule. The bad always drives out the good.
Never mind that with occasional rare exceptions commercial radio and TV is a cultural wasteland---the rare exceptions are drowned out in a sea of banality.
Huxley's titty-tainment rules. Indeed Huxley's Brave New world is exactly where we are at---brought to one and all by the corporate media which has no interest whatsoever in encouraging the exercise of discriminative intelligence about anything. Everyone home alone zombied out in their drug of choice and zombied out in front of the idiot box waiting for the next big thing to get excited about.
All the dreadfully sane normal every ones sitting in front of their insanity machine (TV) which delivers all the degraded and degrading toxic garbage of the world psyche into their "living" rooms.

And we wonder why everything is becoming so one dimensional,gross, banal, and barbarian---why there is so much disrespect on the streets.

This bastardization of everything is what Roskam is advocating.

If you want to see how gross and banal the world has become try watching or listening to Federal Parliament. During the Howard years it has become a growling pit of strutting adolescent egos engaged in petty point scoring---no substance whatsoever.

Dear Frank Carson,
I've been an employee and later ran a business. (Businesses also get big benefits from taxpayers.) My neighbour runs a sucessful one too. Prices undercut big advertising competitors by eschewing credit cards, loyalty schemes and other rent seeking intermediaries. Customers benefit by his failure to advertise (Yellow Pages excepted).
His firm has a reputation for quality - plenty of customers. He proudly never charges what he thinks he can get. Prices are fair in relation to costs. Hence the success. Just had a fence built by another who operates identically. Really cheap because costs are minimised. Your micro-economics is commonly used but often unnecessary. My common complaint was inability to get vital information from our supplier firms about products and services we needed because it was unavailable, untimely or sketchy - despite their marketing. Think opportunity cost.
Yes, the congregation is partly financing the plumber's boozing and whoring. Don't you select who you do business with? One of my criteria is a reputation for ethical behaviour. We're members of a community, not mere economic units. Interdependent.
Substituting "cricket" for "string quartets" would not change my example which referred to past market failure. I'd like more correspondents. It was a question. Can you help?
I'll be selfish too, briefly. I pay for the entertainment and news content others use and from which I receive negligible benefit. Quite prepared to fund my minority tastes separately and technology will probably enable it in future but not yet. (Really I'm happy to continue subsidising others.) In the meantime we have broadcasting, most of which is a cost to all of us. While we have it, minority tastes should obviously be catered for. Fifty more correspondents might greatly benefit many who are not asking for them now. How many? Who predicts? John's answer remains unsatisfactory. Commercial TV regularly benefits from ABC experimentation.
Very free access to the publicly owned spectrum has been tried. I remember Bangkok radio in the 1970s. Surely you don't wish anything resembling that on us?

Sorry about calling you Frank. Very careless.

The ABC does not have a diverse political outlook.Most of the people who work there have gone from the secure environs of home ,to school,to tertiary education and then to dear old aunty,thus to be kept by the tax payer instead of their parents.

The protected environs of being unsackable and unaccountable does not make for unbiased media coverage since many would not survive in the real world of private enterprise,which pays the taxes for their self indulgent childish interludes.

Dear Frank Carson,
I too have been an employee and for the last five years have run a business. And not in financing, banking or advertising or PR either. In the real world of producing products, services that people really want. I don't know what you have done, please tell us.

I want to hear string quartets but do not want to watch cricket. Experience shows that pure private enterprises do not provide all that most of us want.

As an engineer I find it is interesting to look at the mess John Roskam's beloved Liberal Party made of cable and then digital TV. The loss of opportunities, the lack of channels the sucking up to the interests of the media moguls is sickening. I wish manufacturing industry could get the same level of government protection that they got.

Hear hear logic, senator Coonan is an absolute disgrace. If we had live footy on the the unused multi channels there would have been dtv in every house in Australia 5 years ago and the analog signal would have been switched off on target.

I live in a town with only one paper (Perth) and it has gone downhill since the daily mail folded decades ago. We just get one eyed political political ramblings, public service bashings and a series of embarrassing photos of tennis stars in unglamorous poses.

Be careful of what you wish for John Roskam.