Six vital questions

1. Don’t know, but Nigella Lawson is the finest dish I’ve seen on a celebrity chef show.

2. Sadly, both.

3. What about that berk Nigel Whatsisname then, what plays the violin? He was definitely bunging it on.

4. No.

5. Because it’s there?

6. Probably not. And the bias only gets noticed because it runs counter to the bias that we’re used to seeing elsewhere. Like Foxtel and all those fiercely independent newspapers owned by that Rupert bloke.

I’m actually a huge fan of the Soccer Broadcasting Service, myself.

I think I actually wrote somewhere back in the mists of time (ie back in my blogger days) that the ABC does alright when it comes to it’s non-news functions; which makes it’s foibles there the more grating.

I can’t really comment much further, as I’ve no interest in television beyond sport myself. Foxtel could ditch 37 of their channels and I’d not notice.

Yes, Scott, but the ABC’s news service is quite possibly the best on TV: the only real challenger is Nine (whose right-wing, but admittedly untaxpayer-funded, bias is about as severe as ABC’s (which is a good thing: they balance each other out)). Well, okay, there’s SBS too. But I never get control of the TV at 18:30, so I’m stuck between the commercials and ABC.

Ten are sensationalist, superficial morons; Seven are retch-inducing and I’ve had real concerns about their trustworthyness (but I don’t remember why ;-); SBS I rarely watch; ABC are biased slightly left-of-centre unless they get pissed off; Nein are biased slightly right-of-centre except in certain abberrant circumstances (where the right-wing view is clearly piss, or advertisers/laziness-involving-press-releases causes them to adopt a particular POV). As for Foxtel, let’s see: we’ve got BBC and CNN, who don’t seem to concentrate on actually reporting *news* very often; we’ve got FOXNews, who’re legendry; and we’ve got SkyNews, who are laughable. So, yeah. Say “no” to TV news, I guess.

(ah, ken, you flatter me…the cheque is in the mail.)

you’re forcing me to make a very sexist claim here, namely that reality TV is merely sport for females. well, it is a truth universally known that females are socialised to prioritise relationships, while males apparently prioritise watching other males run into each other carrying sticks and balls.

females enjoy watching relationships develop in the house–friendships and enmities and love affairs–and the group dynamics and gossip and shifting allegiances. we’re from Venus and that.

i am also happy to admit i’m a people watcher from way back and these shows are field day for anyone with an interest in social and personality psychology. to the claims that it isn’t real, i say the environment is just as fake as any social psych experiment. and if you put a bunch of people into an enclosed environment and observe them continuously, you’re still going to get group dynamics and human interaction and relationships – the physical context is a red herring.

having said that, even i get fed up with it now and then…but it’s still better than watching sport.

Ken,
Your comments are food for thought but I just can’t stomach the reality shows. It just shows people don’t swallow every bit of rubbish around.

The taste of ABC/SBS viewers is obviously high.
Particularly the SBS test pattern!

can’t agree with Gianna here or with the generalisation of reality shows and gender. This is one woman who won’t go near Big Brother, who resents merely reading the name, even watching an ad for it (during the football) or catching the last moronic minutes before an ABC style drama that now surfaces elsewhere.
People used to look to drama and narrative rather than fake social experiments for revelation. I know these aren’t mutually exclusive, but it disturbs me that there’s a sizeable demographic happy to go along with that crass commercial circus.
Cooking shows and DIY are possibly more about voyeurism than the kids in the compound. Vicarious domesticity.

I’m surprised that the thing about “The Block” which no one has mentioned so far is that Kez Packer would appear to be making a profit out of it. And I’m not talking about all the product placement stuff (predictably highlighted on last Monday’s Media Watch).

The thing is that, for three of the four couple, the only thing they will get out of the show (apart from the fame’n’glory) is the difference between the “reserve price” and what “their” renovated unit goes for. (Plus probably a few power tools, and other portable goodies).

Given that all of the units were “shells” at best at commencement (at least one could not be said to be “at lock-up stage”) then the stated “reserve price” for these shells – @ $595,000 each – seems a might high.

I’m no expert on Bondi real estate, but I’d be surprised if a smallish renovated unit in Bondi is worth more than $800k. Remembering that all fixtures and building materials are presumably “contra”, the “value” of these must be guessed, but I would say that $150k would be an absolute minimum. This leaves the 11 weeks (?) labour (if you haven’t watched it, the show is no “sit on the couch” deal for its participants) of the three couples valued at around $50k ($25k each), or quite possibly less.

$25k is a fair bit of money in some contexts. But I’d think that, for the average yuppie renovator, if they made a profit – after materials – of $25k upon selling their pad, then they wouldn’t be especially rapt about the return on their 11 weeks of hard work.

And if the participants were unionized actor-builders working ~80 hour weeks, then I’m quite certain that Kez’s bill would be much more than $2,100 per week per cast-member.

Also Gianna quite a few of the lads at work are watching BB…

sorry gianna – I was a bit grouchy this morning. There’s so much crass stuff around in general it gets depressing. Guess we all need some pure meaningless diversion in our lives. And yes -unfortunately sport continues its decline into entertainment and its drift away from its grass roots (local drama). Guess that was the inevitable outcome of a national competition.
I was watching 10’s less pretentious coverage – for old time’s sake really.

“ABC Left Wing bias goes beyond news and current affairs. It pervades almost everything it does on its national broadcasting bands at least. ”

I agree. Whenever the ABC broadcasts a football march, the commentators always are more excited when the ball goes down the left wing.

And, just the other day I was watching a nature doco on birds of prey, and I am sure the camera focussed more on a wedge-tail eagle’s left wing than on its right wing.

“How come Tim Blair, Professor Imre Bunyip, the IPA and Richard Alston never mention those? That represent 95% of what the ABC does.”

I’d say it’s probably because, like most Australians, they don’t watch them.

I watch programs on the ABC approxiamately never. In fact, I watch very little TV at all.

Bias on Channel 9 doesn’t really annoy me like it does on the ABC. I enjoy “A Current Affair” even less than any show on the ABC. The difference is, If I don’t like it, I can exercise my right as a consumer to switch off.

I have to fund the ABC no matter how shit it is. And that’s the real argument here.

Bargarz: yup, you’re right (I assume ;-)). (I guess this means SBS shits all over Nein, too, eh?)

Dave: Good call on the left wings. As for your reply to Yobbo, I guess the problem isn’t that ABC’s news is biased, so much as that it’s biased away from *them*. Would they complain if ’twere right-wing? But I don’t think making a comparison with public schools and universities (and libraries!) would help; they’re all places of intellectual growth, a topic which is of course hideously infested with lefties…

Jason: Yeah, like JJJ or ABC Sports (wait… sports is AM… I like your qualifier, meaningless though it is).

It’s only shithouse in your view, Dave. Unlike the ABC, shools, hospitals, public transport and the army are services that we would need, regardless of how they were funded. There are decent arguments for privatisation of those too, but it’s beside the point.

The ABC is not a necessity. There are 3 free-to-air commercial stations, and pay TV as well. If it disappeared completely, its market share would be quickly cannibalised by the remaining TV media, and nobody would be any worse off.

We don’t need a government-funded TV broadcaster any more than we need a government-funded Newspaper. Why we still have one is a mystery to me.

As shocking as this may sound to some, I have about (OK, exactly if you don’t count the hand-held one that I take to the cricket) 6 televisions in my house, and only 3 are tuned to receive ABC (although 1 picks up ABC digital, which is actually pretty good): those that my parents watch. I couldn’t give a shit what’s on the abc (not when you can download Nigella’s episodes …)

And Ken, I like you, but dude, don’t knock The Block. Not only is it quite possibly the greatest television show ever invented, it’s entertaining as well. Please, you can’t tell me that you’re not slightly interested to see what they do to their pads, considering your apparent enjoyment from renovation.

The drama! The renovations!! The squabbles!! GOLD!!

I enjoy watching documentaries on ABC and sometimes, if the remote control is too far away, I might watch one of their news programs. But is this the best way of spending the public’s money? There is no doubt that a well defended population, with broad access to education and health services, is something that we should aim for. But I can’t see how anyone can say that the ABC is so essential to our society that it should be treated in the same regard as health, education and defence, and therefore funded by the public.

Of course, the ABC does provides many benefits. My parents love watching it, and I watch a few documentaries that simply wouldn’t air on commercial TV. But the issue is whether the benefit the ABC provides is greater than that which 5-600 million dollars worth of research grants, industry incentives or health/education spending would allow.

In my opinion, as an unemployed honours science/law graduate who knows of at least one PhD in organic chemistry that works as a cleaner, we could better spend the money on other areas. Of course, cutting ABC’s budget isn’t going to help that, but somewhere along the line someone has to ask whether it is in our best interests to continue fund a television and radio network when there could be better ways to spend the money.

Perhaps it would be cheaper to provide documentaries free to video stores and just combine the news divisions of SBS and ABC onto a single channel.

What about public libraries, Yobs?

I had high hopes for “reality” TV programmes like Big Brother and popstars. Maybe if ’twere exposed to the public just how shallow and, well, *bloody idiotic* the cult of celebrtiy is (where you can stick someone on TV for a few nights, have people watch them scratch their arse, and create a celebrity), then they’d start to question it a little.

Well, that’s what I’d hoped. Turns out that a shitload of people just fell for it (oooh! Oooh! Mr X from Big Brother is going to be at Belconnen Mall today only! Come on, we’d better go see!)

*encouraged*

“While a lot of pensioners may watch the ABC, I think you’ll find most unemployed people don’t. They’d rather have an extra $1 a week in their dole cheque.”

Call me a cynic, but for some reason, I don’t see the government axing the ABC in order to raise unemployment benefits.