It’s Thursday, so we need nominations for “Cnut of the Week” for tonight’s edition of Stilgherrian Live (9.30pm Sydney time).
It’s the same rules as usual. We’re after people who’ve been in the news this week, futilely trying to hold back the tide of digital change.
Somehow I don’t think we’ll be short of nominees this week. Who do you nominate, and why?
how about the american government propping up AIG just for the time being to teh tune of $85B knowing it needs to be sold quickly or it will fall over regardless??
Hurricane Ike: http://www.kswo.com/Global/story.asp?S=9027246.
Christ… The Oz‘s Mark Day is back for yet another swing this week. This time he’s railing against ABC MD, Mark Scott, for wanting “a marginal increase in funding” so Aunty can ramp up her exciting next phase of podcasts and other digital offerings — FREE OF CHARGE to the taxpayers (which is pretty much how it reads in the ABC Charter, you would have thought).
“Why doesn’t he raise it himself?”, grumbles Day. As he sees it, the ABC should primarily concern itself with “saving taxpayer dollars” — which, by logical extension, would suggest producing as little media as possible. Apparently, according to the Day Doctrine, the ABC should only be required to provide to provide free-to-air programming ONCE, in ONE format, for it to have discharged its duty to the charter… and anyone who missed out should be made to pay for a download.
Mark Scott, at least, seems to be trying to embrace the potential of new media. And Mark Day is just a spiteful old poon, sat in his cloistered office, arms folded, next to his typewriter, lecturing anyone with a new idea to kowtow to his thoroughly outdated approach to the information economy.
Cnut of the Week… and then some, I tells ya. With extra points for maintaining his Old Media Fart dogmatism for 2 weeks running.
@mike: Yes, the AIG debacle is certainly holding back the tide of the inevitable. I’ll have to read more about it — I’ve been a bit out of the news loop the last couple of days. @Wolfcat said much the same thing: “The US Reserve Bank for denying the economy is going south”.
@Alex: That, Sir, is a lovely variation. I hadn’t thought of the Cnut being a force of nature. It nicely inverts the idea of Crown versus Ocean.
@Stephen Stockwell: There really is a theme emerging from The Australia‘s opinion columns lately, eh? You’ve nailed it there. The ABC’s Charter uses the word “broadcasting”. I’m not aware of said broadcasting being limited to electromagnetic radiation being broadcast through the ether.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Charter , as I mentioned previously, has better wording for this: “be made available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means”.
And from Twitter I’ve received further nominations: