@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:

• The Stroganoff Affair, though I’m not quite sure whether there’s a tide-of-the-future angle.
• Michael Costa’s amazing rant about the NSW government being dominated by “spin merchants” and “machine politicians” who were “unqualified to govern” — conveniently forgetting that until a few days ago he was one of them.

“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cloistered office, arms folded, next to his typewriter, lecturing anyone with a new idea to kowtow to his thoroughly outdated approach to the information economy.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.