SPAMINATOR

Have you, like me, been recieving calls from these numbers?

* 02 8219 0500
* 02 8303 8320
* 03 8102 9565
* 03 8558 0556
* 03 8558 1441
* 03 8558 1442
* 03 8558 1443
* 03 8558 1444
* 03 8558 1445
* 03 8558 1446
* 03 8558 1447
* 03 9540 2950
* 03 9540 5101
* 03 9540 5189
* 03 9645 2474 <-- I've been called by this number

DON'T CALL BACK, IT'S A SCAM!

Apparently it's all part of a massive scam where they ring you up and hang up straight away, then when you ring back they keep you on the line at $2.50/min with the promise of a prize at then end. Read about it here, here, here and here.

Crap like this makes it hard not to be cynical of strangers.

.:|| HIGH TIDE REPORT ||:.

Well, I said HIGH TIDE would be published on Thursdays, and it's 2:00 Saturday afternoon, so I'm quite proud of my diligence and commitment...
______________________________________________________

Today's Media and Marketing liftout provided some great information on the state of the mainstream Australian media landscape:
The editor obviously wanted the front page to be all about the kids;
Read about downsizing The Courier Mail -- its ciculation numbers, that is;
There is plenty happening in the fluffy sections, with the truth behind Adro's reinstatement, to the Biggest Loser House and Big Brother's mother-daughter concept is not the first-born;
In the ever-changing television ratings, Channel 10 say `thank god you're here` to Working Dog's latest concept;
Uni stuednts, would you listen and learn?;
Big things are happening in pay-TV, but Stephen Mayne isn't so keen;
Mark Day gives us a lesson on how to report a massacre in 10 years, and;
I'll take a look at the latest marketing schemes -- and the hippest strategy seem so be involve the audience.

-=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=- -=-

It's all about the kids: The editor of the Australian's Media section obviously isn't shy of riding on the public bandwagon of interest, choosing to publish child-oriented stories in three out of the four front page headlines. Apparently it's not enough for mothers to care for their children, they also have to buy magazines to read about what to buy them, a trend ACP will try to capitalise on with a new mag called Shop Til You Drop 4 Kids (surely `Kidz` would have been more appropriate).
STYD 4 Kids, will be an ugly adaptation of the existing Shop Til You Drop, where readers are guaranteed to learn that ever-elusive character trait, `how to be fabulous`. We can only hope that STYD 4 Kids will teach us how to make our children fabulous too, then we'll finally be able to celebrate our fabulousness together without worrying if anyone doesn't know how to be fabulous. Then and only then can we yearn for the enlightenment of modern age: being ABSOLUTELY fabulous.
--
Downsizing the Courier Mail (in more ways than one): What's that up there in the sky? Is it a broadsheet, is it a tabloid? No is `compact`. Brisbanites were treated to a change in the traditional broadsheet format of The Courier Mail back in March. And while I'm in favour of the compact format (don't dare call it a tabloid, says editor David Fagan in this interview transcript), it seems that the Courier has not impressed readers. In Sheena MacLean's story, she indicates weekday readership is down 0.7% and Saturdays are down 3.3% since twelve months ago. The big winners are Queensland's regional papers, with the Gold Coast Bulletin and Cairns Post's Mon-Fri circulation up around 2.5%, and The Townsville Bulletin's weekday readership up 3.5%. The ACT dead-trees are doing it tough with the Canberra Times' readership down an average of 3% throughout the whole week. No wonder John Howard is worried children aren't being tort to reed and rite proplie, no-one in Canberra can read the paper...
--

The truth behind Adro's reinstatement: followers of the Biggest Loser phenomenon will be familiar with the show's controversial decision to reinstate one of the contenstants after he'd already been evicted. During the episode, we were told that Adro had worked so hard and lost so much weight that it would be unfair to send him home. Well my ears pricked up. Why would they just bring someone back after they'd been eliminated just because he had `worked really hard`? The truth came out in Media on Thursday thatsome of the contestants had been taking `vitamins and supplements` in order to lose more weight. (I imagine it was stuff like slim-shakes and diet pills. The journalist suggests maybe some contestants had been hanging around Shane Warne's mum). The drama played right into the hands of Channel 10, posting TBL's fattest audience yet, with 1.65 million sitting down to watch the fatty boob-bahs. As a point of note, Adro went on to win the $200,000.

--

BB's mother-daughter concept not the first born: There are two people in the world: people who groan when Big Brother ads come on TV, and those who don't. Although I am an enthusiastic groaner, I still like to spy the controversy from a distance. It turns out the `world first` mother and daughter partnership is not the first at all, despite Channel 10's proud claim. BB Greece pioneered the concept, and a few other countries followed. I wonder if Gretel (Queen Amidala) Killeen knew that. During the first epidsode, Dad and I happened to look up from our dinner long enough to hear one of the girls say with great conviction, "I think they picked us to go in here because we're smart. I think we've all got brains".

----more tomorrow----

announcing::: the ~HIGH TIDE MEDIA REPORT~

I've decided that since I get so much of my material from The Australian's Media and Marketing lift-out, every Thursday (or Friday if I'm lazy) I'll write up a bit of a synopsis outlining what's going on in Australian media. It will be called the HIGH TIDE MEDIA REPORT.

The material won't necessarily be entirely from Media, but a lot of it will be. HIGH TIDE will also give me a chance to post any interesting media musings I've heard elsewhere during the week.

Now all you avid readers of the Daily Current (all zero of you) can look forward to the end of the week for your Australian media synopsis...

Enjoy!

===========================

photo courtesy of sjgov.org

Respected soldier/gun-crazed sniper? Let the SMH decide...

Private Jacob Kovco was around guns for much of his life.

This is how Chantal Rumble and Cynthia Banham from the Sydney Morning Herald chose to angle yesterday's story about Australia's first military death in the War on Terror.

According to military reports, Kovco accidentally shot himself while cleaning his pistol in Baghdad last Friday.

Here is Brendan Nelson's media release

The media release states that there will be a Board of Inquiry to investigate the matters surrounding Kovco's death.

It also says `there are no confirmed details available yet about the circumstances that led to PTE Kovco's death`.

I'm not saying there's nobody out there who has speculated the possibility Kovco committed suicide, but I have to ask:

Is it responsible or ethical for Rumble and Banham to write a story, three days after his death and with no credible evidence, about the fact that Kovco had been around guns all his life?

I don't think so, and as Crikey! put it:

`Jacob Kovco is the first Australian casualty of the Iraq war. The second should not be the truth about how he died`

Here's a few more quotes from the story:

• `As a student... he spent his weekends shooting deer on the Gippsland high plains;`
• `He also got work at the local slaugherhouse, where one of his jobs was to shoot suffering cows;`
• `He became a highly trained sniper and ended up in Baghdad;`

(Wow, he should be a pretty experienced with all this shooting, hey?)

• `He has left behind his childhood sweetheart, Shelley... and two young children;`

(What, he left them behind in the same way Michael Hutchence left INXS behind?)

• `Two other soldiers were in the room when Private Kovco shot himself`

Ambiguous statements like these should not be welcome in Australia's oldest newspaper, particularly the day before we remember the fallen Australian and New Zealand soldiers of war.

What will people be remebering about Private Kovco when they attend their local ANZAC march?

Tragic death of a respected Australian soldier; or gun-crazed sniper who probably shot himself?

Where are all the journalist activists?

That's the title of an article written by Margaret Simons in today's edition of Crikey!

She says none of the journalists are acting as forces against the new cross-media ownership laws proposed by Helen Coonan. Yesterday was the closing date for inquiries about Coonan's discussion paper.

All I will say is that I agree with her. Who will stand up for media diversity, free expression and fair reporting if journalists don't? Not the media owners, that's for sure--they'll just sit back and rub their hands together.

Action has to come from those working in the field to make the media industries in Australia more accountable and impartial. As much as media CEOs talk about how much they value their staff, they can't escape being governed by the bottom line.

Let the egg puns begin!

Why doesn't the Easter bunny deliver to farmer Joe's house?

===============================================

That's where his eggs-girlfriend lives.


Thank you, you're too kind

(applause)

KCB 201: Convergent media a dinki-di favourite

Multi-platform media content should have television industry traditionalists afraid, according to a story (not avail. online) by Brian Buchanan in The Australian's Media liftout today.

Buchanan attended the MIPTV-Milia TV trade fair this week, and said there were two key points: that content is now produced across many media platforms; and user-created content is on the rise.

It's fairly obvious in the every-day lives of you and me that media have become ubiquitous; content is everywhere. We can call people from remote areas on mobile phones and check the news on the internet; and we can check the news from our mobile phones and call people over the internet.

As for TV, just have a look at Channel 7's five highest rating shows this week. The shows that take advantage of more than one entertainment platform are the ones that succeed: Dancing With the Stars (ranked 1), Desparate Housewives (2), Where Are They Now? (3), Sunday News (5), and Lost (7).

Lost is the big one, it's the Eddie McGuire of television programs--a finger in every pie.

I'm more interested in the rise of user-created content, because I'm smack bang in the middle of studying it for Virtual Cultures.

In his speech, CEO of AOL Johnathan Miller said the future of TV was the internet, and that the active viewer, or `viewser`, is in charge of the programming. Not the programme director or the advertising department.

=====
Why are we so obsessed with giving every new group of people who do something different some kind of radically hyphenated, wierd acronym, or mushed together name. There's cashed-up bogans (CUBS), mogans (see previous), DINKS, YUPPIES, and numerous prefixes for the word `-sexual` to describe an unnessecarily large number of male gender identities. And in the academic field there's the produser, prosumer and viewser. What's next, conduser, conviewmer, confuser!?
=====

Is channel 7 winning the ratings because they've converged their marketing with popular internet search engine Yahoo?

In this week's lecture, we looked at fandom and consumer-created content. It's a really amazing area, so many ideas you can explore.

Apparently, there are people out there who are so in to their favourite tv show/film/game that they're creating really cool films and short movies that incorporate the ideas of the particular program. Most of them don't get paid/endorsed for it, they're just doing it out of their own commitment as a fan.

Another speaker at the trade fair said the tv industry must give more control to its audience or face becoming the next dinasour.

I think this is true of all traditional mainstream media platforms: tv, radio (began long ago with talkback, but still needs to integrate the audience more), newspapers, magazines, mainstream music and the internet should all embrace the power of the audience and the enthusiasm that some audience segments have to actively participate in their chosen format.

Also, on the front page of the Media section (yeah, I'm all over it, it's the only thing I read on Thursdays), Fairfax chairman Ron Walker told journalist Mark Day that "now people are looking online sites more and more, and I am proud to say Fairfax.. is almost leading the pack in[online] markets".

"I think we have made some very good decisions in recent times about where we are taking our digital and online businesses," he said.

"Every media board worth their salt has to be aware of future media [platforms]."

Hang on... the CEO of a newspaper company talking about the importance of its internet audience?

Convergence people, convergence. It's the way of the future.
Now let us venture to the unknown and prosper in a rich convergent media environment!

ok that was lame, but you get my gist.

===================
image caption: Eddie McGuire doing his best impression of Georgie Porgie, circa 1985.

Internet Quota :: that's really got my goat-a

HEY! (red text means me anrgy person) I figured out why my blogger account is slower than a bloody wet week:

Am I the only one who didn't know QUT students are limited to how much internet we can use?

Yeah, we all have a quota of 150MB and if we go over they slow down our internet speed!?!?!?!
Turns out I've clocked up 222MB, and so they've slowed me down.

Now I'd be fine with this if I came into uni every day and downloaded songs, watched videos, did some online banking, bought useless junk on eBay then went home. But I DON'T! Every subject I'm enrolled in--and pay for--requires me to be on the internet every day. It's pretty hard for me to write a blog for Virtual Cultures if they're squeezing my bollocks on internet usage isn't it?

Another subject, Journalism info Systems, is pretty much conducted purely online. We do ALL our research and submit our stories online, we download the lecture notes online. I just had to write an 8-par' story within 9o mins for assessment--that's find a story, find an angle, research, and write an entire story using only the internet--and the web pages are timing out because it's taking so long to load pages. I was waiting 5 mins for friggin Google to load!

Anyway, I think you can buy more MBs. I'll have to fork out for that I guess. Bugger me, what a rort.

I can't imagine how students without the internet at home survive--how does QUT expect them to survive on 150MB/month? Especially if they're Virtual Cultures students, or in Web Design or something.

I'm interested to see who else is having the same problem. You can check your quotas here. Please comment of you're over the limit, maybe we can make some waves to get the quota increased for internet-based subjects.

Ripped Off

I can't believe we have to drag our sorry, hungover arses to uni on the Monday after the holidays!

Tuesday's ANZAC Day, surely they'd just let us have the Mon and Tues off, surely!
Bugger me... now I have to front up at 8.00am the day after holidays.

And then our community project proposal is due on Thursday, and I've got a news story due on the Tuesday. It's a bit harsh, isn't it?

Well, looks like these holidays won't be much of a holiday. But I'll try my best, really I will, in the name of reckless student-hood I'll try to get tipsy at least once a day...

______________________________
cartoon courtesy of vforvits.com

Digital Radio

Digital television has been available to the public since 2001, and it's time to broaden the horizons and include radio: humble, yet prolific.

I'm currently researching for a story on what digital radio will mean to the Australian news and entertainment media landscape, and more importantly, what it will mean to you and I: what will it offer us?

Minister for Communications, Senator Helen Coonan reckons we'll have digital radio by 2009, but is this soon enough?

Now I love radio, some day I want to work in radio, I think radio is an amazing medium that has survived the test of time and succeeded in the face of intense competition. But let's face it, radio needs a boost. The internet will eventually equal radio's share in the advertising market and people will be downloading the latest music faster than radio stations can change CDs.

Radio needs to go digital as soon as the technology is available so it can say to the liseners `Hey, look what we can give you that no other medium can. Sure, you can download music but we've got this` "This" is digital technology. "This" is live, high quality programmes you can listen to anywhere. "This" is a new angle of opportunity that will stop radio's body bag being zipped up.

There's plenty more to say, and I'll do a bit of a wrap-up of my story after I write it. I'm heading in to the Triple M and 4BC studios next week for work experience, so hopefully I'll get some juicy information there.

In the mean time, feel free to comment. Do you think radio will die without digital? Are you ready to adapt to digital radio technology... has anyone already adapted? Can you wait till 2009 before it's widely available? Has your dog been itching itself more than usual...?

Time to go.

Bloody Blogger

Is anybody else finding the Blogger server R-E-A-L-L-Y S-L-O-W ?

Maybe it's had a big night on the blog grog...

KCB 201: new direction for the daily current

Hi everyone.
For a university subject called Virtual Cultures, I am required to create a blog and talk a bit about the unit. Virtual Cultures explores... well... virtual cultures. No, wait, let me expand: we explore the culture that can be found... within... a... virtual... um... society (???). OK, it's a fairly self explanatory name. But how could we explore virtual cultures without exploring the amazing and rapidly expanding phenomenon that is the blogoshpere? Blogs are the most obvious and integral culture found in cyberspace... Blogs and Lost fan forums... but mostly blogs.

Therefore, from now until the end of Semester 1, I'll be posting a daily(ish) comment on how the subject is going and I'll be asking qustions of my fellow students about the course. This shouldn't frustrate regular readers of the daily current too much because... well... there aren't any... regular readers.

So tune in every now and then, comment on my comments, link me to your blog and we'll become a happy little community of blog-buddies! I'll try and put as many links to other blogs as I can on the little side-bar thingy over there
<-------------------------- I think this is the idea... to link as widely as possible. I'll try and comment on every blog that I go to and, in return, it'd be great if you could leave comments here. Even if you want to tell me you just joined a medi-eval cooking club, or if you enjoy riding Shetland ponies in your spare time -- I'll be happy to hear it. Also, if I see/hear anything in the media that I think is worthy of more attention, I'll post it up here and we can all jam together.

*ALL POSTS REALATING TO MY SUBJECT, VIRTUAL CULTURES, WILL DISPLAY 'KCB 201' IN THE TITLE*

Happy reading,
Chris.