Trailerwow.

I've not walked away from a trailer and felt blown away by special effects in a long time, but it's happened. I was left that way by a trailer the other day - "2012", the new film by Roland Emmerich - by not only the complete believability of the things I was seeing on screen, but the brazen scale of what had been put together for me to ogle at.

For it to be the latest film behind the re-ruining of "Godzilla", the similarly building-flattening "Independence Day", and the extra gloomy "The Day After Tomorrow", you'd have to say that Roland Emmerich is good at keeping a theme going. The trailer's right below me here, so check out the 2009 version of the end of the world, popularly predicted to be actually occur in 2012. It's pretty impressive, even though I have full confidence in it being a comically awful film, like the rest of his tales, but watch out for the early signs of a lack of creativity; Swiping the design of the ships from classic Battlestar Galactica, and going back to rival disaster film "Deep Impact" to use another elder african-american statesman as U.S. president. Nice effects though. Really feels like it's getting better now.

"The Future Begins". Again.

picture to follow.

I'm nuts about science fiction, and I have a lot of fond memories of Star Trek's original series, aswell as the movies. Well, the first two. While I'm one to bemoan the lack of new ideas in Hollywood, I do actually like some attempts to revisit an intellectual property(IP). Especially when, like Star Trek, the IP has been revisited a lot of times already. The animated series, the videogames, The Next Generation, Next Generation movies, DS9, Voyager and countless books.

The thing is, going into this film as someone who has watched Star Trek his entire life, I felt like watching this movie was like taking a test I was over-prepared for. It really did start from "the beginning", as we were present for not only Jim Kirk taking his first command, but the natal birth of him, not just his birth as the starship commander we know about. You come to the story as though the old Star Trek never happened, or you're being treated to a refresher course in something lost. And that's the theme, and overall thread to the film. The birth of the new.

The other side of that thread, and an inevitability to the birth of the new, is the death of the old. Or most of it. While it remains to be seen that this continuity/alternate reality version of Star Trek will continue, or be as long-lasting as the previous reality, the 2009, J.J. Abrams version does it's best to put the old one to bed. You'll probably know already that this film has time-travel in it, and if you didn't then it won't come as a surprise. J.J. Abrams has become well versed in things like time-travel, via his experiences on Lost, or more recently Fringe. Not to mention the ill-advised, fourth-wall breaking finale of Felicity, where the cast found a time-machine, which sent them thirty years into OUR past, to organise the rebellion ahead of Judgement Day.

Without spoiling it, the time-travel here is used, as it has been since Terminator, to be a preventative measure of sorts; "fixing" things by altering history. Although maybe not as benevolently as when Sam Beckett did the same.

As a fan, it worked a treat for me. The metaphor of birth from death made it altogether easy for me to segue into this re-invention of a world-wide phenomenon, which I'd say is by far the greatest, but maybe not the most obvious achievement of this film.

The film itself, was fine. Chris Pine did a great job as a conduit for a sort of "meta-Kirk", almost as impressively as Karl Urban did a number on the role of Bones McCoy. The effects were excellent, especially the H.A.L.O. jump sequence(Although I think an extended, POV inside a helmet shot would have been better for part of that scene), and I really loved that the ships were treat like submarines, the original inspiration for ships like the Enterprise, even if the majority of lower decks felt more like "Red Dwarf" than "Star Trek" at times.

Granted, I had my head in my hand when the main characters had to explain "like an alternate reality?"(Why not have a character called "Ensign Exposition III" to read those awful lines), I didn't think "warp speed" should be controlled by a chrome lever, and I could have cracked something over the kid playing Chekov for the way he played him like an elderly dork from "Fiddler on the Roof". But these were very small things in a film I liked a lot. I'd have enjoyed it more, but I felt a little detached from the experience, because I kept thinking;

"It's obviously not intended for me"

Again, I really did like the film, but because of the nature of it - killing the old so that the new may live - meant I felt a little spurned, as though in mourning. Not a lot, but enough for me to not enjoy it as much as I felt I should have - But I imagine that most people will not suffer the same as me.

All in all, it's a very good film, and unless Up is as good as I've heard, this may be the best of the blockbuster releases this year, and I say that while refusing to see Terminator 4 - "The Franchise Goes To Hell" - on the basis that the whole thing was re-written to manage Christian Bale's ego. So yeah, it's good, great maybe, and don't let the little things I didn't like put you off. Partly because I'm an unbearable snobby nerd, and partly because they really don't matter.

Titanic "Unsinkable" - According to Travel Agents & Designers of Titanic

I love this. According to a "poll", a majority of people prefer going to the cinema as opposed to staying home with a DVD/Blu-Ray/Download and watching it on a home theatre.

Problem is, with the survey itself.

You see, the survey was paid for by Moviefone, a national company that deals exclusively with selling cinema tickets, so hardly an objective witness. Secondly, the survey was conducted amongst "movie-goers", so it was people who were already IN the cinema to begin with, many of whom will have been there on the ticket they ordered through Moviefone - so it's in no way suspect at all. rofl. Conduct a similar interview with customers in Blockbusters and impress me.

"Fighting the Wrong Fight"

(This was originally meant to be up last night, but due to an unscheduled and non-coincidental broadband outage, I couldn't. Who am I kidding, I could have organised it the day before and forgotten about it. Anyway, enjoy)

Ok, so I'd already written about why the licence fund should under no circumstances be used to subsidise commercial tv networks, and while that seems to be still a part of the plan as outlined in the "Digital Britain" report, the rest of it I hadn't seen coming, and I say this to it. As someone who knows a lot about technology and politics, this is about as moronic as it could possibly get.

Lets start off with what I'd already discussed. While at this point in my reading of the report, it doesn't seem like the licence fee will go in any way directly toward the ITV entertainment department, £130,000,000 of the licence money will head toward the ITV regional news departments. I'm not entirely sure WHY it is that any of said money should be going toward the local news desks of the largest commercial TV provider on free-to-air TV, especially when ITV knows full well that it needs to cut down on it's outgoings. That may sound like I've just said two things that are in opposition to each other, but the thing is, if ITV feel THAT much in need to cover the local news broadcasts, why are they even doing it? Why not offer up the rights to independent providers, and spin off the current local offices? Even better, why not reduce current costs by slashing departmental costs and removing every unnecessary step of middle-management, and have them fund the damn thing themselves?

I admit it. I'm steamed right now. My preference is really not for the money that was going to the BBC, to be not only reduced on review every time the charter comes up, but also be reduced in order to pay for something a badly-run private enterprise agreed to do, in order to broadcast in the UK.

I imagine my ire will make my head explode when after a few years of the licence fee allowing ITV to cut costs, the BBC will lose out again to ITV in the Premier League highlight package deal, but the consumer still finds themselves subsidising ITV to make even bigger asses out of themselves, and out of the consumer.

The next thing, and the first thing that drew my eye when I read about it, was the new initiative to help fund broadband in hard-to-reach areas, aswell as part-fund the upgrade to what the report calls "next-generation broadband" - ie: The kind of broadband that countries like Japan and South Korea have right now, fibre-optic lines like the ones that NTL/Virgin have already installed to much of their customer base.

This is something I think is fine; In the same way that I think it's fine that no-one should be allowed to kill a unicorn.

Everybody SHOULD have broadband access. The same way everybody SHOULD have regular postal deliveries. The same way that everybody SHOULD have a phone line, be it mobile or landline.

But I'm far from convinced that a 50p/month levy on anyone who has a fixed phone line is the way to go about it. That's right, the idea is, that if you have a landline, like the one you probably only ever use for your broadband, you will have to pay fifty pence a month, to subsidise telecommunications businesses and their expansion plans. And I have no doubt that the major profiteer in this, will be BT. The very same BT that has resisted continuous attempts to open up the market, despite OFCOM's urgings. The same BT that has caused untold damage to the broadband market in the UK, described today by the author of the report as :-

"the competitive market we have in this country"

I'm sure what he meant to say is that the UK has a competitive broadband market in spite of the business that gets to arbitrarily decide which broadband customers have access to which broadband providers. I'm not joking, there have been many times when I've had to make extended phone calls to both BT and a prospective broadband provider to actually, y'know, get my paid-for broadband working, only to find that BT haven't made the broadband in my area available to the provider I wanted to go with(PIPEX & Demon, if you're interested), which meant I had little-to-no choice in the matter as to whether I wanted to sign up for BT broadband.

So yeah, apparently the best way to get broadband to members of the public that are not currently covered(Apparently it's around "one third", I'm not sure if that's one third of the population or one-third of the surface area of the UK, the report hasn't been too clear on that so far for me), is for people who already have to pay for broadband, or people who don't pay for broadband but have a landline phone, to subsidise the effort to connect up these lost souls.

Except it's not. My comparison earlier with people deserving a phone line and deserving a broadband connection deservers returning to. There are many people who have only within the last twenty-five years been able to pick up a phone and call someone. In many cases, that's something that BT simply weren't prepared to do, so the locals, using fundraising and money out of their own pocket, organised for their town/village/hamlet to be connected via a trunk line. I realise I'm speaking anecdotally here, and I'm sure that there have been measures from the government to connect up such places to the phone network in the past. But fifty pence from anyone who even has a landline phone, to help pay for broadband for someone who lives far away from the rest of society? Again, anecdotally, I've known people who have lived in such places, and I've listened to a lot of stories on the news and in shows like "Relocation, Relocation, Relocation", that if people are living in the kind of place that doesn't have broadband access, they moved there for a reason. And if they still want it after moving out there, then they can pay for it, or realise they made a silly decision when the moved, and never considered things like "Hmmm, will I need da interwebz, or am I just fine with the famous local mint cake?".

I hasten to add, I feel a healthy dose of cynicism running through me over this. I don't like the idea of myself, my friends or my family(Well, maybe my family), having to pay a legal form of taxation, to subsidise the hobbies of people who don't want to move. And it is the hobbies. I've read about the stat that says that twenty-two million Britons rely on their net access to work, I just feel that it's the same thing that every generation has to deal with, and accept: If you want the best facilities, you need to move closer to the large population centres. If you don't, then you need to come up with some way of paying for what you want to come to you.

My other feeling on this, is that if it is one third of the population that is without broadband, or without broadband that meets the minimum standard of the report - two megabits per second - then it feels an awful lot like that's an ample market to be taken up by phone line and broadband providers.

Oh, wait. That can't happen. Know why? Because BT doesn't like private phone companies connecting to their network, and BT OWN the damned network.

The final thing that gets me about the report, is something I mentioned in my previous article. Piracy. Unsurprisingly, there are any number of industry figureheads and government faces that are standing up at this point, talking to cameras or audio devices, to get out the word that piracy is wrong, and takes money out of the pockets, and food out of the mouthes of their impoverished, soot-faced, charity store cloth wearing children.

While there probably are an awful lot of people out there who do actually fit the industry stereotype of a "pirate"(Arrrr); someone who has no regard for the law, is fine with the act of stealing, and is fine with both buying and selling illegal copies down in the marketplace....there is another party to all of this, and it's a party entirely of the entertainment industry's making.

The continuing rise of technology in our lives has had an effect on how we are prepared to enjoy our culture. Be it music, podcasts, audiobooks, movies, tv shows, video podcasts or games(Although I haven't seen videogame piracy mentioned yet in the report, which doesn't surprise me), all are a significant part of our modern culture. Eschewing such debates as "Is it really culture? I mean, it's just shit, right?", on the grounds that even at the time of Shakespeare or Da Vinci, there were innumerable amounts of hack entertainers standing on corners reciting limericks for change, and people who could only just hold a piece of charcoal standing on streets offering caricatures for sale. Meaning that just because it's shit, doesn't mean its not culture. It means it's shit, but it's still part of modern culture.

Anyway, with the advent of the cassette tape, we were able to record what we wanted, either from another cassette or from some source we had lying around, like a friend beat-boxing into a cheap mic, or us doing silly voices to make our friends laugh. Then we had the video tape, which meant we were no longer at the behest of the cinema manager or television scheduler as to when we could see what we wanted to see. Re-writable discs like CD's, then DVD's and now Blu-Ray discs offer us space to transfer computerised information of any sort, in the same way as we use the wire between us and the bastard BT to check our email - we're always swapping data. Then, with the rise of the digital sound file, soon to become synonymous with the machine we'd hear it from - the mp3 file and the mp3 player - it was made obvious to us all, that if the information could be digitised, then it could be taken with us in something much more convenient to us, and we'd once again, be able to enjoy it in the way that we preferred, when we prefer it.

As the mp3 revolution gained pace, it found a leader. Admittedly a leader not everyone agrees with, but still the leader - the iPod. I'm not going to discuss the benefits/restrictions that come with an iPod, I only bring it up to rightfully point out that the iPod was the tool that enabled us to really witness the change in lifestyle it represented. I've not always had iPods, and I know plenty of others who resent them(For the battery life, mostly(This part was for you, Ash and Evs), but the word "iPod" has risen to such a level, that many people will use "iPod" to describe any mp3 player, or the more recently developed personal media player, or PMP. The PMP is around about where we are right now. Again, the easiest one to explain this with, is the iPhone, but the Sony PSP is another example of PMP technology - a handheld device that will play back any and all audio or video it is capable of, AT YOUR DISCRETION. It is at this stage in time, where even the providers of most of the content for these PMPs - legitimate or not - describe themselves as just that.

"Content Providers".

Gone is the line between the tv broadcast and the LP, the dividing line between the radio station and the movie projector - it can all be digital content, to be managed and used in any number of ways. And this is because of it being "digital".

Now, as I went on in detail about the ass-backwards nature of TV networks as content providers last time around, it behooves me to be a little briefer this time. They're ludicrously ass-backwards. And not just the TV networks, the record companies and film companies are completely wretched when it comes to their record on dragging their heels. About the only difference has been that the music industry has been about four years ahead of the video content makers/owners. However, both are desperate to cling to their current method of business. The music costs as much as it does, not because that's how much the artists need from each sale, its that's how much it needs to be to pay all the different levels of bureaucracy within the music industry, and still make a profit for said levels of bureaucracy and the shareholders in the company. I don't know that the music industry has changed dramatically in the last ten years, but since I last saw the kind of contract breakdown on how much money from the sale of a CD went to a band in 1998, I'd be surprised if the amount made by any artist is that much.

The TV industry needs you to watch their content on the TV, so that you can be witness to the ads they make their money from. And then after that, they'd rather you saw it by paying for it via a DVD or these days an over-priced online download. Unless you've recorded it on a VHS, DVD recorder, or Tivo-like box that uses a hard drive(See Sky+ and V+), in which case it's fine, and you can skip the ads with those. Again, the amount of money it costs to make and sell a DVD, or a legal download, is insignificant to the amount of money it costs us to buy it. I'm not talking by a little, it's a vast mark-up, especially on the downloads - which are of DVD or lesser quality and feature no extras, despite usually costing a LOT more than the DVD's.

It all comes down to paying the middleman.

And I'm not averse to it.

But when the middleman has sat back while the world has gotten more and more used to being able to experience their culture in their own way, at their own time, in their own choice of place, to place such ludicrous restrictions on content is not only farcical, it's borderline criminal.

For the middleman to preach that piracy ruins the careers of artists, while record company executive officers run similarly scaled bonuses and wage packets as the recently bailed out bank executives, is criminal.

For people who are willing to obey the law, but find themselves resorting to illegal downloads when there is no place in the country for those people to find the perfectly legal content they require, and are then treated in the same manner as drug addicts because the companies never intended to keep up with what consumers wanted, is criminal.

Actually, the drug addict comparison is a fairly accurate one. Whenever the argument over what should be done with the problem of drug addiction in any country arises, it always comes down to one fight.

Treatment vs. Enforcement. Time in rehab versus time in prison. But as someone who has had no compunction using a variety of substances - beginning with the tobacco and caffeine they're using right now - to fill a hole in their lives, I feel empowered to say this.

You're fighting the wrong fight.

People don't just get addicted, it comes from a deep place within, and either an unwillingness to help themselves, or an inability to see where the problem comes from. And this? This is precisely the problem. Instead of looking to provide versatile, flexible, easily available cultural media that can be played on a large variety of devices, so as to meet their customer's needs, the chase continues to stamp the genie back into the bottle. And if this trend continues, then the proposed legislation and enforcement powers alluded to today, will drive illegal downloads further underground, to the point of being compared to drug dealers.

And that, is the wrong fight.

"Smokers Outside The Hospital Door"

"And with great consideration Mr. Speaker, I put to the house for consideration, the 'Intellectual Bailout Bill' - where funds will be used to prop up the most moronic of companies whose only business interest is making a living out of making crap TV"

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"The BBC could be made to share part of the television licence fee with commercial rivals under government plans to be announced later.

The Digital Britain report will suggest ways to help companies like Channel 4 cope with the impact of the internet."

Source

I give up. I just give up.

The publicly-funded BBC was created to provide radio and tv to the masses, and while it was often used as a wartime propaganda tool, it has become something that I think everyone should be proud of. Sure, there are stories written with some regularity about how some say the BBC doesn't reflect them, and sometimes they are chastised for using part of the licence fee for steep contracts for certain performers(In stories often written by the most well-paid talking heads that the press can afford), but I gotta say, this idea - of sharing the fee around - is JUST stupid.

First off, the BBC is without a doubt, the highest calibre content provider in the UK, and regarded as one of the highest content providers in the world. Compare it to the output of ITV, 4, any of the channels on Sky or Virgin, or......does five even broadcast anymore?

Seriously. I love the stuff they put out, and I'm far from alone. True, I may hate the relentless plod of all the costume dramas they put out. But I'm not the audience for that. I also roll my eyes whenever I find shows like "Two Pints of Lager & A Packet of Crisps" not only on tv, but on an awful lot. It's just drivel. But I'm not the audience for that.

The thing is, the BBC also produce an awful lot of stuff I do like. I watch News 24 every day(It's the best choice for news in my mind, less subjective than the Jeremy-Kyle-esque show that Sky News puts on, and simply better at reporting the news than CNN or FOX), I love listening to just two radio stations - Five Live and 6 Music - both BBC stations, both without peer. I could go into more detail, but seeing as I've already stated I think the BBC is great, that would be me missing the point of my own article.

Try as I might to think about it, I don't know many parts of the British population that the BBC does a disservice to. There's a fair amount of people who think there should be more religious programming, and while I don't think there should be(On the basis that those people can coddle each other's ignorance at home, the same way they did in the dark ages), I recognise that apart from the craziness of the 400 Club on early morning Sky One and some of the more well-hidden Sky channels that serve an entirely religious purpose, the BBC is currently the only non-subscription channel that offers ANY consistent religious programming. I'll freely admit that it seems confined to happy, clappy christians on Songs of Praise, but that seems a fair amount of time to give to people who should be in church at that time on a Sunday anyway.

There are dramas, comedies, documentaries, music, opinion, news, news analysis, reality shows, lots of children's shows for absent parents, business shows, stuff that really just chats to you and talks about stuff like "The One Show", and for people who don't like television or laughing, there's "Two Pints of Lager & A Packet of Crisps".

And that's missing out the radio and web stuff they do, including the brilliant iPlayer, the best effort by pretty much any tv channel in the world at bringing content to their customers, something which I feel has a lot to do with why the other networks don't DESERVE any of the licence fee.

I watch a lot of American TV. I also read a lot about American TV, which I feel helps educate me to the nature of the biggest tv market in the world. There are a lot of shows that come out of America that I like, and some that I absolutely LOVE. But I tell you, that those shows get made at all, when they're produced or bought by networks that are run by people with wood for brains is staggering.

Leaving aside the astonishing decisions that are made on a monthly basis to cancel good shows that aren't immediately popular, in order to give life to bad shows that dumb people like to watch, U.S. tv networks are in a similar pinch to some of the U.K. tv networks. Ad revenue is down, the viewing audience is way down, and executives spend so much of the day scratching their head and wondering why no-one will watch their crap, they come home bald with their scalp looking like a tomato. It's partly to do with the audience being treat worse and worse every year, ever crappier and more banal shows being put on in an attempt to make numbers for shareholders, to a point where anything new or difficult, or (God forbid), intelligent is put on the air, the audience just don't know what to do with it. You'll have heard the name HBO, and perhaps even Showtime. These networks do actually consistently produce some stuff that ranges from "Well, at least it's different", to "Wow, this is good", to "When this finishes, my life will be empty". But these are subscription channels, which have a direct source of income. And they know what their audience likes, because if they start losing some of their audience, they can try something new to bring them back.

The major networks in the U.S.; ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, and if we must, the CW, are all in different amounts of strife, but all are affected. CBS is the current leader of the pack - laden with such diverse shows as "CSI", "CSI Miami", "CSI New York", "The Mentalist"(Portable CSI), "Cold Case"(CSI but with flashbacks and no office budget), "NUMB3RS"(Predictive CSI), "NCIS"(Air Force CSI) and the forthcoming "NCIS: Los Angeles"(I wish I was joking), they've surged ahead of the pack on a consistent basis. But they're not immune to the economy - recently they had to choose between expensive-to-make procedural police drama "Cold Case", and expensive-to-make procedural FBI drama "Without a Trace", and are starting to rely more on shows like their procedural S.W.A.T. show, "Flashpoint", which works for them because Flashpoint, like a number of new shows for 2009, is made for cheap in Canada, then sold at a competitive price to the U.S..

ABC, home of LOST and Desperate Housewives, has seen the numbers fall, but stay strong for LOST, but just fall for Housewives. Ugly Betty continues down a hill, while recent shows like "Private Practice" and the show it span off from - "Grey's Anatomy", splutter often, but remain relatively strong. ABC is also the home to such guff as "America's Funniest Home Videos", "The Bachelor" and it's spinoff "The Bachelorette", "Dancing With the Stars"(aka "Strictly Come Dancing" with people you've never heard of but the same judges are there), and the U.S. versions of "Supernanny" and "Wife Swap". I guess what I'm saying is, imagine ITV with LOST and Desperate Housewives and you've got the picture.

FOX is famous over here for being part of the name for a film studio, aswell as bringing us the Simpsons, but is also responsible for showing us all that even in the 21st century, an ageing drunk can still be a spy, via "24". They also have shows I like, such as worldwide favourite "House", the "X-Files but with sort of a story" show that is "Fringe", and several animated shows like "Family Guy". But FOX have garnered a reputation for chopping and changing their schedule often, and often lose viewers on struggling shows when they get moved around. How ever the shows do, it never really matters, because as long as America has an "Idol" addiction, FOX will be afloat. Although with Simon Cowell said to be considering walking, we'll see.

NBC......Oh, poor NBC. It's not that they don't like good shows there, it's just they don't like making them or promoting them. For a long time now, NBC has lost both viewers and money hand over fist, partly because they often make bad shows that disappoint, or they make expensive good shows, then drop them so fast, you'll question whether it was really there. I'd go into it, but I think there's an entire article I could write on NBC, so I'll leave it. Suffice it to say, it's the ultimate bureaucracy. Too many people on too many levels making too many decisions. Their endless faith in Ben Silverman, a supposed "wunderkind" producer is just something I can't wrap my head around. His latest "golden egg", is to have adverts feature as part of the show you're watching, involving the sets, and maybe even the actual actors as they recommend something to you. I've seen it, and if you don't know it's coming, it feels like a really weird, non-sequitir scene of the show. Like either you're on drugs and hallucinating, or what you're witnessing is a TV show begging for money on the street.

The CW is a network I don't know much about. It makes "Supernatural", which means it deserves my respect, and it makes "Smallville", which means it deserves my rotten eggs. The best thing I can tell you about the predicament at The CW, is that they recently gave up their ENTIRE weekend primetime schedule, unable to make it work at all, and set it out for tender to other companies.

Something you might have wondered over those paragraphs, as being conspicuous, is internet strategy. "We've got the iPlayer and the knockoffs the other channels have put out later(I know 4's was first, but it didn't really work til recently), so what did the Americans have?". Answer is nothing. They honestly had nothing. While we've only had things like Sky+ or V+ for a little while, the Americans have grown used to having the Tivo, an identical system that records programs onto a hard drive for playback later. Let me explain that - for many years, the American consumer has had a box sitting under their TV, that digitally records every show the viewer wants - turning them into a video file like the ones on your computer - so you can watch it later, and it allows you to skip the ads completely. The one thing that the networks have resisted again and again, was the ability to convert said Tivo files into something you could watch somewhere other than your living room. Say, your computer, or your iPod.

The best you could do was either visit a network website to watch ads for the new episode, or a small version of the previous one. The next option would be to hit YouTube, and see if any of the videos of the show had survived the morning blitz of the network lawyers.

A while later, after people started finding out they could illegally download their favourite shows via such things as torrents, tv channels started offering their wares on the iTunes store. Now, I'm a fan of the iTunes store. It may still be riddled with DRM and file formats that mean you're stuck using it on an iPod or your computer, but it has a lot of content, often free, and until recently, was the only method available for purchasing digital content over the internet in ANY kind of legal fashion. Yes, there have been myriad other online mp3 stores, most recently the Amazon store, but until Amazon began offering itself, no-one has been able to compete with Apple's shop.

All of this is to say, that TV networks, moreso than movie studios, have been......how best to put it.....REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEALLY slow at accepting new things. At first, the internet was "A fad", and regarded as the modern version of teletext - you'd use it, but it was just for reading the headline news, your stock price and the footie results. Then, it was a den of thieves, with nothing but despicable digital pirates, with their mp3 players and peg-legs, having the gall to record tv shows, put them onto their computer, and share them with friends/strangers. I mean, the utter CONTEMPT, that these thieves showed to tv networks that couldn't even be bothered to offer up a version of their show to be watched on their computer or video mp3 player, the NERVE of them to feel they should be able to get the content in a way that suits their needs and not the schedule. Then, in a slight change of heart, tv networks started saying "Yeah, kids, we still think of you as thieving bastards, but if you can get your dad's credit card, we'll sell what you can find for free, or watch for free on tv, or buy for less on DVD, over the iTunes store.". That all kind of went stupid, when in the middle of this period, NBC, still feeling all high and mighty with the successes of Friends and The West wing, began a fight with Apple over their "pricing structure", and in a fit of temper, NBC withdrew all of their shows from what was still the only legal way to get a digital copy of a tv show. They threw a wobbly with the best option out there, to get the stuff out, admittedly at an inflated price. If that's the best game in town, you either make a better game or accept what you need to do. Again, to be clear, I'm a fan of the store, but even I know it's very expensive, but then unless you want the illegal option, tough luck - it's the only choice.

Flash forward to now.

NBC is one of several networks selling through iTunes, aswell as several other digital systems, but not currently via the Xbox Live Video Marketplace - a service similar to iTunes, except done through an Xbox 360, with a similar service expanding through the rival Sony PS3. Their numbers are dropping, while they attempt to re-focus their efforts on services such as HULU. HULU is basically YouTube, with nothing but legal content from providers like NBC and FOX, but with adverts in the videos and on the website. In other words it's free to watch, just less fun than you might want.

So, the networks audiences are down, and so is the amount of money being paid for advertising on tv - because the audiences are lower - and it's because of two things.

One: the networks continue to value popular crap that further lowers the audience's expectations and ruin any chance of being able to make something good AND popular.

Two: The most important part. After spending YEARS ignoring the internet, then blaming it and criminalising impatient viewers who couldn't wait for a corporation to catch up with them, then trying to extract blood from a stone by asking people to pay more for a tv show download than it costs to get the same thing in a DVD that has better quality and extra features missing from downloads, the American TV networks are FINALLY getting to the point where they look like they're going in ANY kind of direction that won't ruin them.

And you know what? The U.K. commercial networks have followed the EXACT same path. ITV's numbers are down? Screw them. Channel 4's numbers are down? Whatever baby. I love you, but whatever. Channel five has numbers? Knock me over with a feather. They've spent a LONG time either ignoring the problem, or being kept on a leash by American networks they refused to press into action. So I don't know why these companies should deserve their own bailout. True, if they received state funding, it would mean protection to prevent them being bought up on the cheap. But these are corporations, and in the case of ITV, I can't find a show they make that I feel represents me in ANY way. I'm completely serious, I haven't watched ITV in YEARS, and unless they start doing that, I have no idea why the licence fee should be shared with morons. While Channel Four is an institution around as old as me, and I have loved it dearly, if it can't do better than it is, I will bid it farewell. If only to serve as some kind of warning sign to the heads of other networks. Jon Snow, I love you man, but Hollyoaks ain't enough.

To put it another way: Either it goes to public service broadcasting, or it doesn't. I won't pay any licence fee that goes to a channel that produced Love Island, or continues to pump money into the looney bin that is Jugs and Jugless Inc.

"On Pie and Politics."

I paid a visit to my Grandparents the other day. Went with Jac and Murphy, and while I took my Gran & Jac to the supermarket, my Grandpa had all sorts of fun sharing the house with Murphy, a dark-haired retriever who's all kinds of soft. At times these days I wonder if in the year before he found himself in the dog shelter we found him in, he was raised by cats.

We had pie and chips, and I failed to convince the elders of my family of the benefits of green tea - mostly failing because after I convinced them to try it, it turned out very weak. Not used to making tea in a pot, but I wish it'd gone better. The pie was M&S's mince, which meant it reminded me of the many times I'd had similar meat and pastry over the years. Which is to say that I enjoyed the feeling, aswell as the pie. Finished off with a Victoria Sponge, which as historical a dessert as it is, is a much more recent experience for me, but nice too.

Shortly after, my Grandfather asked me a question, that by the looks of Jac and my Gran through my peripheral vision, they wished he hadn't.

"Chris, are you at all political?"

I couldn't tell you how my face looked at that moment, but I like to think it communicated what went through my head when he asked me:

"Hoboy."

What followed was to say the least, not pretty. I had to start from a point of speaking loudly, because he suffers from a chronic hearing problem, and combining the fact that I began by having to shout to talk to him, plus my own bull-headedness on issues, was a recipe for testiness. Especially when his first follow-up question was "So what do you think of Gordon Brown?". I sighed a little, and started to explain I was not a fan. First, there's the issue of succession. I'm not a fan of having a leader being bestowed upon us by the previous occupant, who despite his appalling cuddliness with the worst leader of the western world(Possibly ever, which is not just my opinion), and the pious use of his faith after leaving office, was the duly elected Prime Minister. To put it as I said to my Grandfather, "We don't have a Prime Minister right now, we have a Dauphin. A prince.". I'm well aware that the current system is what allows this, and the current system also means that an election to allow the people to decide if we really do want Gordon to stay in Downing St. is, and can only really be called by Gordon. I just don't have to agree with it, especially if(And I defer to my Grandfather on his knowledge on this subject), the succession part of this is enabled only by the rules of the Labour party, not law.

We went back and forth a few times, feeling the need to interrupt each other several times, where I explained that Gordon was one of the people to blame for the recession and recent world financial debacle, because he'd been one of the world leaders to strip out the barrier that protected customers from risky bank practices by preventing savings banks also being trading banks, meaning if moronic trading practices cost a trading bank a lot of money, the people who had money in a savings bank wouldn't be so badly affected. I was on finger one of a three-finger routine, when I was told that the situation had been caused by bankers, who had loaned money to people who shouldn't have been loaned the money(See: Sub-Prime mortgage market in the U.S.). I felt like I was correcting him by saying they were only able to offer loans and mortgages to such bad customers because of lax financial regulation, which had been stripped of it's teeth by late-term President Clinton and his fed chair Alan Greenspan, whole-term President Bush II, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for most of that period, whose name escapes me. He then felt apt to further defend my spurious suggestions about the PM, by pointing out to me the strengths of the Labour party, and that the Labour party was "working-class people".

Then I moved onto blaming other stuff such as short-selling, but it was becoming clear what the gist was. I was angry about a generation of political terms being spent making sacrifices of legislation to the altar of "The Free Market", in order to grease the wheels of said market to keep it running at an ever-more profitable rate. The free market concept is essentially one of "just leave it alone, it can take care of itself". The main idea behind it is that the market can decide what is good and bad for the market, and if followed wholeheartedly, bad practices would be punished by a lack of confidence and therefore a lack of profit - leading to said bad practicer going out of business or changing it's ways - whereas the best business practices would lead to a stronger business, and by osmosis/following the example, the market would be stronger. Thing is, "The Free Market" is an idea. And with ideas, they can be good ideas, they can be bad ideas - hell, write them out in enough detail, you can get your idea called a great theory - but the problem with ideas, is that they lack a key ingredient. People. Add people to the free market, and take away the lifeguards telling people not to run, you end up with swimmers holding people under the water while taking bets on how long the victim will hold their breath, and if someone can't pay that bet when they lose, they sell that debt to someone else so they can pay their losses, while the debt they sold gets sold some more, and some more, until no-one knows what it's actually worth or who owns it.

After reading the last paragraph, you'd be forgiven for thinking:

"The gist? What the hell, Chris?!?"

But trust me, that's the short form of it, with metaphors instead of shouting. My Grandfather, on the other hand - a long-term Labour member and supporter(They proudly told me a while ago they were known by name to their current MP and Foreign Secretary, Stephen Miliband) - posited the following observation to me:

"So, you're quite right-wing then. You believe that the Government should control what the banks do?"

I have to say, I couldn't help but laugh. While it's the second time in my life I've been described as "right-wing"(Evs got the cherry on that), I would never ever consider myself as from the right of....well, anybody. Maybe Karl Marx or Gandhi, perhaps. It was a bizarre moment for me, because I had to use my fading laughter as a cover while I tried to wrap my head around the notion that because I wanted the Government to protect me and the rest of the people from a tiny but powerful majority.....I was right-wing?

That ending of the discussion stuck in my head for the last twenty-four hours or so, and the reason why, hit me a few hours ago. For something to be right-wing, as my Grandfather proposed, would be to place faith and power in the authority of your rulers, and recommend that it would be best for all to accept the wisdom and authority of said overlords, and for them to choose what is best for us; with our views on the issue never a factor in what decision they made, or how it should be implemented. So, on that basis, I was being described as "right-wing", when I was suggesting(While shouting), that the people be protected from the nefarious ways of bankers and their worst mistakes, that the leader of the Government should be elected, not selected, and I resented the PM, for failing on both of those counts. Whereas I was being accused of this by someone extolling the virtues of the Labour Party as "working class", and in fact that they were virtuous because the party was "working class", and that the PM should be supported because of that.

My point is, I'm not really sure as to which of us in that discussion was more right-wing.

I don't know if I'm right-wing on any political or ethical issue. I know I probably come across that way because I can be stubborn to the point of people asking me "Do those ears work?", but that comes from an issue inside me where I always need to be right, and I read and listen to opinions from all sides, aswell as empirical data, before I make my mind up on anything. And when, as happens, I'm proven wrong, I thank the person who has, because they've given me the ability to go on, and be right again with this new information. But I have, and always will support the right of someone to voice a differing opinion. And I will always make sure people know that, just before I get into an argument with them about which of us is right. While I'm always going to think less of someone who has what I see as an ill-educated position, or is ignorant of the whole picture, or is just so WRONG.....I'll always hold them in high regard for discussing it with me, even if they never change their mind. The only people I hold in any low regard, is people who refuse to have an opinion, or hide it to avoid being confronted.

The reason why? Someone I hold in high regard once wrote the following.

"If you hide your ignorance, no-one will hit you and you'll never learn."

Source

And so, despite still being crippled in my life by the hits I've taken, I say this: Here's to getting hit. Cheers.

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Note: It's an hour later, I should have said that while I was referring to Aaron Sorkin writing that line in "The West Wing" episode "Two Cathedrals"(S02E22), he did not create the line - it was originally written by Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451.

Today on "Politicians say the....Oddest things"

The Labour party suffered some massive injuries lately, including their worst performance in Wales and Scotland for nearly a century. Amidst that, I was listening to the coverage on the radio this afternoon, and I heard Rhodri Morgan, the current First Minister for Wales, say something that I'd imagine was intended......not quite the way he put it.

"The war is next year. I think of this as a Dunkirk moment

not a D-day,

el Alamein, or Stalingrad, that's next year"

from PoliticsHome

That wasn't all of it, and I had to dig to find that part, because the BBC story I found missed out that part(Which was a little weird, seeing as I'd heard it on 5Live.)

"It's time to move forward now. We have lost the battle but we have got the prospect of success next year in the war. This was Dunkirk."

from BBC News

Regardless, here's the bit. Read the first quote, specifically the bit "not a D-Day". I've tried and tried to look at this from another perspective, where I'm wrong and it still makes sense(Please mention it if you can see it), but.....did Rhod Morgan just compare the Labour Party to.....the Nazis?

Princess? A moment of your time.

I'm still a massive fan of 2D animation, and in many instances I prefer the 2D over the 3D, even if it's the same story done twice.  Don't get me wrong, I think Pixar do some great work, and there are tons of talented 3D animators producing their own stuff around the world.  I bring this up, because Disney have a feature film coming up, one which made my heart sing when I started reading about it, and watching the line tests I'd been lucky to find online.  While it's pretty obvious that the film - "The Frog Princess" - isn't aimed at me, and I don't think I'm ever going to see it, I'm still excited that so many people are being paid to make a film like this.  Mind you.  I was wandering over the IMDB this morning, and I saw some publicity stills of the film.  And they left me with a question in my head.

Did they have to give her a glass eye?  I mean, her eyes really aren't looking in the same direction.