Best of the Week: The media manifesto you won’t get next week, and the ASX rollercoaster
Welcome to Unmade, written early this morning at rainy Sisters Beach, Tasmania. While I was away in the UK, and the East Coast was taking its battering, our tanks ran dry, twice. Now I’m back for a while, and so is the rain. Hurrah, and also, drat.
Domestic travel isn’t yet as automatic, or relaxed, as it felt before the pandemic. There were far more anxious moments in the simple trip than there used to be. I arrived at Sydney’s domestic terminal a couple of hours early, having heard the horror stories about security queues, only to breeze through in a couple of minutes.
On the plus side, it gave me time to rearrange the display in the bookshop to my own satisfaction.
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Great posting Tim. I agree with all eight issues on your to-do list.
You are spot-on with the Spectrum issues. Putting a price of $0 of a publicly owned asset is stunning.
I agree with Broadband – essential. 5G is inevitable, but its Achilles heel is that its range is around 500m. Living in a regional area we’re stuck on antiquated technology. 4G has the range but not the speed. Luckily, it’s a clear and sunny morning and we’re getting 4.9Mbps via Vocus. To get regional 5G the cost of installing towers would be astronomical. Satellites are either slow (NBN) or subject to weather interference. 4G Mobile has promise (not LTE) and installing your own infrastructure then subscribing to a mobile phone contract looks like our future.
I partially agree with “And most recently Paul Fletcher had even less impact.” You seem to have skated over the fact that early this year he removed the requirement for a quota of Australian Children’s Content (20 hours). Australia has been a leading nation for children’s content and recognised around the world such as Bluey, The Wiggles etc. Well that era has ended with a stroke of the pen. Australian kids will not be able to see and hear their stories at one of the most important times of a child’s growth on commercial TV.
Cheers.