Hats off to Rupert Murdoch!

My hat is off to Rupert Murdoch, who has recently declared his intention to charge for online access to his many media publications. It’s about time that someone, somewhere, sometime, declared that giving stuff away for free that actually costs real money to produce makes no economic sense and, ultimately, has no economic future.

The current business model on the internet not only makes no financial sense, it also creates a culture of entitlement to getting everything for nothing. Otherwise respectable middle-class people are induced into law-breaking use of unlicensed electronic equipment to steal cable tv, internet access, phone connections etc etc.. Such people should, of course, be reported and prosecuted – so watch out Bat!

The next step is to promote the creation of Wifi/Mobile phone “black-spots”, as opposed to hot-spots. What a relief it would be to find places where you can’t contact, or be contacted by, anyone else. Finally, you might regain control of your own time and your life without uninvited interruption or distraction. What a blessing that would be! I can see such places becoming a mecca for the overly-stressed – the next “big thing”

A firther important challenge is to kill 24/7 news and talk-radio!
Bruce Springsteen famously recorded a song which proclaimed that there were “57 channels and there’s nothing on”. Sadly, it now feels like there’s about 1057 competing channels and there’s still nothing on. Competition certainly hasn’t brought quality!

Our media is filled with the same talking/writing heads, endlessly repeating the same old tired guff ad nauseam. They speculate endlessly on what might happen if X, Y or Z was to occur, even when the result e.g. a general election, will be known within days. If you change radio stations, you’ll hear the same contributors turning up on RTE, Today FM & Newstalk over the course of any day. If only we could have a law that confined current affairs of any kind to 5% of station output we’d all be better off – believe me! That would be a boon to public service broadcasting. Perhaps coupled with a legal constraint on politicians – how much time per week/number of opinions they can give to media?

Give my head peace. Please.