Posts matching tags 'abc'
2006/7/31
Cult 1970s BBC comedy troupe The Goodies, who recently reissued some of their shows on DVD and did a successful tour of Australia (where, thanks to the ABC's buying of their show, they are a national institution), are now doing a UK tour, starting off with a show at the Edinburgh Festival.
The show is a mixture of reminiscences, clips from the shows, new sketches and their chart hit song, "The Funky Gibbon". Then there are the recordings of Oddie, 65, "who we can switch off at any moment". Among the sketches is one about the Goodies' invention of Ecky-Thump, a Lancastrian martial art, at which a man in Scotland died laughing when it was originally broadcast. "We'll have medics on hand," Brooke-Taylor said.
Both Brooke-Taylor and Garden, 63, admit they are not sure who their audiences will be in Edinburgh, but if it goes well there is a chance of a national tour. Garden seems slightly nervous. "In Australia there was this great fan base. In this country, nobody has seen the show for 25 years," he said. For anyone under 40, features included a rip-off of King Kong with a kitten on the Post Office Tower, and the Goodies' bicycle for three. The show routinely attracted audiences of up to 14 million.(14 million? Wasn't that the entire population of Australia at the time? Presumably they mean in Britain during the 1970s.)
2006/6/15
In an attempt to remake the ABC in its own conservative, monocultural image, the Australian government has appointed a controversial right-wing historian, known for his ad hominem attacks on opponents, to its board:
Mr Windschuttle has been a fierce critic of the so-called "black armband" view of history and claimed in his 2002 The Fabrication of Aboriginal History that massacres of Tasmanian Aborigines had been exaggerated.
The eight-member board already includes right-wing columnist Janet Albrechtsen and conservative anthropologist Ron Brunton.Those on the "anvil" side of the culture war, of course, protest loudly.
Historian Stuart Macintyre, who has often crossed swords with Mr Windschuttle, said: "The whole point about a public broadcaster is to be a place of a plurality of views. A precondition for that is that the people who are directing it respect that role and don't try to declare other views to be illegimate in the way that Windschuttle has."It is unclear how much power the board will have over the ABC's day-to-day operation, though the day is getting nearer when the Australian national broadcaster becomes a big hammer in the culture war, the stern, paternalistic voice of the Howard government, dictating the official party line on issues, from current politics to history to culture, and consigning un-Australian views to the wilderness by omission or one-sided dismissal. Then, once it is a trustworthy organ of the government, maybe it will once again get some decent funding.
2003/11/6
Scenes from Howard's Australia: ABC censors Deepchild music video because of it containing a political statement condemning Australia's refugee policy. The ABC's transformation from an independent alternative voice into an inoffensive soma-holiday for Relaxed and Comfortable Australia seems to be well advanced.
2003/5/28
Senator Alston, that Savonarola of Canberra, has condemned the ABC for anti-US bias in its news reporting, possibly signalling a new round of political purges within the ABC.
The dossier of alleged examples is heavily critical of AM presenter Linda Mottram, instancing a series of reports in which the journalist referred to the US Government's "propaganda war" and described the death of three journalists as a "body blow" to the coalition's campaign that "undermined the Pentagon's claim that it is waging a compassionate war".
Of course, given the fact that left-wing idealists gravitate to state-run non-profit newsmedia (right-wing idealists are either Randian/Thatcherite free-market platygaeans who abhor the very notion of state-run media as interference in the perfection of the market or else religious moralist types who don't trust a Godless state interfering in their work), the effect of purges would be brief, unless Alston appoints a permanent office of witchfinder-general to keep hunting down those pesky Communists. Either that or bans the ABC from news/current-affairs reporting, restricting it to a mandate of "relaxed and comfortable" lifestyle programmes and those British comedies too crappy for pay-TV to buy the rights to. I know; perhaps they could cut the ABC's news budget to 0 and do a deal to licence content from FOXNews or someone.
2001/10/29
Election-related sites: The ABC is running an election weblog, linking to election-related articles everywhere, for all you political trainspotters out there. Speaking of trains, a group called Public Transport First want to get the politicians to support public transport, rather than just building more freeways.