Cameron's Brain: media ownership is soooo 20th century

All this hullabaloo today in the Aussie press about media ownership changes is making me laugh. Especially the position of Labor. As if they needed to prove in more ways that they are stuck in the 19th century,

THE Federal Government's planned changes to media regulations were bad news for democracy and diversity of opinion, Opposition communications spokesman Stephen Conroy said today. (Herald Sun)

Somebody buy that boy an Ozemail starter kit for his next birthday. There has never been more diversity in our media and it's just getting started. We are rapidly entering the long-awaited era of more-freakin-media-than-you-can-handle. Who owns the newspapers and TV stations in Australia has never been less important. Readership and viewership is going to continue to decline over the next decade as more and more people turn to internet media for their news and entertainment.

That reminds me. I was talking yesterday to a guy who is the Director of Business Development for an IPTV company out of Canada. He had sent me an email inviting me to blog and/or podcast his media kit. I sent him an email reply saying "IPTV? That is soooo 1996"... or something like that. So he rang me from Vancouver and I spent the next hour trying to explain that his model of "a complete IPTV solution for telcos" was deader than Billy Ray Cyrus' career. Every time I brought up Microsoft and the XBOX360, his response was "well Microsoft hasn't been able to get a solution up anywhere in the world". I kept trying to explain that Microsoft isn't going to PROVIDE the "solution". They are proving the box that sits in my living room. They may also have some kind of media search & subscribe site I can access from my box. But that is it. Millions of people around the world will provide the media I watch, listen to and read. It isn't going to be Microsoft and it SURE AS HELL isn't going to be Telstra. I had to spend 20 minutes giving him the backstory as to why Telstra isn't going to be our TV provider of choice... not in this lifetime. They are a pipe. And they don't even have a firm grasp on that business these days.

So anyway, I better get back to eating my $23 room service pizza (thank you Sheraton On The Park).