Why, my God, why?

reply to post by whitewave


LOL LOL LOL Whitewave,

I agree with everything you posted above. I was introduced to the demise of Heath Ledger the other night at work by the same guys who torture me with the latest antics of the "Fab Four." Pretty much the same result from me too. I did not lose much sleep over it I can assure you. Once again my life is not so droll I must live and breath through these heros/gods of the big screen. Nor do I as often stated here live and breath through the gods of sports.

Intresting point Rawsom has brought up. I am not so sure I would be confident in our media if the government ran it verses the commercial buisnesses sponsoring such. I am finding myself disatisfied with the concept of either doing so. In my mind you have a government running such to the level of government incompetance and sterility. On the other side...commercial intrests to the point of lowest common denominator. Take your pick..which droll would you like. I will choose my own mouse to click out or a remote controller in reigning in either pablum/chaos.

Thanks,
Orangetom

reply to post by orangetom1999


I was propably a bit inaccurate about some ways of solving these dependency issues. You have commercial media and goverment's media. There's a midpoint in existence, actually. At least in Finland we have, if you can call it such.

This it how it goes.

Goverment has made it a law that every single home that has a television inside, is required to pay a licence fee for that appratus. This fee is not a tax, although it can be viewed as such. This fee goes to a media company that has a protection of goverment in that goverment deals with people who do not pay. Fine is exactly the amount that has been left unpaid while not paying.

This is a forced pay, as even if you only watch commercial tv-channels, you are still entitled to pay a licence fee to a company that only runs two totally free channels that have nothing to do with commercialism. It doesn't even matter if you only watch VCR/DVD, you cannot prove otherwise anyway. (Believe me, this has been tried tens of times in court, with no avail.)

Goverment has absolutely no control on the budget of this company, and this company is in turn required to not make any money whatsoever while doing its business. It can also do no profits, such is not allowed for this company. Goverment also has no control over what programs these channels will broadcast, although normal laws are expected to be followed. At that, these two channels actually show more than commercial ones if we look at cencorship on certain issues and age limits of programs. (In Finland, after certain time of day, its totally in parental responsibility to see that kids don't watch programs and goverment responsibility stops there at that point.)


Usually, this company deals with their leadership themselves, although criticism from outside sources will monitor its doings at large. They pay for their workers a normal salary, and expect them to be neutral and stay neutral on issues considering goverment's business. Every once in a while an ex politican gets the job of CEO at that company, but that's not enough, as they do require a fitting education as well. After that point, this politican is no longer allowed to stay as CEO (or elected as one in the company) if he/she continues doing politics.

We like this system, and do not want to get rid of it even if it makes competition a bit difficult for commercial companies. After all, this system ensures that hell freezes over before politicans are allowed to be elected when all they do is shout slogans. Nobody gives a # about that kind of advertising here, people want debate.

Obviously this system has its own flaws, there's no perfect system. My cincere hope is that our system prevents problems caused by totally commercial media companies.