From: Douglas Greville (dgrev@iinet.net.au)
Date: Tue Apr 06 2004 - 17:48:45 PDT
Nigel
> Folks, I was vexed to find an item
Good on you Nige. You do however realise you are p*ssing into the
wind don't you?
Lets get one thing really clear. The moment anybody gets money or
"reward/goods in lieu" it becomes a job, not sport. Sport is something
you do for relaxation or exercise and it's reward is limited to some
cheap valueless trophy that forever more is a dust collector and gets
thrown out when your relatives get to go through things once you are no
longer around.
What is really happening is that big business has made "sport" into a
huge business.
The "masses" have been duped into believing it is still sport and
willingly go along with it because it provides them with a source of
low mental effort entertainment after a hard day/week at work.
In actuality it is the modern version of what used to happen in Rome,
nothing like a fake war to keep everyone's attention diverted from
how stuffed the medical and eductaion system is.
It is a place for all the young "heros" (I detest the use of that word
in relation to "sport") of the modern era to do battle.
You only need to look at the amount of
air time the major codes of "sport" gets in each of our countries and
compare it to the air time Vietnam-ver-2 in which all of our countries
are currently involved gets.
"Defence" companies don't buy airtime to promote their products, but
everyone from breakfast cereal to bedding manufacturers are only too
keen to feature the latest "sporting hero" in their ads.
No sport promotion = no hero = no sale of product = no paid ads to
keep the TV station profitable. As to why our 2 government TV
stations (for the yanks the BBC in Britain and ABC in Australia) also
do this is beyond me.
A bloke I know used to be involved in the TV world and had a very
cynical opinion about the Evening News.
He says:
"It is a variety show masquerading as news. Analyse the content and
you get:
- Introduction 1 min 50% sport :50% "news"
- Next 14 minutes usually consist of 2 min of sport breaking news, eg
current glamour boy 2-times his wife or stubs his toe during training.
Then allow 6 minutes of ads which gives you a max of 6 mins of actual
news, mostly politics and disaster.
- Next 6 mins is ads.
- Next 8 mins is sport, often including a nearly verbatim rehash of
the glamour boy's escapades.
- Finale 4 mins is a mix of weather, tide times, radar camera locations
and whatever other dross applies locally."
The money involved has far more power than any minor event such as a
world war 60 years ago. Lets face it, we are a statistically small
group of anoraks living in the past. Our average age (collecting
community) is in the high 40s and up. We are not even on the radar
as far as the networks are concerned as we are not the average TV
viewer. Nor do we buy the latest fashion goods: well, unless you
buy fashion camo instead of surplus?
Anyway, love your letter, but I think it will be filed straight in
the TV executives' rubbish bin.
Regards
Doug
I think I will duck for cover now........
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