I'm a former Telewest cable TV customer caught in the cross-fire between Murdoch and Branson since Virgin Media took over Telewest. Murdoch has massively put up his price for the use of his channels and Branson won't pay, so we are now without Lost, Nip Tuck and the Simpsons.
As the boss said - 57 channels and nothin' on.
It's not so much that there is less good stuff on TV these days - people who wax lyrical about the golden age of TV when we had I Claudius and Play For Today forget that we also had at the same time Bless This House and The Golden Shot. But the quality is spread thinner over more channels of crap now, so unfortunately terrestrial TV simply isn't enough to capture it.
Even so I can't bring myself to pay anything to Murdoch and his evil empire.
I'm not sure if this is entirely rational, I suspect that Branson may be just better with his PR. But at least he doesn't play the role of a modern-day kingmaker by controlling so much of the media.
And I didn't spend many cold nights with the pickets outside the plant where he had sacked his entire work force so that he could break the union, as I did twenty years ago at Fortress Wapping.
Symbolically my NGA 'Murdoch Is Bad News' mug is chipped and unused these days, but I still can't bring myself to chuck it out and so it stays in my garage for cleaning paint brushes.
As the boss said - 57 channels and nothin' on.
It's not so much that there is less good stuff on TV these days - people who wax lyrical about the golden age of TV when we had I Claudius and Play For Today forget that we also had at the same time Bless This House and The Golden Shot. But the quality is spread thinner over more channels of crap now, so unfortunately terrestrial TV simply isn't enough to capture it.
Even so I can't bring myself to pay anything to Murdoch and his evil empire.
I'm not sure if this is entirely rational, I suspect that Branson may be just better with his PR. But at least he doesn't play the role of a modern-day kingmaker by controlling so much of the media.
And I didn't spend many cold nights with the pickets outside the plant where he had sacked his entire work force so that he could break the union, as I did twenty years ago at Fortress Wapping.
Symbolically my NGA 'Murdoch Is Bad News' mug is chipped and unused these days, but I still can't bring myself to chuck it out and so it stays in my garage for cleaning paint brushes.
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