The media difference.

Because of the Queensland State election next saturday, my Accounting mid-sem test will be.... tomorrow.

Horray. -_-

However, as election is looming, I noticed a rather welcome change in the media of Australia.

Namely, the fact that the opposition party actually gets to speak up, unlike back in Singapore, where the media is hugely controlled by the ruling party, ie PAP.

Firstly, there are all these propaganda which amuses me to no end. For example, the current premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, who is from the opposition party (labour), appears on TV so many times, I've seriously lost count. On TV, he keeps talking about how well he has done, namely in areas of employment and health. On top of that, there are ads which show the coalition (which is the ruling party of Australia) being disunited, as their coalition "just lasted 3 days" and such.

More amusingly, the speakers of Coalition are always seen with grainy pictures which resembles something of the 60s and their sound seems to have been taken from a 32kbps mp3 file.

Fun. A refreshing difference.

However, this isn't the only difference in the media. There are a host of other differences other than the politics.

For one, the TVs just LOVE to have weird game shows. Nothing of the japanese type which is really weird, but most of the game shows are just people asking random trivia which allows you to win cash and prices. Soaps are another love, as you see them on almost every other day. Not a lot of action stuff like CSI and 24 (on another note, 24 didn't perform too well with Aussies as it struggled for ratings yet again).

Another major difference will be sports. Aussie rules football, ie footy as it is more commonly known here, is shown every weekend on live FREE TV. Same goes for the local Rugby league, and I can presume the same goes for the Australian football "A league". In fact, the government has worked quite hard to ensure that people don't have to pay extra to get FOX Sports just to watch their beloved local sports. While the English Premier League is on FOX Sports (which means I can't watch it. Bah), the local scene sports are kept free for all, although they have a LOAD of advertisments.

Compare this to Singapore, where even the local S League is shown on Channelnewsasia, not exactly a channel you'll flip to just to watch the soccer. Movies and serials are the key back in Singapore, as you see them every other day (Monday night movie. Saturday night movie, Sunday night special).

Aussie just has one movie or so a MONTH.

Culture difference?

Nah. It's just the interest of the media groups. With roughly 5 free to air channels, you have to work hard to win viewers so that investors will invest money in the channel for advertisments. Compare that to just Mediacorpse owning the free to air channel, and Starhub owning the cable. As Starhub owns the cable, they are allowed to do strange and crazy things such as those they did during the World Cup back in June. In Aussie, the World Cup was shown free, live, on SBS and also on Cable.

However, not all is bad about Singapore media. I'm not a huge fan of soaps, prefering more drama which can be found back in Singapore media. Some of the Singapore's homegrown shows are fairly amusing as well (PCK heads the list), and such shows the Singapore culture which cannot be found anywhere else.

But still, the political part of the media is sorely missing from Singapore. Every Sunday night, there's this very comical show which has people poking fun of everything, usually everyday happenings, Aussie swimmer who has won the gold medal, and politics.

Usually Johnny and his "I didn't know about it" lines ( Link ), and also the people who wants John Howard out (note that John Howard is the longest serving PM in Aussie history).

"I don't think he's an old bastard."

"I just think that he's just past it."

XD @ the rap these people even made up.

Too bad you don't get to see people poking fun at the PAP in Singapore though.

But hey, it has served Singapore very well thus far.

Don't fix the wheel unless it is broken.

---

Song of (whatever) switched to Setsunai Omoi from the rather surprisingly good Zero no Tsukaima Soundtrack.

Or maybe I'm just a sucker for piano songs.

And oh....



There. I am perfectly fine, although I probably lost loads of weight as I eat 1 decent meal a day (laziness more than anything).

Now stop pestering me. LoL.