Thursday, 31 July 2008
New Signs For Niceness
Good move? I dunno. It means we aren't gracious enough (clearly true) but also reminds us to think of other users who are a little more inconvenienced that ourselves. Not too sure about the word 'Priority' though. It tends to imply importance in a prestgious kind of way, as opposed to "women and children first".
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
The Reality Of Paying For TV
Each household in Singapore has to pay $110* a year for a Radio and TV licence. There were about 934,000 households in 2007**. That means MDA should have collected about $103 million taxes in that year.
At the same time there were 531,000 Pay TV subscribers** in the same year. With the cheapest plan on offer from StarHub set at about $25, these subscribers must have forked out at least an additional $13.3 million dollars a month. That's about $160 million for the year.
A large part of the Radio and TV licence goes to Mediacorp and other media owners for creating free-to-air programming. Mediacorp takes care of eight TV stations and 14 radio stations. Mediacorp also makes money from advertisers.
Enough facts, let the ranting begin.
I am not the first one to question the amount of money that goes into paying for a licence to watch TV and listen to the radio. The complaints got louder since Starhub with its cable TV started to fill out screens with more entertaining fare to keep us up at night. We all get 8 free-to-air channels. I am paying for an additional 42 channels on cable and personally, spend way more time watching cable programming than Mediocrecorp crap. So should we pay for the right to have TV in our homes, pay for free-to-air broadcasting and pay again to the cable TV operator? I know some of you don't even listen to radio anymore, and others don't watch TV because you get your fix from Youtube and other Internet media sources. If you don't use it, you shouldn't have to pay for it.
Someone's gotta talk about this more. Apart from makan, there's little else to do but watch TV and worry about $.
*http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/devnpolicies.aspx?sid=185
**Statistics Singapore (http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/sif2008.pdf)
At the same time there were 531,000 Pay TV subscribers** in the same year. With the cheapest plan on offer from StarHub set at about $25, these subscribers must have forked out at least an additional $13.3 million dollars a month. That's about $160 million for the year.
A large part of the Radio and TV licence goes to Mediacorp and other media owners for creating free-to-air programming. Mediacorp takes care of eight TV stations and 14 radio stations. Mediacorp also makes money from advertisers.
Enough facts, let the ranting begin.
I am not the first one to question the amount of money that goes into paying for a licence to watch TV and listen to the radio. The complaints got louder since Starhub with its cable TV started to fill out screens with more entertaining fare to keep us up at night. We all get 8 free-to-air channels. I am paying for an additional 42 channels on cable and personally, spend way more time watching cable programming than Mediocrecorp crap. So should we pay for the right to have TV in our homes, pay for free-to-air broadcasting and pay again to the cable TV operator? I know some of you don't even listen to radio anymore, and others don't watch TV because you get your fix from Youtube and other Internet media sources. If you don't use it, you shouldn't have to pay for it.
Someone's gotta talk about this more. Apart from makan, there's little else to do but watch TV and worry about $.
*http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/devnpolicies.aspx?sid=185
**Statistics Singapore (http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pubn/reference/sif2008.pdf)
Friday, 25 July 2008
Ode To Plurk
I plurk
Dun work
All day
Click and play
Addicted
Already predicted
Timelined MSN on thread
Comment then mark all as read
With plurk, karma you earn
More and more you yearn
Some say crazy
Plurk till lenses hazy
It can be lots of fun
The work piles into a ton
What? 37 Unread?!
No replies, no cred
Ok, am not so obssessed
Occasionally I plurk I confess
Control is required
Managed fun is desired
Come visit my plurk page
Join, it's all the rage
Dun work
All day
Click and play
Addicted
Already predicted
Timelined MSN on thread
Comment then mark all as read
With plurk, karma you earn
More and more you yearn
Some say crazy
Plurk till lenses hazy
It can be lots of fun
The work piles into a ton
What? 37 Unread?!
No replies, no cred
Ok, am not so obssessed
Occasionally I plurk I confess
Control is required
Managed fun is desired
Come visit my plurk page
Join, it's all the rage
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