TV Ads Suck In The Free Market Economy

This is two posts a row from me, but I know most of you wonderful contributors, if not all of you are too busy studying for impending uni exams to post any new material. Not studying at uni this year and therefore not doing much at all ;) I'll guess I'll take the slack. But I'm working on finally getting my Ps. And I'm playing a little bridge. And I'm planning for my overseas trip. I'm only here till July 27th people! But hopefully everyone is not too busy to visit the Casbah every so often to see how Juan and Justin's brainchild is ticking along. Bear with me, I'm just starting to unleash my current mother of all rants. I watched Australia lose against both England and BANGLADESH.......that's right......BANGLADESH recently and was shocked and appalled that it was Channel 7 who was broadcasting Australia's paltry performances, not the usual Channel 9. Apart from missing the commentating greats of Richie, Tony and Greg CHANNEL 7 SHOWED 2 ADS AT THE END OF AN OVER INSTEAD OF THE USUAL 1 BY CHANNEL 9!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Perhaps you need to be a cricket lover to truly realise the implications of this but really it just means more ads that you don't want to see and less cricket that you do. I thought for a few seconds about this and realised IT IS THE FAULT OF THE FREE MARKET ECONOMY. THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF MARKET FAILURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And here's my reasoning to do everybody's favourite economics teacher, Mrs Wong proud. It also kind of avenges the 5 I got for IB Eco because the IB idiot markers in Geneva or Timbuktu or La Paz couldn't follow simple cross referencing. Idiots. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Australian television stations compete for broadcasting rights of the cricket. Only one (usually) can broadcast the cricket and the rights go to the highest bidder. So ceteris paribus the station with the most money broadcasts the cricket. Stations get the money to pay for the cricket by advertising. In order for Channel 7 to outbid Channel 9, they need to include more advertising. As cricket is an essential good/service in Australia, people will put up with a lot of advertising before switching off. Hence we have A VICIOUS SPIRAL where in order to outbid one another, broadcasters must include more and more advertising, infuriating viewers before a limit is reached. THIS IS KNOWN AS THE FOXTEL PHENOMENOM Commercial television is free. To pay for the costs of broadcasting, broadcasters must use their medium for advertisment. Foxtel is private television (you need to pay to watch it). IT IS A PRIVATE GOOD/SERVICE. As more and more peoples' fed-up-with-advertising-threshold is reached, they will abandon commercial television and switch to Foxtel. Now Foxtel can outbid commercial stations for the cricket. So now people can only watch the cricket on Foxtel. Once a significant population uses Foxtel, Foxtel gets greedy. IT STARTS PUTTING ON ADVERTISEMENTS and increasing its income (Subscription fees + advertisement fees). Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. And now, in the not too distant future, the spiral will continue. A FOXTEL 2 will be formed, charging even more money than FOXTEL because it promises no ads. It will outbid FOXTEL for broadcasting stuff and then introduce ads. THEN FOXTEL 3 WILL FORM. THEN FOXTEL 4. THEN 5. YOU GET THE FUCKING POINT. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I wont pretend I know an answer for this problem, because advertisement provides a vital role in actually providing funds for getting stuff going. So blame human greed. And Channel 10's self promotion. WHY ARE THEY SELF PROMOTING!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU'RE ALREADY WATCHING THE FUCKING CHANNEL!!!!!!!!!!!! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!