Which country is the most obsessed with Harry Potter? The book sales indicated by Nielsen Media Research show that Britain and Australia own the most Harry Potter books per person:
Will the final book of the series propel sales to one per person in Britain. It's not far off...
Browsing Wikipedia's list of censored music videos I was surprised to find one that I have on regular rotation, British Sea Power's Please Stand Up. Your challenge (if you dare) is to watch the video and work out why MTV in the USA banned it.
[I'll pause for you to watch the video...]
Okay, if you've bravely seen the video then you'll suspect that the objections weren't to the images of the band playing in a nice little cottage in the country. If you found the lyrics a bit hard to hear, then you can read them in full on the band's site.
[I'll get a coffee while you read that...]
What, you still haven't worked it out? Apparently it's on the following two lines:
And then all of the sudden it's all better better
A little excitement makes us wetter wetter
Confused? I'll let NME and Soul Shine Magazine clear it up. I'm chalking it up to "cultural differences".
The amount of Australian content on Australian television has been significantly eroded over the years. Most recently it has been affected by the introduction of the Australia-USA Free Trade Agreement and the (perpetually nascent) digital television. The former was bitterly opposed by the Australian film and television industry, which feared that they'd be sidelined by cheaper American imports.
The Sydney Morning Herald touches on the importance of Australian television to the building and maintenance of a national character.
The possible demise of free television because of its failure to modernise behind a wall of protection might be greeted with a regretful shrug of the shoulders, in much the same way as we regard the demise of textile manufacturing, except that while there's no obvious difference between a Chinese shirt and an Australian one, there is a big difference between American TV shows and Australian ones.The advertising money that's channelled through the networks' programming departments into local drama helps form the national character, in which case Australia is becoming a cipher, a non-entity. According to Harold Mitchell, just 9 per cent of fiction programs on Australian TV in the past 12 months were locally produced. This compares with 86 per cent in the UK, 56 per cent in Germany, 47 per cent in Italy, 31 per cent in France and 21 per cent in Sweden.
To take an example in a slightly different area, I watch a lot of French films. That's not because French films are inherently good, but because they produce so many that some are bound to be the type that I like. In contrast, Australia currently creates so little television drama that it's not unexpected that there is nothing that I like.
The Evatt Foundation shows the great disparity in size with the USA, Australia's main source of entertainment.
Over the past 5 years Australia has produced on average 34 feature films per year worth about US$100 million, while in the same period the US has produced an average of 656 feature films per year worth about US$10.8 billion.Australia has 28 commercial free-to-air television stations affiliated with 3 networks; 2 national public broadcasters; and 5 subscription TV operators offering up to 56 channels. In the US there are more than 1,500 TV stations, most of which are affiliated with 5 major networks, and 9,000 cable TV systems.
Finally, the Screen Producers Assocation of Australia has an article about the reduction in funding and drama output of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Of 17 OECD countries surveyed about levels of public broadcasting funding, Australia came in at 16th, behind countries including Belgium, Ireland and New Zealand.
I've previously noted the lack of funding for the ABC. That's just one component in the globalisation of entertainment which could lead to the situation of people going for overseas holidays and seeing the same old stuff on television everywhere they go.
After doing all the hard work in setting up the WAFL Grounds interactive map, I decided to go the whole hog and expand it to cover AFL grounds too. All of the current playing arenas for the Australian Football League are indicated, as well as a few of the recently vacated grounds.
Changing demographics and generally lower crowd support have forced West Australian Football League (Aussie Rules) clubs to relocate to remain financially viable. In the last few years various clubs have moved some kilometres from their original bases, but their location-based names have remained.
This has resulted in the current odd situation of East Perth's home ground being in West Perth, and West Perth now playing out of Joondalup, over 20km North of Perth. In addition, home grounds are being renamed after commercial sponsors instead of their locations. To assist confused supporters I have created a WAFL grounds map, showing current and recent WAFL home grounds, the names of stadiums and the clubs that are based there.
Update 1-July-2006: Changed map location.
Doctor Who has developed a reputation for its low budget special effects. Whilst recently watching some of Peter Davison's 1983 episodes I noticed that the TARDIS console display looked suspiciously like it had been generated by a BBC Micro. Did the BBC use a cheap home computer from 1981 to simulate the advanced computing power of hundreds, even thousands of years into the future?
The Twin Dilemma, broadcast in 1984, was the first storyline of Colin Baker's era as the doctor. Either by accident or design, a brief sequence during this program actually showed the BBC Basic and assembler code used to create the console display. Luckily, I managed to capture a few screenshots with which to remember this momentous occasion.
Here is the doctor, in rather bland garb, and his assistant du jour, Peri. The accompanying shot is of this episode's terrifying aliens, the Gastropods.
(Click on screenshots for larger pictures)
This is the command centre which contains the display of interest. The woman closest to the camera is "operating" the display.
I've transcribed the code below. If you want to have a play with BBC Basic then you can try an online BBC emulator written in Java, but note that the code given here is incomplete, and that you may need to tinker with the key mapping option to produce all of the BBC's keystrokes.
The code we can see is just the final lines of a display program. Up to line 400 it's in assembler, which I would guess is to be the procedure that does the actual printing to screen. Lines 410 to 610 are the definition of a procedure called title. This calls PROCdisplay a number of times, which is presumably the assembler procedure that we see the end of above. You can even see the RUN command at the bottom of the screen, ready for someone to press Return.
TA&7A
360.AP:LDX&78:LDY#0:.AD:LDAM%,X:STA(&76),Y:CLC:
TYA:ADC#8:TAY:DEX:BNEAD
370CLC:LDA&76:ADC#1:STA&76:LDA&77:ADC#0:STA&77
380DEC&7B:BNEAQ:CLC:LDA&74:ADC&82::STA&74:STA&76:LDA&75:
ADC&83:STA&75:STA&77:LDA#8:STA&79:.AQ:DEC&7A:BNEAP
390CLC:LDA&72:ADC#1:STA&72:LDA&73:ADC#0:STA&73
400DEC&7F:BEQAZ;JMPAA:.AZ:RTS:J:NEXT:ENDPROC
410DEF PROCtitle
420REPEAT UNTIL INKEY(0)=32
455Xsize=4:Ysize=4:YOUR$="_______":PRINTTAB(6,7);:
PROCdisplay
460Xsize=4:Ysize=4:YOUR$="X,V,773":PRINTTAB(6,6);:
PROCdisplay
461REPEAT UNTIL INKEY(0)=32
465Xsize=2:Ysize=2:YOUR$="LAST LOCATION: 27:43":
PRINTTAB(0,14);:PROCdisplay
466REPEAT UNTIL INKEY(0)=32
467Xsize=2:Ysize=2:YOUR$="LAST CONTACT: 12-99":
PRINTTAB(0,20);:PROCdisplay
470REPEAT UNTIL INKEY(0)=32
475Xsize=2:Ysize=2:YOUR$="_______":PRINTTAB(2,29);:
PROCdisplay
480Xsize=2:Ysize=2:YOUR$="BELIEVED DESTROYED":
PRINTTAB(2,20);:PROCdisplay
520FORW=0to 463:NEXT:
610ENDPROC
>RUN
If you want to decipher the code, and you are not that familiar with BBC Basic, you should know:
A% is an integer variable named AR$ is a string variable&76 means hexadecimal number 76DEF PROCexample ... ENDPROC is a procedure declarationPROCexample calls the procedureREPEAT UNTIL INKEY(0)=32 means pause until space is pressedPRINTTAB(X,Y) sets up where on screen the next text will be written, with (0,0) the top leftHere's the output, which unsurprisingly does what the code specifies. If you look carefully you can see the angled bracket on the end of the bottom line where the computer is waiting for more input. The picture on the right shows the screen in situ, on the far left of shot.
The very next storyline had the exact same occurrence, but with more advanced graphics. Here are the doctor and Peri again, as they appeared in Attack of the Cybermen, and the code itself, which appears for only a couple of frames.
I have copied as much as I can make out below. I have also annoted the parts that involve special BBC Basic commands. In reading the code, note that graphics are always done based on a hypothetical screen which is 1280 pixels wide and 1024 pixels high, with the origin (0,0) at the bottom left. This is distinct from text mode, which has an origin at the top left.
870X%=A%*SINB
880Y%=B%*COSB
890MOVE0,0
- fill a triangle between specifed point (X%,Y%) and last two points used in plotting actions
900PLOT85,X%,Y%
910NEXT
1090
1100ENDPROC
1110
1120
1130DEFPROCGRID
1140
1150
- redefine graphics origin to point (0,0)
1160VDU29,0;0;
- redefine colour 1 (red) to be absolute colour 7 (white)
1170VDU19,1,7,0,0,0
- set graphics colour to 1 (red)
1180X=5:GCOL0,1
1190LOCALX:LOCALY
1200FORX=0TO1275 STEP1275/N
1210FORY=0TO1020 STEP1028/N
1220MOVEX,0:DRAWX,Y:NEXTY:NEXTX
1230FORY=0TO1028 STEP1028/N
1240FORX=0TO1275 STEP1275/N
1250MOVE0,7:DRAWX,Y:NEXTX:NEXTY
1280
1290
1300
1310
1320ENDPROC
1330
1340
1350
1360END
RUN
This is the grid being drawn with its vertical lines first, from left to right. Then come the horizontal lines, from the bottom up.
Finally, you can see a circle being drawn out of triangles, which is probably done by the bit of code before line 1100. In the actual storyline, this denotes the location of the cybermen's transmitter.
I wonder if the BBC's innovation in using a common household microcomputer to produce effects for its leading science fiction program of the day was noted at the time. If not, then it's not too late to redress the balance, and praise their skilful use of meagre resources to produce a memorable program.
