Sponsor's Message

Their award winning news site remains one of the most popular destinations for Net users, most of who are drawn by the organisation's reputation for unbiased, timely news reporting and the total lack of advertising.

Of course the BBC has a real advantage over competitors such as CNN, MSNBC, etc -- and that's the fact it doesn't need to make any money -- its revenues coming largely from the public purse.

Of course this also means that it has to be very careful with its spending, since no government is going to write a blank cheque to a state broadcaster, and this is something that makes the beeb's willingness to push the boundaries even more incredible.

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination.

For example...

While the recording industry continues to work hard to prevent its wares from appearing on the Net without DRM or some kind of charge attached, the BBC broke new ground by making several hours worth of high quality classical recordings available for free download.

Also, while few broadcasters make any of their full programme material available through the Net, the BBC continues to increase the amount of stuff they effectively rebroadcast from their website.

It's a shame that we're not seeing the same levels of commitment to the Net from local broadcasters and publishers. Indeed, I was very disappointed today when I read that the NZ Herald is about to start charging for "premium content".

One of the Herald's main attractions for me (and countless others) was the fact that I could quickly search its archives for past stories, then link to those stories so that my readers could enjoy some context to what I'm saying.

Well I'm sorry but, as of November, I won't be able to do this any more.

The NZ Herald is planning to charge $3 per day (or $99 per year) for access to its archives.

The paper also thinks that some people will be prepared to pay good money to access the opinions of its columnists. Sorry, but opinions aren't really worth much today -- after all, everyone has one already.

Of course the Herald's move might be seen as creating new opportunities for other online publishers and if I had the time and money, I'd be leaping right in there to take advantage of their changed policy.

Obviously the Herald's beancounters think that the net result of their moves will be increased revenue -- and that may well happen. The problem is that they've lost what was probably the single distinguishing benefit they had over Stuff.co.nz -- and the online news market is a very competitive one.

Don't forget the sponsor!
I expect that many of Aardvark's regular readers forget that this column is brought to you every week-day morning by the kind sponsor whose message appears on this page. Sponsors are always keen to see that they're getting value for money -- so I encourage you to check out the offer that's promoted here by visiting their site. If nobody bothers then one day there might be nothing to read here :-)

Lighten Up
Time for some of the crazy stuff you can find on the net, and today it's me!

If you didn't see the episode of "The Tem Show" in which I hurled Temuera Morrison down a runway in my jet-powered dragster then download the 20MB video from this page and take a look.

Go have your say in The Aardvark Forums

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