From local wankers to global citizens
The channels we’re watching TV on are stateless and global, but if we abandon our support for local content, who will be left to tell the stories that only we can tell? Tyler Greer makes the case for supporting local TV content.
I’m old enough to remember Paul Hogan before he was a divorced, international movie-making tax dodger.
He was funny. Real funny. Aussie funny. My favourite of his creations, Leo Wanker, was a wanna-be stuntman with a handlebar moustache and fearless approach to danger. His attempts at stunts would always end the same way: disaster for him, tears of laughter for me.
Today, even the name ‘Leo Wanker’ seems so puerile as to be tragic, but at the time that name embodied something uniquely Australian.
It’s lucky we have tax payer funded platforms like ABC and SBS to tell local stories like SBS has done with the locally produced Viceland. Oh wait!
‘Which media buyer in Australia would not pull at least some spend from free-to-air and place it on Nextflix if they could?’ Yes, and why? To get away from endless episodes of The Block, MASH, The Bachelor and other recurrent mindless crap. That’s why. It’s about quality.
More people browse images on Google (‘Google Images’) than Pinterest. (Somebody told me to download the Houzz app the other day to scroll through idea’s for an upcoming reno… I asked them if they were mad: “I search Google Images”.)
‘Content’ isnt just text. Companies who sell fashion, homewares, building products (enter further industries here), must align with a decent Google Images strategy. Google will serve up your images nice and fast. People will pin your images. Make them easily found by Google and of a size that works for the user and hey presto.