Dad is a Fox News junkie. I even said I would get him Fox News via satellite if he liked it that much, but he has gone off it a bit now that E. D. Hill is not on Fox & Friends, and some liberal former CBS journo has taken her place. (And this is coming from a leftie.) I have gone off it since I do not see Juliet Huddy’s legs any more. (Jack’s law: the perfect woman must have ‘Juliet Huddy’s legs’ as part of her specification.)
   He’s a bit pissed off because Prime TV, which used to carry Fox News for a few hours before his bedtime, has reduced coverage to about half an hour, squeezed in between Prime’s ever-skilful programming of infomercials, airing between 3 and 3.30 a.m. It used to start around 11.30 p.m. and carry on till 4 a.m., and, once upon a time, even went straight to dawn. He used to record the lot overnight.
   Now, he just doesn’t even watch Prime. He used to catch a bit of Letterman that aired before the switchover to Fox, but now he just goes on to al-Jazeera. Methinks Prime keeps putting its foot in it: no new Top Gears for a while, and … um … well, actually, I don’t know what else it has on. Maybe some Frasier re-runs.
   I know: he could get Sky. But he doesn’t like Sky. He has had too many mates who had it, and then cancelled it, because the more channels you have, the more nothing you have to watch. And besides, while Fox News is now on Sky Digital, here is an email from the service dated July 13, 2005, when I enquired for Dad whether it would ever carry the channel:

Thank you for your email.
   No plans at present to add this channel, firstly we are currently operating at almost full capacity on our bandwidth, and Prime TV hold the rights to this channel in New Zealand.

   All of a sudden it has capacity in 2007? Well, of course. Follow the money. It realized that there were people like my Dad watching. And it decided it would try to move them to pay TV, just as it got the rights for football (that’s soccer) off terrestial television.
   The result: he just stopped watching. There’s plenty else on free TV. And if free TV goes more and more low-brow, we have our DVDs and tapes of programming from nicer times.
   I doubt Dad will ever get Sky, and as long as he has the BBC World channel and al-Jazeera, he might forget about Fox News Channel in general. Mr Murdoch would not be pleased. Posted by Jack Yan, 10:38  permalink

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