Not since the Nine Network controversially removed the “dots” from their logo in 2006 has there been so much debate over a television network’s identification. Or any logo for that matter.

This week, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) revealed that its network of television stations, hitherto known generically as “ABC-TV” are in for a name change and an identity makeover. This fuelled a rumour that the iconic ABC logo, which has been in use since 1965, would disappear from our screens.

I knew that a change to the familiar lissajous curve ABC logo would spark some discussion. I didn’t expect that The Australian newspaper would see the matter to be of such national significance to warrant a page 1 cover story! The Australian‘s Michael Bodey claimed this morning that “the (ABC’s) looping ‘squiggle’ logo will be taken off air after more than four decades in favour of a younger and fresher brand.”

As it turned out, The Australian and Mr. Bodey were wrong. Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, Director of Television Kim Dalton flatly denied that the logo was to be abolished and expressed frustration at The Australian’s erroneous reporting.

The ABC is planning to re-badge “ABC-TV” as “ABC1″ to better align the network with its digital-only sister station “ABC2″. The naming follows the convention used by the British Broadcasting Corporation and makes sense in light of news that the ABC is planning a children’s channel to be called ABC3. These changes would obviously involve a new set of idents, but not an abolition of the ABC logo.

The ABC has one of the most widely recognised corporate logos in Australia. Along with the Nine Network’s dots, both are renowned across the country. Abolishing the ABC logo would be as crazy as abolishing the Nine “dots” was, surely?

Back in 2005, the Nine Network was losing ratings and talent to the rival Seven Network. So Nine decided a re-brand was in order and the “dots” were dropped.

The dots dated back to the opening of Sydney station TCN9 in 1956, and were so successful as a corporate identity that they even spread to Nine affiliates such as Darwin’s NTD8, Newcastle’s NBN3 and Wollongong’s WIN4 that didn’t even broadcast on analogue Channel 9! Yet in 2006 they were scrapped in a multimillion dollar “corporate makeover” that sparked considerable controversy in media circles. The move was a branding failure and after 18 months, the ‘dots‘ are back with a vengeance.

Unlike the Nine Network, the ABC is aware of the value of its logo and so won’t make the same stupid mistake. The Australian newspaper (and a blog) released a “leaked logo” for ABC1 (shown below) but ABC management told Crikey that the logo is incorrect. The new “ABC1″ will be launched on Monday 4 February and the ABC is refusing to release the official ABC1 logo until then.

Some commentators have suggested that having “ABC1″ on analogue Channel 2 may cause confusion, however this will only be an issue in the major capital cities since ABC television is broadcast on other channels in the regional centres. And most people will probably cope anyway as the station will still be available on VHF Channel 2 (or whatever frequency it had previously broadcast on in any particular district).

I’ll watch with interest to see how successful the launch of the new-look ABC1 and ABC2 are. I do wonder if the “incorrect” ABC1 logo wasn’t leaked to stir-up media attention (and thus free promotion) for ABC Television ahead of the re-branding?

Christmas is again approaching, and as is the tradition here at The Grapevine it’s time to celebrate with an article!

I always enjoy this time leading up to Christmas as the city comes alive with festivities and there is a general air of happiness and charity across Melbourne.

One of the best Christmas practices is in fact a tradition that goes back many centuries. The lighting of advent wreaths in our churches is a simple but elegant way in which the weeks are counted during Advent. The wreath contains four candles – three purple and one pink – and as the weeks pass a new candle is lit until the week of Christmas. Seeing the Advent wreath always gives me a sense of happiness, as it marks the coming of Christmas.

A Christmas wreath suspended from the ceiling of St Francis Church.

As always, the traditonal Myer Windows are popular in Melbourne. The theme for 2007 is Uno’s Garden, a children’s book by Graeme Base (ISBN 0670041912). All of the window’s in Myer’s Bourke Street store have been dedicated to recreating Base’s story about striking the correct balance between development and conservation. The display is excellent and I decided this year to view the windows in the evening when the queues are much shorter. I suggest you do the same!

A mother shows her child the Myer Windows at night.

One of the nicest Christmas displays this year was one that I found by chance. When visiting Federation Square, I walked past the BMW Edge Theatre Hall. Therein I found a giant spiral Christmas Tree made of LED lights that lit the whole room. It’s simple elegance was so captivating! In fact the whole Christmas display at Federation Square was really interesting with different types of decorations spread throughout the main atrium. They’re well worth a look as well as the giant Advent Calendar on the eastern ‘shard’.

The Christmas Tree at BMW Edge,Federation Square.

Perhaps the most elegant of Christmas displays can be witnessed in the former Commercial Bank of Australia Banking Chambers at 333 Collins Street.

The original portion of this amazing building was constructed in 1891 and features a barrel-vaulted ceiling, granite columns, giant arches, elaborate wrought iron gates and a shiny marble floor. In the centre is a huge Christmas tree.

With the ornate plasterwork as a backdrop, this really makes for an elegant scene indeed.

The festive interior of 333 Collins Street.

Of course there are many other Christmas displays across the city. As was the case last year, the John Mockridge Fountain Wall is the backdrop to a “nativity panel” which consists of metal cut-out lettering quoting the parts of the bible describing Christ’s birth. This looks really amazing at night, and with the nearby giant Christmas tree adds much Christmas cheer to the City Square site.

The “Nativity Wall” illuminated at night.

One of the disappointments is that the City of Melbourne Council has again decided to recycle the same cheap-looking stars suspended from the overhead tram wires. These are used every year and I really do feel that these fail to express the joy of a city’s celebration of Christmas. I am hoping they’ll be replaced with something better next year.

Dull and boring: Melbourne’s streets feature these uninspiring stars.

Despite the dull stars, Council can be forgiven on account of the delightful Christmas lights display in Hardware Lane. This is an annual tradition that goes back many years, but the festive lights really look great along the narrow laneway that serves as a popular café spot in the city centre.

I’ll end this post with a photo I took earlier in December of a bunch of Santa’s running down the Bourke Street Mall. The Santa’s were raising awareness for UnitingCare’s Giving Tree, it turned out. Anyway, I found this spectacle rather amusing!

Santa’s running down the Bourke Street Mall.

Merry Christmas everyone!

This was a big weekend in the life of a.d.online – the entire website was relocated from the USA to Australia. What am I talking about, you ask? Web hosts, of course!

I have been running this website since July 1998. In that time I have moved on from from a “look at me, I have a website” website (as was the novelty in those days) to progressively building up the site’s content to create something useful that people can enjoy.

Initially the website was hosted on Tripod– a free web host that was all the rage long before MySpace was invented.

But as my website, and my ambitions for it grew, I eventually decided to go “professional” and get a domain and paid web hosting. In 2003, I registered the domain www.adonline.id.au and my website was transferred to Kangaweb on US-based servers. And there it stayed until this weekend.

I plan to roll out some new features in the coming months. As I was researching the requirements for these new components, I realised that my current hosting arrangements couldn’t support what I had in mind. So it was once again time to move house.

After careful consideration, I settled on a local company called Jumba. Jumba operates Australian-based web servers, which means for visitors from Australia and South-East Asia, the website may load a bit faster than it used to.

However, for most visitors there will be no immediate difference in the website. The design is the same, the URL is the same and the features are all the same for now. As the site is expanded in coming months, I will hopefully deliver a range of improved services and content that you will find enjoyable. Until then, it’s business-as-usual.

And how was the move? Fairly straightforward to be honest.

Nearly everything travelled across without a glitch and the change in DNS records was impressively fast.

The only real drama was the Australian Radio Online website, which was using a particular PHP script to serve media content. This didn’t function on my new server, so I had to implement a new delivery system that took about two hours of fiddling-with to correct. As this is the most popular part of my website, it was an immediate priority.

The only other problem was a minor and peculiar one…. the images from just one News Desk post didn’t make the journey. Replacements were quickly uploaded, so no dramas there.

If you notice any problems or faults with any parts of this website, feel free to contact me via the Feedback Form. Otherwise I look forward to bringing you a progressively richer website in the coming months.

The Prime Minister announced yesterday that the Commonwealth Government would be selling its remaining share in Telstra. The government will sell around $8 billion worth of its stock in October this year, whilst the remaining shares will be transferred to the Future Fund for a later sale.

I believe this decision is against the national interest.

The problem all starts with the proverbial ‘tyranny of distance’. Australia has a population of 20 million spread across a landmass the size of the USA. Providing telecommunications for sparse rural populations is unprofitable because the cost of infrastructure vastly outweighs revenue. In the past, government-owned Telstra paid for rural infrastructure with the profits it made in city markets. More recently, a Univeral Service Obligation was imposed on the partially-privatised Telstra to protect these unprofitable services.

That was fine whilst the government was the majority shareholder and could run Telstra as it saw fit. But if Telstra is fully privatised, then the government surely relinquishes control as well as ownership? And in an open marketplace where the other telcos are allowed to pick-and-choose which regional markets they want to trade in, there is a compelling argument that says that a USO is an unreasonable imposition for one company to take.

Of course, the removal of the USO would be devastating for many rural communities, and so it makes one question whether privatisation is really a good decision after all. Surely if the government wants these services to be provided, it should pay for them? Or just run the company as it always has. After all, there was a reason why Telstra was government-owned in the first place.

Telstra owns most of Australia’s telecommunications infrastructure, which is a legacy from its monopoly days. The price Telstra charges to rivals for use of its network is regulated to ensure competition is promoted. Whilst this may be good social policy, I don’t believe it is fair to ask this of a privatised company. The government is effectively asking Telstra to subsidise its rivals.

It has been suggested many times that Telstra should be split into a retail company and an infrastructure authority, the latter managed by the government. The government-owned authority could charge all the telcos (including Telstra) for use of the network, and in turn provide a universal service. Such a system could be easily operated on a commercial basis at no expense to the taxpayer, and would ensure that critical upgrades were made to the system. The retail part of Telstra could then be privatised, if so desired.

Telstra management has been complaining bitterly about the cost of regulation on its profits. On 4 August, Telstra announced that it was pulling out of a planned $4 billion programme to install a nationwide fibre-to-the-node broadband network. Apparently, an agreement could not be reached between Telstra and the competition regulator about the price Telstra was allowed to charge its retail and wholesale users for use of the new network. So Telstra decided to abandon the plan altogether and for now Australia misses out.

As reported in The Age recently, a World Bank study showed that Australia’s average ADSL speed of barely 1 Mbps is one of the slowest in the world. By comparison, the average in Britain is 13 Mbps, 8.4 Mbps is standard in France and 6.8 Mbps typical in Canada. The Australian Internet Industry Association believes that 80% of Australians will need to have access to 10 Mbps+ broadband by 2010 for the nation to remain competitive.

Broadband is today what the railways were 150 years ago – a vital piece of infrastructure critical to the development of the nation. And whilst that infrastructure can be privately provided, it is sometimes in the national interest for the government to take the lead and make it happen. In the case of broadband, this means replacing the copper network with fibre-optic to enable high-speed internet connections for all Australians. For reasons of economic advancement, industry competition and equity of access, this network should be installed and paid for by a government-owned authority, if not Telstra. A privately-owned Telstra will only build the network if it can charge what it likes (and therefore wedge out competition). And if Telstra won’t build it, no-one else will.

For all these reasons, Telstra should remain in majority government ownership and control. Ideally, the Commonwealth Government, through Telstra, would orchestrate a share-buyback that would amount to a re-nationalisation of the company. Realistically, this is not going to happen.

So there are two options for the government at present: either sell its 51.8% share or retain it. From a purely financial standpoint, selling the shares is a mistake. Telstra shares peaked at $9.50 in 1999. Now they are worth about $3.50 a share, and are apparently still losing value. With the shares being so cheap, does a sale now represent a good return to taxpayers? Arguably not.

To ensure that rural services are maintained, broadband services are improved and competition in the telecommunications sector continues, Telstra should remain in majority government-ownership and split. A government-owned Telstra could be used as a tool for growing the nation, just as it was in the past.

Today was the big day: After three-and-a-half years of blood, sweat and tears, I submitted my PhD thesis to the School of Graduate Studies. In return I received a trophy in the form of a congratulatory yellow balloon on a stick!

Everything progressed very smoothly in the end. There was no last-minute panic, no rushed paragraph writing, no late nights and no last-minute crisis at the printers. In fact, the only problem was one graph that did not print for some reason. But that was easily remedied.

The thesis will now be forwarded to my anonymous examiners for their assessment. I don’t expect to receive a result for another three to four months.

With my yellow balloon in hand, I realised that my days at the Faculty of Land and Food Resources are now over. The “real world” now beckons, with higher wages and even greater expectations!

The Faculty of Land and Food Resources building, University of Melbourne.

I have enjoyed my three years of intense study, although I am keen on a rest before returning to work. I have learned a great deal and gained many valuable skills.

Studying a PhD has been a most worthwhile experience and I now feel a great sense of accomplishment.