Bogan's Run

For the first time in my life, I’ve ordered satellite TV. I did used to think that calling up and saying “I’d like a subscription to the home of Boganism, and a lovely dish on the wall please” was right up there with saying “I’d like my leg cut off” and “I’m a bloke, I’m an occer, and I really love my VB”. But, in this ever shifting universe, I’ve finally come to the conclusion, that there are worse things that could happen, than sticking a Sat dish on the side of a 150 year old house. Three things have made me decide this.

• The lack of a TV aerial in the house, which makes for certain domestic tension.


• The complete lack of anything worth watching on domestic Australian TV.


• The huge internet costs that come about from watching decent TV from the UK, via the BBC iPlayer in Australia – the land that unmetered interweb access forgot.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the incredulous voice from India, when I called up the Foxtel call centre, asking for the most basic of basic packages, which gives you, well not a lot to be honest, but at least the basic terrestrial free channels and BBC World. It’s very hard to track down this basic package, as the awful Foxtel website hides away the details, and instead will only let you sign up for one of the major channel packages – at 100 dollars a month – but if you call up, you can force it through. So long as you have an iron will and nerves of steel, to put up with the pit-bull like sales drones. I was asked 8 times – 8 – to reconsider. “But sir... surely you want sports?” “Commonwealth games?” “How about if I sign you up and you can see if you like it?” “There are a lot of well packaged options” “There is a great package of film channels” “I hear you sir, but everyone watches sports?” Who is this everyone? Really?

That really gets up my goat.

I mean, really? It isn’t me. Although I see from today’s AFR that 80% of Foxtel’s 1.6 million subscribers take sports. And that the commonwealth games coverage costs an extra $85. I ended up just begging the guy to give me BBC World, with no HD, no extra recording boxes, no extra boxes in any other rooms, no extra anything, the most basic of basic channels I could get. Honestly – Australian Pay TV makes buying a TV licence in the UK seem like the bargain of the century.