Saturday, 29 August 2009

Mamma Medium is the Message

Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi launched a withering attack on the British Broadcasting Corporation last night, calling the corporation's size and ambitions 'chilling' and claiming that they were effectively a 'land grab' on a beleaguered media market.

Companies controlled by the family of the Italian Prime Minister dominate Italian commercial television - with a 45% audience share and over 60% of total advertising sales. This is particularly significant in a country where Newspaper readership is relatively low. However Signor Berlusconi's main concern is that state sponsored broadcasting stands in the way of any benign and well-intentioned mogul's ambition to increase his monopoly and "give people what they want."

"People do not want to listen to state sponsored propaganda," said Mr Berlusconi, speaking at a Guardian lecture last night. "Trust the people. They want a diet of gossip and pornography, except of course when that gossip and pornography involves their beloved Prime Minister Silvio, who is a stranger to this kind of thing anyway. Similarly they want to pay for good quality television on demand; they are happy to increase the profits of my media empire... except of course those cowboys of the internet 'Wild West Country' who insist on downloading pirated content and denying me those profits."

"Isn't it time that we left the 'Wild West," he concluded "to those who know how to make it bear fruit? This is not the time nor place for 'happy homesteaders' staking their claim, nor power hungry politicians and state sponsored journalists engaged in an information 'land grab'. This is territory for pioneers, entrepreneurs such as myself who believe that 'pornography of the people, by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Wrapping up the Guardian lecture Mr Berlusconi denied that this current attack on free, state sponsored news had anything to do with the fact that his corporation is about to move to paid-for news content across his empire.

36 comments:

  1. Poor old Silvio, when will they leave my good friend alone

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  2. Yeah, poor guy, no one will leave him alone, not even all those nubile young women

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  3. Its the Pope that I feel sorry for. He gave Silvio his backing and look what he has got in return???

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  4. Apparently Signor B is going to sue the Vatican for behaving like Judas

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  5. It poor old James Murdoch that I'm worried about. There don't appear to be any nice escorts around for him

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  6. Even the Vatican bishops are now bashing his bishop. They have cancelled a din dins that was planned...

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  7. That's the 'last supper' Silvio will have with the Pope

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  8. Maybe the big man at News Int can now worm his way into the affections of the big man in Rome. Although I have a feeling that Rupe might be a born again

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  9. Yeah Rupe's a born again. They don't go in for transubstantiation... although should not be a problem. Rupe can walk on water.

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  10. Whereas Silvio is porn again

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  11. I cannot believe that Murdoch really wants to charge for the content of The Sun. Most of the drivel is paid for by advertisers and PRs who infest Fleet Street nowadays

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  12. That's why it is so outrageous that the Beeb hands out news for free.
    Who's going to pay for his shite if they can get proper news for free?

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  13. Benito Frapaccino29 August 2009 at 11:02

    I love the elegance of Signor Berlusconi but I love the elegance of Rupert Murdoch even more.

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  14. I love the smell of napalm in the morning

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  15. I once had dinner with both Silvio and Rupert at an audience with Madonna a few years ago. We all thought that we might give this Kabbalah thing a go. But Madge started chanting 'like a Virgin' and Silvio became a bit anxious and ran out of the room. Rupert piped up, "you know when Silvio is getting younger, coz the virgins all start looking older."

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  16. Few people know this but Silvio has not only has plastic surgery to his face - giving him the appearance of a teenager - but he also had his scrotal sac tightened.
    Now his testicles reside somewhere in his buttocks

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  17. That would explain his permanent hard on as well

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  18. Tiberius Caesar Imperator29 August 2009 at 17:28

    Rome wasn't built in a day, I'll grant you. But nor was it screwed in a century.

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  19. I have it on good authority that Benito Berlusconi likes Gregorian chant

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  20. Oh yeah and who's authority might that have been?

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  21. Pixie Lott told me

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  22. I am angry with you people. I am Robert Langdon, scourge of the Opus Dei, and yet you do not understand the significance of Signor Berlusconi's hair transplant.
    It has been arranged with a form of patternisation that we symbologists call GodWig. Only those who are descended from Judas Iscariot wear this kind of hair transplant and it appears to me that this signifies that Mickey Mouse is to emerge (The second coming) at any moment.
    Mark my words, for I AM Robert Langdon

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  23. My name is Umberto Eco. I know for a fact that Robert Langdon's book is a form of fictionalisation of the reflex of patternistic self reference and that it is therefore not Mickey Mouse that will appear, but rather Donald Duck.

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  24. This is total BS!!!!
    Umberto Eco is not a real person. He was invented by Opus Dei to distract me from revealing to the world what Opus Dei really is.
    They will not stop until they have destroyed every last Knight's Templar on this planet!!!

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  25. This is complete and utter moronic garbage.
    For I am Umberto Eco of the University of Bologna and I don't take this kind of shit from no-one.
    Even if James Joyce came back to earth right now and told me that this religious stuff was a distraction, I would not believe him.
    Mark my words, it is not I who threaten the Knight's Templars, it is rather Robert Langdon who has been asked by Harper Collins to offer them a three book deal to reveal their history.
    The hand of Murdoch is at work, mark my words.

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  26. Please, can we give this pseudo academic bullshit a rest?

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  27. I think that you need more girls on your website. This is bit juvenile for my liking

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  28. You know what men are like once they start thinking that they're funny.
    I grew up surrounded by four brothers who would quote Python's parrot sketch eight times a day (each).

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  29. I love men and their humourrrrr

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  30. I love their humourrrrr too, but preferably before sex, not after it

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  31. Gina Lollabrigida29 August 2009 at 19:50

    God you are so right, pillow talk and wisecracks are two alien cultures

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  32. Dear oh dear, who in God's name let the frails in?

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  33. We need to get back to basics that's for sure.

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  34. I was the proverbial 'third man' and I quite possibly invented the 'third way'

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