Own Goal

Welcome to the world of SingHub; an amalgam of two separate telcos who in the process of vying for the Soccer World Cup rights, managed to alienate most fans and FIFA.

The upshot thus far is that most of soccer-mad Singaporeans will not be able to see the World Cup.

Enter the government with a new set of rules to try and avoid this type of situation ever happening again. The new law means that even if one of the telcos will have to carry exclusive content purchased by another player.

The forces of the open market have not been in the best consumer interest so it will be interesting to see what impact this law has. At the very least it will mean one less box on top of the TV.

Not that any of the above is much interest to me, as I have studiously avoided subscribing to any cable offering, either in New Zealand or here in Singapore.

I hold out for free to air television although the entertainment fare here in Singapore is very patchy and the acting pool severely limited.

Marketing Gone Bad

A much vaunted graffiti spraying (carried out by a masked man) of Singapore's postal boxes and organised by SingPost has backfired spectacularly!

Designed to 'engage with youth' the boxes in question drew horrified responses from a significant section of the population, who believed they were witnessing an act of gratuitous vandalism.

For many Singaporeans the term 'graffiti' bring back vivid memories of the delinquent, expatriate teenager Michael Fay; who went on a vandalistic binge defacing vehicles.

As Fay was a US citizen, the States objected to the mandatory punishment of caning metered out by the Singapore courts. My take was then and remains, that if you are a resident in a country you abide by its laws and if you do not, then you will be punished according to the laws of the land.

The SingPost boxes were a PR disaster for the company and are now being repainted as part of a more sedate art competition.