It’s almost becoming a weekly event. Rupert Murdoch says something about the future of media, paywalls and electronic newspapers, and the Guardian has a go. Today, it’s the turn of Jemima Kiss, who in an article entitled Murdoch: Tablets are the future for News Corp reports that “Rupert Murdoch was cosying up to Apple again today as he spoke at a media debate,” (of course, the Guardian wouldn’t be seen dead releasing an iPad article approximately once every three seconds) and argues that “in the long term, the thing that will be harder to calculate is the cost of losing much of [the Times’s] voice in the international, online news market. That’s the bottom line we’d really like to see.”

It’s far better, presumably, to obliterate the cash reserves the Guardian has built up over decades by relying too much on ‘free’; the Guardian may have a bigger voice now in international news, but that will only last as long as its pile of cash does.

I’m no fan of Rupert Murdoch. I think his attitude towards the likes of the BBC is abhorrent, and with the exception of a few talented columnists, the Times isn’t a publication I’m interested in reading. However, my gut tells me that Murdoch’s gamble might well work; he’s taking a risk in saying to people that news and related content is worth paying for if the format is good enough. This will add value to his brand rather than diminish it. And when in the future rivals realise he was right, they’ll be fighting to enter a market Murdoch’s already leading in.

Gary Marshall links to a surprisingly candid and lengthy piece by Nigel Whitfield on the state of reviews for the tech press. If you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes and don’t know a freelance journo you can get drunk enough to reveal all (and, let’s face it, that means you just don’t know a freelance journo, because most would sell their souls for half a stout and a packet of peanuts), it provides plenty of insight.

Particular gems include the rather brutal fact of reviewers having a lack of time. Whitfield notes that half-page reviews may pay as low as £80, and if you spend a day screwing around with a product to get it to work, before spending a day testing it, you’re rapidly heading below minimum wage. The reality is actually worse: £80 isn’t a bad rate at all these days, and many freelancers earn less than half of that for a half page, and so get £30 to £50 to fully review a piece of software or hardware (including sourcing imagery, writing the review and editing/marking up said review). Online, things are even worse, with some websites offering as little as £10 for a 500-word review, images and HTML mark-up of edited content.

These days, the only way reviews can be financially viable is if the reviewer already has enough knowledge to get through testing reasonably efficiently. That’s why you tend to see the same people review the same products quite a lot, and it’s also why you sometimes find an obvious flaw isn’t flagged in a review: the reviewer likely had to knock testing on the head after spending twice as long on it as they’d initially wanted to, in order to make enough money to do trivial things such as paying the rent, buying food, and the like.

Still, there are times when I get teeth-gnashingly angry about errors in review copy. John Gruber found an absolute gem over at Information Week; Eric Zeman pitches the iPhone 4 against the Droid X, and rather oddly says that “The iPhone 4 won’t support applications built in-house by businesses,” which therefore “gives the Droid X a slight advantage when it comes to apps”. Given that every single Apple keynote on the iPhone has rattled on about its enterprise app capability, and also that Apple has a section on its website about this functionality, this is one of those times where I feel zero sympathy for the writer.

It’s one thing missing an obscure fact, or incorrectly stating how a feature works, but to in a business magazine incorrectly state a device you’re reviewing lacks business-oriented functionality when an explanation of said business functionality is accessible by typing “iphone enterprise apps” into Google is unprofessional, incompetent and totally unfair on the article’s audience.

It’s not a big surprise when a right-wing think-tank bitches about the licence fee, but they’re not usually so transparent as to say: “We love Sky. Sky makes us feel funny in our happy place. We really really think the BBC should be just like Sky.”

So congratulations, Adam Smith Institute, where the BBC you hate so much was kind enough to report your boneheaded views:

It says continuing with the public subsidy will lead the broadcaster to be scaled back and “diminish its contribution”. To be fair, this isn’t entirely inaccurate, but only because governments and Rupert Murdoch bang on about the ‘evils’ of the licence fee so much. The Tories are desperate to marginalise the BBC under the guise of ‘value for money’, which will, inevitably, lead to it being scaled back.

But let’s think about the subscription model. The BBC would suddenly have to become competitive in every way: pricing, market-share, popular television. In other words, it would have to become another Sky, otherwise it’d lose the income it needs to survive. This would most definitely lead to it being scaled back and diminishing its contribution.

The report singles out the success of Sky with its subscription model, adding that the BBC could have “the global presence of a Hollywood studio but with a wider range of output”. Sky is now in around ten million homes, but for the majority of its life it’s had little serious competition. Even when Virgin arrived, Sky was the major player and with Virgin totally capitulating towards Sky recently, that looks set to continue. The BBC would not enter a market in the same fashion as Sky, which offered people lots of US shows at a reasonable price, the alternative being terrestrial television. It would enter a market fighting both against Sky and Freeview.

Again, the only way it could possibly survive as a major player would be to ditch the niche and go with the popular; if the BBC stayed as it was, it would become utterly marginalised—the television equivalent of a critically acclaimed indie studio, rather than a big Hollywood player like Warner Bros.

The BBC should be given a fixed sum of money from the government to cover any initial losses, it suggests. I’m not sure how a ‘fixed sum’ can cover loses, unless said fixed sum equates to the money the BBC would have gotten from the licence fee, but there you go.

The institute has also called for what makes up the essentials of public service broadcasting to be redefined. Sounds great, although these guys don’t seem to understand that public broadcasting services are more able to service the public in a meaningful manner when they aren’t commercial entities.

It currently includes areas such as news and children’s programmes, which would remain free under its proposed new system. But hang on—you’ve already said the BBC’s going to have to scrap its licence fee and will only temporarily get government money to make up some of the shortfall. Now you’re saying that it will have to pay for news and children’s TV for no return, out of its diminishing pool of resources? What a great idea!

Advertising on the BBC is not ruled out in the report, but it acknowledges the broadcaster would prefer advert-free forms of revenue. Man, if only the UK currently had a really good company that offered a great range of programming, news and children’s TV, radio and web services, and all entirely ad-free, for a reasonably low monthly fee. HANG ON A MINUTE!

David Graham, the former BBC producer who wrote the report, said he hoped his findings would encourage “serious debate at a critical time”. I’m also hoping his findings will encourage former BBC producer David Graham that coming up with some actual arguments might be nice, rather than banging the old ‘poor value’ drum again and again. This is particularly tricky when those you’re trying to convince bother to do the sums and find out how little the BBC costs.

“It really is going to be very difficult for the BBC to resist the justifiable hostility of other competitors who just now, receiving no subsidy, have to bear the whole brunt of the… competitive market, cycles that go up and down,” Mr Graham told BBC 5 live. And now we get to the crux of it. Those poor commercial channels! It’s so unfair that they have to deal with the cycles that go up and down when the BBC gets huge piles of cash for doing nothing apart from: providing loads of programming that isn’t considered commercially viable by other channels; creating niche output that is world-class and that commercial channels won’t touch; offering the closest thing the UK has to impartial news, since it doesn’t need to deal with advertisers; getting the bulk of its output from the UK, rather than grabbing from an ever-diminishing pool of quality US output. (We’re already seeing UK channels being forced to buy second- and third-tier US shows. Sooner or later, we’re going to be importing the dregs. Surely, it’s better to make more British television, but, hey, that doesn’t work terribly well when it comes to making huge profits for commercial organisations.)

Also, cycles go down and up. When the commercial companies are making money hand over fist, I don’t hear them complaining.

“You know ITV up against BBC really hasn’t a chance in a difficult advertising environment and that really shouldn’t be allowed,” he added. OK, so in a tough financial climate, we should hamstring the BBC, because ITV can’t cut it? ITV’s problems are, of course, nothing to do with ITV choosing to increasingly concentrate on terrible mass-market programming that leaves it unable to differentiate itself from all the other garbage channels now available in the UK. It’s all the fault of the BBC!

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has indicated his support for continuing with the licence fee, but last month suggested it could be cut from the current £145.50 after the next negotiations. ‘Culture’ Secretary Jeremy Hunt wants to kill the BBC, but thinks it’ll be more fun for it to get a death of a thousand cuts.

The spokeswoman for the BBC Trust, which represents licence fee payers and governs the BBC, said: “The trust welcomes the fact that the current government has expressed its support for the continued existence of multi-year licence fee settlements. But, frankly, we wish they, Hunt and Graham would go screw themselves, and realise that £2.80 per week for everything the BBC offers is, in reality, a huge bargain.

The iPad’s a confirmed success. Apple can’t make the things fast enough, and they’re vanishing from shelves worldwide. Another thing that’s vanished is the ‘pad’ jokes, comparing Apple’s device to sanitary products. This sort of thing tends to be the case when a device is successful—the same thing happened to the Wii.

What’s more interesting is how ‘pad’ now might become a generic term over ‘tablet’ for similar devices. Engadget reports that HP’s filed for the PalmPad trademark and Pocket-lint notes that RIM’s grabbed Blackpad.com.

These might be defensive moves, but perhaps these companies are bright enough to take advantage of Apple’s branding success, using names that would immediately get consumers thinking of the iPad, but selling devices that are more ‘open’ or more geared towards enterprise. That said, don’t expect Microsoft to reveal the Windows PhonePad 7 any time soon.

On the Societal Web, Alison McClintock examines the reasoning behind modern corporations using software to find disgruntled customers online. As she rightly points out: “There’s no such thing as a lone complaint in cyberspace and businesses of any size and sector should take note.”

I agree with this, and it’s interesting to see this modern take on customer service in action. I’ve bitched about various companies on Twitter, and had responses from support teams, leading to swift resolutions, which is great. There are, however, two problems. The first is when a company’s systems aren’t fully integrated. It’s great for someone to reply to you on Twitter within five minutes, but decidedly less great when they tell you to email a certain address and you don’t get a response. Secondly, if this process is being automated—as is increasingly common—everything goes wrong very quickly.

Recently, I said something on Twitter about the BBC licence fee costing less per month than the standing charges on my BT bill. Taking that text in context, there’s no reason for any company to respond to me. Sure enough, though, a BT ‘bot’ chirpily replied to the tweet, asking me if I needed help with my bill. This is a nuisance, and shows that, as with any other area of customer care, you actually have to take care to make it work. Scouring the internet and helping customers is a good thing; having bots run rampant and respond to vague keywords in an out-of-context manner is not.

Hat tip: Ian Betteridge.