AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Grant]

So she knew something was up which was why she drove past at three am? But the murderers had dismissed her so she wouldn't have a key.

We need more research into exactly how she was sacked. I'm asking Chat GPT

[Mick Harper]

You're jumping the gun. We don't know whether she was the housekeeper. Remember, Monroe had just suffered some sort of mental collapse and her 'doctor' had advised her to live in an ordinary house in an ordinary LA suburb--but just round the corner from the doctor!--'to get in touch with the real Marilyn'.

Now that is potty in itself. Not as a therapeutic measure but as a practical one. Can you imagine the second most famous woman in the world (after the Queen) living somewhere that allowed anyone to ring the bell and say, "Is Marilyn in?" Except after the housekeeper had gone home, it would be, "Oh, Marilyn. Glad you're in..."

That's where ChatGP should start.

[Mick Harper]

So now we proceed to (a) make sense of the known facts while (b) de-fanging the conspiracy theory aspects. If we accept that Marilyn Monroe was simultaneously a valuable property and an embarrassment to various parties we might put together this scenario:

1. She is set up in a nice house in a nice suburb, handy for work, friends, doctor etc
2. The house is provided with discreet security externally and modest assistance internally
3. One night everything goes pear-shaped and Marilyn does a Jimi Hendrix
4. Everybody is scrambling to protect their backs
5. In co-operation with a mildly corrupt LAPD.

I think that just about does it. The only loose end is the identity of the people who 'set it up'. Candidates include: the studio, her actors agency, the doctor, the Mob, the Kennedys, the government, her Ratpack friends and herself.

That would be a matter of public record if anybody had been prepared to dig hard enough at the time. Maybe even now.

[Wile E. Coyote]

It looks to Wiley, (after a quick look) that it was an accidental death, but caused by severe medical malpractice, in which the houskeeper/personal assistant was also complicit.

Similar to Matthew Perry.

[Mick Harper]

This was huge at the time. Were the authorities so incompetent as not to uncover such skullduggery with the whole world watching? Even if they couldn't prove it, it would have been the (un)official explanation.

It doesn't explain why the housekeeper was around at 3 am nor why her nephew repaired the window at 5 am. A mere doctor would not have had the co-operation of even an LAPD-on-the-casual-take.

The Glazier's Story, it occurs to me, ties in with the missing key and the drive-by lit window. I should like to know the last definite sighting of -- or phone call with -- Monroe since the death might have occurred much earlier. Now we are in Chappaquiddick territory!

[Mick Harper]

I've had a coupla days letting this swirl around my mind. There's only one thing that pulls everything together, the studio.

As I understand it, the 'studio system' signs you up for relative peanuts, you have to do (say) three pictures a year, for seven years. You can't work for anyone else and you have to abide by reasonably onerous 'life' rules.

If you're a bust, you get cut; if you become 'bankable' you have to work for rookie money for half your working life. You have to make the films they say or you can be loaned out to other studios to make their films, whether you want to or not. It's just like the NFL.

Now Marilyn's mom is known to be clinically insane. Maybe she is too, maybe she just can't handle being a star, maybe she is just chafing against her contract. Whatever it is, she's going off the studio rails big time and she's the studio's biggest property. So what do they do?

They provide her with a house, a house doctor, a housekeeper, discrete security which includes tapes of what's going on in the house. All of which is testified to, sort of, but if it becomes national news the studio will be for the high jump. Marilyn's the world's sweetheart, never mind dead Kennedys'. Someone's got to pay.

Splish, splash, splosh, it ain't gonna be the studio. And if anyone even bigger than the studio (and/or the Mob) says otherwise, they've got the tapes. So it is a conspiracy theory after all. And unless I get a brown envelope pronto I'm going to write it all up on this website I operate, gazpacho?

[Mick Harper]

I was watching a Youtube about the last British manufacturer of train wagons--I won't give the URL in case this is too specialist for youse guys--when I thought I recognised the name of the company, W H Davis.

Sure enough, when I googled the name, it turned out there was a Welsh poet called W H Davies we had to study in primary school because he was a fave of one of our teachers. Or maybe that's too specialist for youse guys. If so, I apologise for wasting your time.

[Mick Harper]

But this goes some way to explaining the charms of Youtube. You would think, given the number of channels fighting for our attention, everybody's interests would be catered for. But we all know this just isn't so. They are all competing at the next level up. Even the level above that. We might call it 'the general interest, segmented'.

I can just about imagine a programme on W H Davies, the poet. More likely ten minutes about him in a BBC-4 doc about Welsh poetry, but even that would be a stretch. I cannot imagine a cable company coming up with anything so worthy.

Even though train buffs outnumber poetry enthusiasts by a fairly wide margin, there's not the remotest chance of twenty minutes being devoted to W H Davis the last wagon-maker in Britain. It might get a two-minute why-oh-why at the end of a news bulletin if it closes down.

So how has Youtube changed all this? /more

[Mick Harper]

All media have one overarching problem: connecting with an audience. This is normally overcome by using gatekeepers. They control the input and the output in such a way the audience will find them.

This has one overarching problem: the expense of the process means not much output and hence not much choice for the audience.

Civilisation is largely the history of finding cheaper and cheaper ways to produce 'stuff' and hence more and more choice for everyone. Blah blah all the way up until the internet.

Now, everyone was potentially 'media' but you had to be your own gatekeeper if you wanted to hook up with an audience. And basically nobody had a prayer of doing this.

Hence the emergence of what we might call 'enabler-gatekeepers'. They made no attempt to winnow on the production side, it all went out willy-nilly, good, bad or indifferent. In fact they didn't even bother to check.

[Mick Harper]

I'll be able to carry on with my YouTube musings now I've had some advice from Virgin

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

So now finally to the essential USP of YouTube. It is not so much that it is free for the consumer (though I pay a tenner a month to be rid of ads) as the content is free for YouTube. Imagine being the owner of a media conglomerate that gets everything for nothing. It's like being the managing editor of Pravda in the old days. But without the Politburo editorially managing you.

That's what makes YouTube the ideal gatekeeper. They're a gatekeeper that doesn't need to guard the gate. It doesn't cost them anything to put it out so why bother? It all goes out.

Of course there have to be squillions of people prepared to work their arses off creating stuff for no (discernible) reward but it turns out to be a vox populi-type situation--being on the telly is reward enough. You sign the disclaimer, you don't ask for an appearance fee.

The upshot of YouTube is that everyman can now speak unto everyman. There are a thousand people out there making daft programmes about trains and a million daft people only too glad to watch them.

I should know, I'm on both sides of the divide. Though I make brilliant YouTubes that nobody ever watches so it's not quite the same. But I thank the Lord I can try, just on the offchance I'll land a mackerel. It'll see me out.

[Mick Harper]

CNN News Update

"We have in the studio a foremost expert on the use of military strikes as an an adjunct to diplomatic negotiations, to assess the latest manoeuvrings in the Strait of Hormuz. Marjorie Taylor Green, what in your view is the President trying to achieve by..."

[Mick Harper]

The tradition, established in the days of Logie Baird, is that you don't watch World Cup games live unless they're mega-important, you watch the daily highlights show. Religiously.

The format never varies. Both BBC and ITV (you choose your poison) set up HQ's in the host city and everyday they put out an hour-long highlights package. This consists of between five and fifteen minutes devoted to each match played that day (depending on its importance) followed by an analysis of each by your regular twerps pretending they know all about South Korea's back four or Bolivia's eccentric manager. Then it's

[Mick Harper]

Today's Telecommunications Quiz

You are the CEO of a huge integrated telecoms company, providing internet, cable TV and telephones to millions of people. You hear that many thousands of them, living in the heart of your nation's capital where a great many influential people avail themselves of your multifarious services, have been deprived of all these things because of a glitch in one of your company's systems.

In the post-mortem you are told that, even after four hours, nobody in your company was even aware of this. Telling exasperated customers to 'try turning it off and on again to see if that has any effect'. How do you word your letter of resignation?