Today’s big news is that the Communications Minister wants to postpone the changeover to digital TV until 2010. Considering that it was originally meant to be next year, somehow I doubt that another four years will be enough. You can just sense the subtext: “the new date is 2010 … or maybe 2012 … or heck, possibly 2018.”

Lots of papers are claiming that changes to media ownership laws, announced in the same package, are the real big news. Actually, those changes are all unsuprising, and would be fairly reasonable if they didn’t completely miss the mark. Witness that in the 47-page discussion paper, the word ‘Internet’ appears only 7 times.

Meanwhile, I’ve been following the news of Alinta Ltd‘s takeover plan for the Australian Gas Light Co, mainly because my parents own Alinta shares. Yesterday, Alinta’s new man Poynton sent letters to all his shareholders asking for their support. Today, AGL played plagiarism by photocopying Alinta’s bid and claiming it as their own (right down to saying 1 / 1.773 = 0.564 shares in AGL for each Alinta share). I wonder if they ever got caught back in uni?

Given the debate over media issues, it’s amusing that today’s West Australian quoted analysts who said AGL were being ridiculous and Alinta clearly had the better leadership, while in AGL’s home town the SMH quoted analysts nodding sycophantically and saying “why yes, the east coast market is very different to life in Perth”. Best of all, you have to rely on a Murdoch paper to get a balanced view of it all.