media consumption 2010

Way back in January I worked out that we were spending around $1000 a year on print media, and that if we canned all the print media we'd have enough money to buy an ipad and some content subscriptions.

We are of course possibly unique in that we never bought the ipad but we did cancel the print media subscriptions - in reality due to my increasing irritation with the Canberra Times and the fact I simply wasn't reading the New Scientist any more rather than any great urge to worship at the cult of Saint Steven.

And how did it go?

Well, we'd kept the Guardian Weekly and Weekend Australian in the hope of slow and lazy Saturdays when you had the time to read the papers properly.

We've also got to confess to finding ourselves picking up free copies of the Canberra Times from Ziggy's or Wiffen's in the market on Saturday, but we can rationalise that.

What we did find is that we missed a morning paper, even though we just skimmed it. I found myself taking my coffee into the study for 10 minutes to start on working through the day's email before driving into work.

So when the Australian came up with a cheap summer deal for home delivery for uni staff I signed up for it, and well, it confirms we're hopelessly addicted to a daily paper. The major difference is that instead of being irritated by the vapidity and superficiality of the CT I now get annoyed by the right wing economic and political stance of the Oz.

J instead merely complains about having the syndicated London Times crossword instead of the Manchester Guardian one, and continues to pine for the Age, which you can't get on subscription in Canberra.

So I guess we're newspaper readers. What we'll do when the Oz summer subscription runs out is anyone's guess.

What is interesting is that at the same time I've basically given up listening to podcasts. Much as I enjoy talk radio, I've been finding it difficult to find time to listen properly - I think I havn't listened to From our own Correspondent as a podcast for about six months now, and have only managed one episode of the iPlayer version of I Claudius.

Reading and TV provide our downtime recreation, and strangely not because of the extra channels that have come with the digital switchover. I guess we're just simply reading more ....