Ahh, Victoria. First you slap a court injunction on the airing of a TV show, even though it was downloaded thousands of times anyway. And now you go and legalise gambling via Pay TV.
Sure, every Aussie loves a bet. But now Victorians can love there bets from the comfort of their lounge. It’s linked with Foxtel’s Sky Racing channel, and provides detailed track and betting information on all thoroughbred, harness and greyhound meetings in Australia.
The service – due to launch in April – is only available to Tabcorp wagering account holders, who have to go through a screening process to get an account. Apparently this, plus the fact that you can pop a password on your Foxtel box, means that the channel is “secure” from underage gambling wannabes and adult gambling addicts.
Understandably, anti-gambling groups are pretty pissed off right now. I mean really, is there any need for this? Surely it’s easy enough to place a bet online without making it available through the TV as well. I mean, that extra Foxtel bandwidth could go (a small way) towards rebroadcasting Channel 7 to satellite customers. And nobody would get hurt by that. Unless they watched It Takes two, I guess.
[The Australian via TV Tonight]
In case you missed it, Channel 9′s new crime drama, Underbelly, was banned from being broadcast in Victoria by the Victorian Supreme Court on Monday as it may influence the result of a murder trial currently underway. The show is a “based on the true story” type show about the 10 year gang war in Melbourne.
But what makes this story really interesting is that within 30 minutes of it being aired last night throughout the rest of Australia, the show was popping up on torrent sites for people to download. Including people from Victoria. According to the SMH, “this morning more than 600 people were already downloading the show from one site”.
