AJ Sadauskas@timrichards It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend a while ago. She was nostalgic for the days when everyone woke up to the same news each morning in the Sydney Morning Herald, and watched the news on ABC each evening.
Except that's not how it was. If you're in the city, there were just the four main channels, with four radio stations for folks over 40 and four for everyone under 40.
In the country, it was often worse. The one commercial broadcaster and the ABC. The one FM station, the AM station, and Radio National.
Most people watched Kerry Packer's TV news and read Murdoch's tabloids.
Movies came out in cinemas six months after the US.
Beyond that? Better hope your local video shop has a copy and no-one else has rented it. Better hope your local record shop has a copy (which wasn't always guaranteed, even for the older albums of popular artists).
As Aly points out, we still can have large mass culture events now if enough people are genuinely interested in a thing. Barbie and the Matildas show it loud and clear.
But it's by choice when it happens, because lots of people like the same thing, rather than because it's the only choice on offer.
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