An Oz view of UK TV

Media Guardian provides a fascinating insight into the British TV from an Australian perspective. Former BSkyB chief Sam Chisholm - actually a New Zealander - has returned Down Under, and it seems he's missing the Old Country.

Half a world away in Australia, Sam Chisholm is missing London. He misses his Hyde Park apartment, his local boozer, the Enterprise, and Langan's Brasserie. He misses Tottenham Hotspur football club, of which he was a director. The TV executive misses English humour and manners. Not least, he misses the broadcasting. "British broadcasting is amazing," he sighs.

Chisholm has returned to Oz to run Kerry Packer's Nine Network in Australia. The last time he was in charge of Nine he created a winning culture at Nine - making it Australia's leading network - and then, in 1990, moved to the UK to turn BSkyB into a money-spinner for Murdoch.

Chisholm is described as "an admirer of the 'brilliant' branding of British channels" - he had a major role to play in successfully "branding" Sky - and on that basis is "scrutinising Nine's promos and marketing."

Interestingly, Chisholm is also an archetype of the international media-cultural axis linking Britain and the Antipodes (and, by extension, the US). He has close links with Australia's two best-known media magnates: Rupert Murdoch - at Britain's BSkyB and its Ausralian equivalent, Foxtel - and Kerry Packer, who owns the Nine Network in Australia. Although he doesn't have much direct experience in the United States, Chisholm does exemplify the type of player prominent in the new, post-colonial, global network in English-language news and entertainment media - a network that clearly includes the US, especially through the links provided by Murdoch's News Corporation.