I’m shocked – if there was a Most Mundane Local Current Affairs award for Australian television, Brisbane Extra would have to win it. Normally they run shows about when to prune your garden, how to wash your car, and where to buy the cheapest petrol.

And yet, tonight they ran an upbeat story on Bookcrossing, exhorting people to jump in on the craze and set their books free…not only that, but the previous story was about a local amateur ukelele craze that is apparently sweeping the suburbs.

So creatively communing with strangers and amateur creativity are now the stuff of really, really mainstream television. Is this good? Is my PhD wired or expired? Or, as I suspect, is there a disconnect between mainstream reality/TV and the super-cool of the really big creative industries?