Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: The Future of the Future

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  • giovanni tiso,

    A lot easier to hide a USB TV card than a CRT television set.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Danielle,

    Heh, I once recommended against hiring this guy based on the fact that he mentioned that he was a fan of Coronation Street.

    Am I allowed to get vaguely GRAR about that? No? Dammit.

    (Not that anyone who doesn't watch it is likely to believe me, but Coronation Street is a very, very good show. The acting is 95% excellent and the characters have depth and consistency; even given the soap opera format, it allows for odd thematic things like 'ugly people on TV'; 'older people with important storylines'; and 'addressing working-class concerns'. It's also camp as a row of tents, in parts, and - really, no lie - hilariously funny sometimes. Deliberately.)

    Charo World. Cuchi-cuchi!… • Since Nov 2006 • 3828 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Am I allowed to get vaguely GRAR about that? No? Dammit.

    You so are. I was timing you, getting concerned.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    And by the way that's something I shall never be able to share with you guys (I think?) and that speaks to what Russell was saying earlier about a less monocultural future. We didn't use to have English soaps when I was a lad, but Brazilian soaps - did we ever. Some of them were absolutely sensational.

    I only watched them to keep company to my gran, you understand. Ahem.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • philipmatthews,

    Not that anyone who doesn't watch it is likely to believe me, but Coronation Street is a very, very good show. The acting is 95% excellent

    The other 5 per cent being the bloke who plays Dev.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2007 • 656 posts Report Reply

  • Rob Stowell,

    Already many are turning off- and the Cognitive Surplus being re-deployed. When we do watch, we'll tend to watch- and make- specialised content, when and where best suits us.
    Funding will tag along, a few years behind. Advertising and (in NZ) government subsidies will continue to prop up traditional FTA for some time after the ratings (which are hardly beyond criticism) disappear...
    Some future NZ government will then re-invent public broadcasting. The BBC will stop their silly policy of only streaming to the UK... and NZ politicians will once again try to figure out ways to subvert the independence of their new creation. :)

    Whakaraupo • Since Nov 2006 • 2120 posts Report Reply

  • Martin Lindberg,

    Am I allowed to get vaguely GRAR about that? No? Dammit.

    Of course you are ;-) The guy in question did actually get the job. I later told him about my concerns about him watching Coronation Street. He then tortured me for years by telling me in detail everything that happened on the show.

    Consequently I now hate the show more than before.

    Stockholm • Since Jul 2009 • 802 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    We didn't use to have English soaps when I was a lad, but Brazilian soaps - did we ever. Some of them were absolutely sensational.

    A friend of ours becameso obsessed with Brazilian soaps to the extent that they became the subject of his MA thesis.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • philipmatthews,

    I later told him about my concerns about him watching Coronation Street.

    What would these "concerns" be? Just wondering.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2007 • 656 posts Report Reply

  • 3410,

    ... and NZ politicians will once again try to figure out ways to subvert the independence of their new creation. :)

    Auckland • Since Jan 2007 • 2618 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel,

    Grammarginalia...

    ...or however you spell yer dipthongs

    dipthongs = Speedos©? (or Crocs©?)
    diphthongs = æ, oi, ou, ea...

    We have to watch our aitches in NZ now!
    ;- )

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    So what do we all think of Coronation Street's new titles and -- gasp! -- re-recorded theme tune?

    Debuted yesterday in Britain.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel,

    So what do we all think of Coronation Street's new titles...

    surprised they didn't get Lily Allen or Dizzee Rascal vocal track added (for da kidz)...
    and gosh that looks like real exterior shots!
    at least there is still a cat on the roof...

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • Martin Lindberg,

    So what do we all think of Coronation Street's new titles and -- gasp! -- re-recorded theme tune?

    Agh! To quote Frank Zappa: "The torture never stops"

    Stockholm • Since Jul 2009 • 802 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes,

    Better to keep money coming from general taxation which is at least partially progressive.
    A licensing fee now would probably be at least $200 to raise anything meaningful, which is a lot for a low income family.

    I sort of agree but how many of those low income families pay up to $90 a month to watch Sky TV? We all complained about the licensing fee but are quite willing to pay for Sky.
    I still don't understand why our "Public" Tvnz has to return a profit to the treasury, I think somewhere along the line, someone lost the plot. It's supposed to be the other way round, surely?.

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes,

    We have to watch our aitches in NZ now!
    ;- )

    "Young man. Where are your aspirates" Asked the Master.
    "Why Sir?. Ave ya got a nedache?"

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • Steve Barnes,

    Heh, I once recommended against hiring this guy based on the fact that he mentioned that he was a fan of Coronation Street.
    Such blatant prejudice - I'm guessing he was ginga as well?

    And worked for OKI and believed that music sounded better through Monster Cables?.
    Coro. as it is referred to by its acolytes, was one of the reasons I left the UK. You can understand my disappointment with the Antipodes.

    Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report Reply

  • Danielle,

    So what do we all think of Coronation Street's new titles and -- gasp! -- re-recorded theme tune?

    They should have changed it to this:

    Charo World. Cuchi-cuchi!… • Since Nov 2006 • 3828 posts Report Reply

  • George Darroch,

    "Young man. Where are your aspirates" Asked the Master.

    Our Prime Minister claims 'e 'as 'em. Aspirational for New Zealand.

    WLG • Since Nov 2006 • 2264 posts Report Reply

  • Mark Graham,

    well the debate seems to be more about content than how to pay for it, so here goes...

    Free to air requires viewers - eyeballs passively watching so advertisers can flog their wares. Narrowcast generally requires pay-to-view as there aren't enough viewers to warrant advertisers spending enough money to offset the cost of watching.

    Each show creates a loyal community and the network can sell ad packages across many brands. It's targeted content to viewers who can't find this kind of content on traditional channels.

    Good luck with that Wammo. Selling ads right now is bloody hard across any media. Budgets have been slashed and viewers/readers are down. This will change but as budgets come back, so do media options, spreading budgets (and viewers/readers) ever thinner.

    The fabled golden era of targeted and relevant advertising based on your current purchase patterns and life-stage is eons off being realised.

    Niche advertisers rarely have enough dosh to support niche channels, especially when you consider that the cost of making a commercial can be roughly equivalent to the amount these potential advertisers have to spend on their marketing.

    The whole media industry is in a period of crisis as the impact of internet technologies and new delivery devices, combined with a world-wide recession, detonates on the players.

    Do I sound depressed? Being a media owner (albeit small) ain't easy right now and is unlikely to be for some time to come. And the answer is 'yes'.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 218 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    So what do we all think of Coronation Street's new titles and -- gasp! -- re-recorded theme tune?

    Nothing either way. Though I'm sure Steven Moffat and Murray Gold are going to appreciate the distraction from the "you've raped my precious childhood memories for the last time" nerd-gasms over the seventeenth re-arrangement of the Doctor Who theme.

    Not that anyone who doesn't watch it is likely to believe me, but Coronation Street is a very, very good show.

    Oh, I'm quite happy to believe you -- Coronation Street and Eastenders may give me the shits, but I've got to admit you don't run for 49 and 25 years respectively, and draw the best part of twenty million viewers on an average week in the UK, unless you're doing something right.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • Robyn Gallagher,

    So what do we all think of Coronation Street's new titles and -- gasp! -- re-recorded theme tune?

    Completely outrageous - the jaunty undertones of the music and spots of bright colours in the scenes imply that life is worth living and that one needn't slit one's wrists.

    Even the ginger cat seems to be coming down from the roof and join in the fun down in Weatherfield. They're probably having a street party.

    Since Nov 2006 • 1946 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Campbell,

    Anyone else remember the introduction of colour TV - they advertised it by showing the cricket ... not because cricket was so compelling but because it was so green.

    (puts on TV geek engineer hat)

    One of the problems with the the way that the colour information was dropped into the black and white signal to create PAL (and the US/Japan NTSC) - basically they stole a little piece of the signal that doesn't get used much, mostly for things that change quickly horizontally across the screen - that's why 'busy' things like checked ties, paisley, houndstooth jackets, stripes etc etc all disappeared from popular fashion replaced with large solid colours (think about the 80s ....) mostly because they looked better on TV .

    The US of course chose their colour system, NTSC (sometimes "never twice the same colour") earlier than the rest of the world and for a bunch of reasons had less bandwidth to work with - this means it couldn't represent the same colour range that our system does - in particular they couldn't show that green grass - nor those saturated colours that NZ ads are full of, not only does the sound jump up on our ads so does the colour.

    Digital TV has its own problems - it's based on the same YUV colour space that our PAL is - the americans find HDTV much more compelling than we do because of all the bright colours they've never seen before - sadly the digital MPEG standard retains a lot of history, in particular 'gamma correction' - something we originally got so that our black and white vacuum tube TVs could be made cheaply - a non-linearity in the TV's CRT tubes was corrected back at the studio - we still have it and it's combination with the 8-bit YUV colour space means that most of the colour codes used to represent colour are used for bright saturated colours and very few are available for dim dark colours - you see this in noir - look at Blade Runner some time (the original DVD, not the 'remastered for DVD') those great scenes in the dark, full of drifting curls of smoke, the image breaks up into blocky artifacts because there just isn't the subtlety available in the colour space. Just like fashion changed with the artifacts of colour TV I expect movies will change, directors will avoid things that don't work well on DVD or digital TV, they depend on for downstream revenue - lots of bright colours are in our future, not so much noir

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report Reply

  • Brickley Paiste,

    Nope -- but Prime did shunt it off to a graveyard slot and stopped promoting it.

    Interesting. I thought it was one of the best I've seen. Tells you something. Keep in mind that most people watch Police Ten Seven, Boarder Patrol, Sensing Horseshit and the like. Imagine your brain if you watched this shit?

    I have never subscribed the 'crap theory' ie dismissing an entire medium because some of its content ain 't so good. Do we ever say, "some books are just a waste of paper so I never read" or " there is some horrible music around, so I never listen to anything??" So, why do some people apply this to television?

    I don't find that convincing. Television's entire purpose is to argue that some soap/chewing gum/baldness therapy is better than some other one. It's purpose is to beam capitalist ideology into everyone's lounge - and no increasingly, everyone's bedrooms.

    Imagine if Goebbels saw this? He'd have a boner for months.

    Books do lots of things. Television doesn't. It asks nothing of you except that you not think.

    Since Mar 2009 • 164 posts Report Reply

  • Jimmy Southgate,

    I suspect i'm not alone when I find that increasingly I watch less and less broadcast television.

    I wonder whether its primary usefulness nowadays is not in producing great drama that is scheduled & viewed at specific times, but rather in showing live moving pictures of something happening somewhere.

    I can't see much other use for the broadcast type of tv (whether or not its actually broadcast) than sports & news essentially.

    Other than sport, and perhaps one or two other things, pretty much everything else I watch is through a variety of time-shifted means.

    Time-shifting means I never watch advertising, so I figure the only way forward its some kind of subscription or pay per view system to finance what I like to view.

    Wellingtown • Since Nov 2006 • 103 posts Report Reply

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