Cracker: A Whale of a Tale
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@Gio
and his job is not just to read things
@jeremy
what is this autoreader guy getting
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What are the salaries at tvnz?
Market rate I imagine.For someone I know there, a couple of people retrenched in her department hasn't given her a pay rise, just a bigger workload and whatever she gets, it aint about the money or her worth. However, she is worth millions to me if that was a measure, but I don't generally move in those circles and really, to want to know salaries is a bit gossippy/ trash mag, don't you think?
Right I'm off to drink, as you were :))
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and his job is not just to read things
What are their jobs then? And bear in mind I say that after having sat through the thing where Judy Bailey explained what her day was like.
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I agree sofie that it's an embarrasing subject for a lot of us, the old salary. .. but with no real figures in this particular scenario how do I know what the costs of labour are in television. How do I even begin to enter into a fiscal debate over this when it's all too embarrasing to talk about.
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Seriously, I can't be arsed. The whole news-readers-have-no-skill-they-just-read-words-and-get-paid-too-much is really really tired an really really old. I'm happy enough for the conversation to devolve into 'what is wrong with teh medias' (despite 'crying bucketfuls' over it, apparently) but really this bit is just boring. Be as disingeuous as you want with the "it would help my budgeting exercise" and "I was only calling them newsreaders", but if you can't accept the bile lying behind those two phrases I quoted before, then that's me done.
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lighten up damian.
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just talking on the web, sorry if i tangled up your feelings. have a great night.
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Damian: RNZ rates very well against other stations. I seem to remember them having the highest ratings: about 10% nationwide. (Gosh, that's a lot of liberal academic blog-readers!)
One thing that always gets my goat is the proposed costs of a public service TV station and news operation. I remember people throwing around a minimum of $80m a year, and a lot more to set up.
I think that's tosh.
Well, if you got TVNZ to set one up, that's probably a minimum it'd cost them. But having worked for CTV for its first three years- a very very cheapo TV station- and watched while TVNZ, suddenly enthused about regional TV (they had access to CTV's books) managed to quickly drop $50m bungling the same sort of operations (remember Horizon? No? who does!)- I can't put any faith in their figures.
I'd look at it differently: how much is a govt willing to spend? And lets see what we can get for that. There are many relatively cheap existing- and more emerging- ways to do the actual broadcasting, which takes a big chunk out of the set-up costs.
I bet there are a good number of journalists and producers who'd love to get involved in stories that lifted the stones and rattled the bones.
The effect of one public broadcaster can be to raise the game- and the terms of public discussion- across the board. Worth getting passionate about :)
edit: oh bother- about 20 posts in the last ten minutes, who can keep up? not me! -
How about his seniority and his ability? The fact that he can actually interview people, and his job is not just to read things? Do these things no longer count? Is it all about the blasted paparazzi now?
There's no doubt Geoff's a fine journalist and an NZ institution. That said, I'd not entirely dismiss the skill associated with fronting the news as just reading an autocue. I have family who read the news albeit a while back and they had done the ropes as journalists for many years first. Perhaps it's changed now, but it used to be that you couldn't get near the autocue until you'd done years of other journalistic work.
... that said, Paul Henry's approach annoys me no end. He's a boorish, oafish, juvenille git ... perfect for breakfast TV clearly...
I watched NZ's Q&A on the weekend when I was briefly back in NZ, I thought Espiner was quite good.
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The whole news-readers-have-no-skill-they-just-read-words-and-get-paid-too-much is really really tired an really really old
It's not what I said - and furthermore you know it's not what I said. Geoff Robinson does what our newsreaders do on television, and on top of that he interviews people, which is bloody hard. And his programme is longer. And he gets up every morning at god knows what hour. And he's been doing it for many years, which ought to count, remuneration-wise. Yet somehow reading the news is more valuable. And there are fewer people who can do it as well as what Robinson does. (That has to be the assumption behind the whole "what the market will pay" thing - these people have to be damn near irreplaceable, if the theory holds.)
I was trying to point out that what Robinson does is very valuable, not de-value what newsreaders do. All the bile has been supplied by you.
Really the narrowness of what can be questioned is quite amazing.
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. . . but I don't generally move in those circles and really, to want to know salaries is a bit gossippy/ trash mag, don't you think?
When you can't visit the dairy/gas station/supermarket without running across at least one billboard/magazine cover touting this week's trivia about Smuggy Buzzcut's contrived doings, all with his and TVNZ's obvious connivance, it seems a perfectly fair question.
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Interesting discussion - and I am continually grateful we have this space for it. I fully understand the structural nature of the problem and I agree that individual staff can't fix those. However..
I don't accept Henry is a bully. I don't consistently see him marginalising people, like you claim. I really don't.
With all due respect, Damian, that says you’re simply not paying attention.
Sometimes he can be a dick.
But never to someone *like you*. Paul Henry consistently picks on only marginalised social groups – just like other bullies do. You won’t see him putting down white business men or sports people – or anyone who he suspects could hand him his arse on a plate.
Where do you think the well-publicised flood of complaints come from? It’s not because he’s some misunderstood charmer. I respect the talent involved in keeping a live conversation going (not the same as reading an autocue by a long shot), but that doesn't excuse being a nasty cowardly prick.
My reaction to this stuff is coloured by my own experiences. I no longer really accept that a bully can be excused
Same (and it might explain the "name-calling", Marcus). I’m not saying Paul Henry is a workplace bully. However tolerating his bullying behaviour on our only morning tv show does damage. It sets a social climate about what is ok and it affects the choices individuals make, including in the workplace. That has real consequences and it causes real, costly - and completely avoidable - pain.
If there were dozens of comparable channels (especially ones that seed the news cycle), it wouldn't matter so much. Fortunately that's the way things are heading, so those who insist on a diet of braying and bullying for breakfast will be able gorge to their heart's content without the acid piss spraying on everyone else's cornflakes.
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oh bother- about 20 posts in the last ten minutes, who can keep up? not me!
Reckon - I've been trying to post that for about 4 pages.
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Damian
I don't accept Henry is a bully. I don't consistently see him marginalising people, like you claim. I really don't.
OK I accept that. All I can judge is what I see on the screen. To me it seems like bullying and as I’ve said I’m sensitive to it so I may just be over-reacting.
To assume that he bullies his co-workers assumes they feel bullied, does it not?
Actually no. Very often people being bullied, and this is especially true of women, assume the blame is their own. I am not saying this is the case with PH but it is common to find bullied people who have no idea that the treatment they get is anything other than normal and acceptable. And yes that is bizarre and sad and yes I agree it sounds like social workers creating a problem where there is none but I have seen it in action. If you don’t buy that from me then please do some research. I can dig up some links for you if you want them, but it’s not a fun subject.
But fine I bow to your experience and your contact with his co-workers that he is not a bully. But equally you have to accept that I perceive his actions on screen as appearing to me to be bullying.
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Really the narrowness of what can be questioned is quite amazing.
I've actually been educated by this thread, in a general sense. I don't mean it personally, because it's as widespread as anything - but there are norms about "what is", and questioning those norms is seen as outrageous.
Again, I say that I respect people who produce content day in and day out under deadline. It's hard work. But that doesn't mean we can't question the entire model under which they produce that content.
It seems however like discussions in NZ have so far happened in a discursive space in which only tinkering around the margin is considered an acceptable thing.
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The effect of one public broadcaster can be to raise the game- and the terms of public discussion- across the board. Worth getting passionate about :)
I'm certainly not going to argue against that Rob. I think we may have got that by stealth via TVNZ 7, but time will tell. And it'll need to keep moving forward.
I didn't mean to knock RNZ. I listen to it heaps. But based on your figures, 90% of people don't. (The radio market is crowded. Most people for some reason choose to listen to ads).
I suspect that if we had a well produced well funded commercial free television service available to everyone in the country, it would rate about that too, maybe up to the 15% ABC gets in Oz.
I wouldn't suggest trying to do anything at bargain basement prices though. Cheap TV looks cheap, and after years of all the slick stuff out there (even if it's dross), it's very hard to watch stuff with low production values. Cheap radio can still sound fine if the person holding the microphone asks the right questions.
Although I do think that arguing about creating new public television networks in 2010 is a bit like the discussion going on about the future of NZ Post. It's a bit late, isn't it?
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What are their jobs then?
Can I gently point out that fronting two and a half hours of live television every day is not actually easy? Most people couldn't do it, and certainly not in a fashion that would attract several times the audience of the opposition.
This really has come down to hating people on the telly.
Well, not just the telly. Kyle declared that Paul Holmes has no talent as a broadcaster. Whatever his indulgences, however annoying he might have been, he arrived at Newstalk ZB when it was in the shitter, Merv Smith had left for the opposition and the Breakfast show ratings had tanked. He turned that show into a phenomenon.
And while I would consider listening to Newstalk Breakfast if you paid me, I certainly wouldn't do it out of choice. But, along with horrors such as the Edge Morning Madhouse, it provides something that ordinary people (some of whom don't even have university degrees!) want to listen to in the morning. They may well find Morning Report dull and alienating. Lord knows I do, some days.
Just to add the the horror, I'm happy to say that I learned things from Paul Holmes on the television -- in particular, his willingness to acknowledge that he was sitting in a studio talking to a camera. People just didn't use to do that here.
Anyway, do feel free to be indignant when someone else (on Kiwiblog, perhaps) complains about the salary attached to a job of which you approve.
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Can I gently point out that fronting two and a half hours of live television every day is not actually easy?
Argh! I'm not saying it's easy! I'm saying that what Geoff Robinson does is also not easy and arguably requires *even more* skill.
This really has come down to hating people on the telly.
No, it really, really hasn't.
Anyway, do feel free to be indignant when someone else (on Kiwiblog, perhaps) complains about the salary attached to a job of which you approve.
If you're still referring to me, sorry, I think everyone should be paid the same except for dentists and toilet cleaners, who should be paid twice as much as everybody else.
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This really has come down to hating people on the telly.
Oh rubbish.
Speaking of which.
Anyway, do feel free to be indignant when someone else (on Kiwiblog, perhaps) complains about the salary attached to a job of which you approve.
Rubbish collectors are paid a fraction of their worth. Again, I borrow from Giovanni.
And some people are paid far too much. Disliking that is not equivalent to disliking them as people, although there is a convergence when they appear to do a bad job (just as a collector who consistently spilled rubbish on my lawn could be considered to be bad at their job).
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Double post.
Giovanni: snap.
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It's not what I said - and furthermore you know it's not what I said. Geoff Robinson does what our newsreaders do on television, and on top of that he interviews people, which is bloody hard.
It is. But in some ways, television is considerably harder. There are a lot more people involved at any moment -- three camera operators, a director and his assistant, the lighting guy, the soundie, the floor manager, the autocue operator, the producer(s) -- and what they do doesn't count for anything unless you personally get your shit together.
That said, I don't know how anyone doing daily interview radio does it. Any kind of live broadcast presenting is remarkably exhausting. That's why so many of the people who do it are maniacs.
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Poor old Shane, the scarlett letter of sex on his jacket forever. I did have sexual relations with the hotel tv.
Oh, bullshit. If Ministers of the Crown want to exercise themselves with grossly over-priced PPV porn that's their affair. But surely they can easily afford to self-finance their masturbation-fodder from their own far from niggardly salaries?
I also think it's entirely fair comment to point out that politicians are quite happy to denounce public sector "cultures of waste and extravagance" (to coin a phrase). It's not the wanking, it's the hypocrisy and entitlement of expecting us to pay for it that gets on my tits.
I don't begrudge Ministers eating and drinking within reason (though if you want a soothing beverage at the end of the day the extortionately expensive minatures in hotel mini-bars aren't exactly cost-effective). But porn? Come on -- on what Bizarro World would a sane person think that's a reasonable use of public money?
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To me this thread is just the usual suspects throwing around some ideas and you and Damian taking the usual flow of banter very personally.
The salaries were raised by damain i think, I was just curious to know what people earn at that level, I've never earnt a lot of money and the statistics n.z seem to indicate most people don't. Can't we ask?
I know racists, sexists, homophobics and they are all very charming to me, buy me beers and everything, even though i tell them that they are mental.
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Oh rubbish.
That was what I talk from all that "autocue reader" stuff, and various other comments in this thread.
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(Although in the real world where the salaries of newsreaders have come down - which I welcome - I will note this: what does it say about the industry that Hawkesby in his day was considered such a prized scalp? Because surely, even though he was very good at doing a difficult and demanding job that I couldn't do in a million years if you got Cronkite himself to coach me, he still *was* at the end of the day the guy who read the news. Not the editor. Not the reporters. Not the interviewer. Not the producers. So what does it say about how we understand the TV news that TVNZ felt that if they lost him they would lose the viewers? That the viewers would go with the guy who read the content as opposed to the guys who made the content available to him? Does it mean that they had dumbed the product down enough that the face presenting it had become the only value added, the only recognisable difference? How bloody insecure is that?)
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