Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: DUM DUM DA DAT DA DAT DADA DAT DA DAT DA!!

Chris Bell

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:49:33 +1200

I couldn't quite find the right place to post this, but is anyone else having trouble viewing recent video content on the PA site?

I'm running Internet Explorer 7.0.5730, and the last few clips are just showing as image placeholders.

I have no option to show the file, open or…

Joe Wylie

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:08:54 +1200

Genuine New Zealand English was certainly stigmatized, and seldom heard in the media up through the 70s. And yep – there was accent training, at least for the NZBC announcers – aiming toward RP as a model.
But we're over it now, happily – and lots of our media personalities,…

Kumara Republic

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:07:32 +1200

"It's our New Zeeeeeland. We're so proud to be here. We bring the best – the very best to yooooou!"
I can't remember all of the lyrics to the rest of the song, but it had bits like "from this lovely land of ours" and "from mountains high, to lakes…

Leigh Kennaway

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 21:47:37 +1200

As long as we can all turn up in whatever we were wearing when we first saw this great piece of cinema!!

Jason Lea

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:45:10 +1200

Here is an article by a Hostess at Expo ‘70

James Griffin

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:16:15 +1200

Oh my goodness... I'm having a Life On Mars moment.

It's 1970. I'm 8. Standing with my parents in a really long queue outside the New Zealand pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka.

Inside there are three screens. Amazing. And that music. And all these images. And all these Japanese…

Robyn Gallagher

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:08:15 +1200

I found a few clips on YouTube of old TVNZ opening promos and I've made a post with them over on Our Tube.

Is this the influence of This Is New Zealand?

Jen Hay

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:40:49 +1200

Genuine New Zealand English was certainly stigmatized, and seldom heard in the media up through the 70s. And yep – there was accent training, at least for the NZBC announcers – aiming toward RP as a model.

But we're over it now, happily – and lots of our media personalities,…

Russell Brown

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:22:03 +1200

Top information from Chris Mitson, formerly of TVNZ News and Current Affairs:

There's a Simon Walker interview with Muldoon you've never seen and probably never will.
As a Christmas spoof the TVNZ programme "Dateline Monday" put Walker in the studio to reprise the famous interview and taped Walker in a…

Russell Brown

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:17:56 +1200

From memory, this played when TV started each morning – kind of the opposite of the Goodnight Kiwi. I don't think it was an except from This Is New Zealand, mainly because it looked newer than something filmed in 1970.
But I bet it was directly inspired by This Is…

Russell Brown

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:14:30 +1200

Re the film – I'm too young (b 1970) and yet I immediately knew what Russell was talking about. So I must have been shown it some time in the 70s.

The money shot has been excerpted on TV quite a few times over the years, so maybe it's that.…

Joanna

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:13:49 +1200

But not the spelling stratum, Steven?

(I'm not normally quite this petulant, but you know who else calls me Joanne? The NAZIS)

Marcus Neiman

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:13:25 +1200

Good point about the absence of the urban. NZ (and Australia) are two of the most urbanised countries in the world but I'm guessing relatively few people's heartstrings as NZers or Australians get routinely pulled in such a maudlin way by images of Onehunga or Karori or wherever else.

Stephen Judd

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:08:41 +1200

May have preceded that. Karelia is entrenched in my psyche, alps are in there, but the overriding memory is a rushing river in the bush.

Me too. Joanne, I was 20 in 1990, and that stratum of brain cells is still fairly functional.

Joanna

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:58:14 +1200

Robyn and Heather – are you sure youse guys aren't describing the old Toyota ads that used to screen circa 1990?
Welcome to our world, won't you come on in...

Heather Gaye

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:30:13 +1200

"It's our New Zeeeeeland. We're so proud to be here. We bring the best – the very best to yooooou!"

May have preceded that. Karelia is entrenched in my psyche, alps are in there, but the overriding memory is a rushing river in the bush.

Robyn Gallagher

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 15:25:00 +1200

Ha, I think that's it! Soaring music over the alps first thing in the morning while waiting for the cartoons to start...

"It's our New Zeeeeeland. We're so proud to be here. We bring the best – the very best to yooooou!"

I can't remember all of the lyrics to…

Stephen Judd

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:40:13 +1200

Re the film – I'm too young (b 1970) and yet I immediately knew what Russell was talking about. So I must have been shown it some time in the 70s.

Re the accents – didn't the NZBC of old put a lot of work into imposing some sort of…

Emma Hart

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:35:43 +1200

Or possibly when the TV schedule started in the mornings?

Ha, I think that's it! Soaring music over the alps first thing in the morning while waiting for the cartoons to start...

Heather Gaye

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:14:09 +1200

Now, I'm pretty sure I'm to young to have seen This is New Zealand, and yet it sounds really familiar.

Same. I remember a short clip – sweeping NZ landscape accompanied by the same piece. Did that, perchance. play at the pictures before the main feature? Or possibly when the…

Robyn Gallagher

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:44:42 +1200

that film, and that sequence, probably had a major impact on the way I have seen my country since.

Now, I'm pretty sure I'm to young to have seen This is New Zealand, and yet it sounds really familiar.

So this makes me think that it's not just Russell that…

Jeremy Andrew

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:54:55 +1200

My Grandmother became afflicted with a more or less permanent phone voice as a result of the years she spent working as a telephone operator back in the days when the calls were connected by moving plugs around the switchboard. I had always wondered why she sounded so much posher…

Simon Grigg

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:30:13 +1200

You can even hear it change over the years in some of the long-term presenters like Angela D'Audney.

which was one of the reasons, as I recall, Pete Sinclair clicked so well with a generation. He didn't try...he simply was and he sounded like it. Oddly, when he moved to…

Ben Austin

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:23:23 +1200

Jeremy, phone voices made NZ great, which no reasonable person could refute, surely!

That Muldoon video is great. Nearly 15 minutes of conversation about the differences between possibly different types of Soviet naval vessels. Anyone else find it almost surreal to see a news item / interview without any humour…

Emma Hart

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:19:59 +1200

Yeah, that interview would have been about the same time I was getting smacked over at school for 'talking posh'. I quickly munged my own accent in order to fit in better. There was definitely still an 'accent hierarchy' around in the seventies and eighties.

Jeremy Andrew

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:11:15 +1200

Ben – snap, phone voice mockery.

Russell Brown

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:10:51 +1200

Walker (feel free to kick me if I'm wrong) was South African born, Oxford educated. It was the Brian Edwards/ Ian Johnstone/Austin Mitchell etc. era of imported accents.

Ah. I had an idea he wasn't born here, and Googled around a bit but couldn't find it. Walker, BTW, ended up…

Jeremy Andrew

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:09:59 +1200

Trying to claim that those who speak 'differently' is an affectation is itself an affectation imho.

If the people who speak differently are purposely speaking differently from how they usually speak, its an affectation. If they normally speak that way it ain't.

However, if the broadcaster doing the hiring specifically…

Ben Austin

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:08:38 +1200

I don't think those accents were affectations either. Many people take speech training while at school if they enjoy public speaking or their parents believe it useful, so for them (and I include myself in this group) this type of accent is how we speak in formal situations. It is…

Sara Bee

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:08:19 +1200

Boy do I remember that movie – I think I must have seen it 3 or 4 times, at least twice with school classes. I lurrved it then, and I'm sure I'll love it now. What would I have been wearing? Very possibly a pink and burgundy crocheted poncho and…

Deborah

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:02:28 +1200

Dammit! I can't get Finlandia out of my head now.

Michael Stevens

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:01:06 +1200

Following on from Joe Wylie, I don't think the accents were affected at that time at all.

People have always used a wide range of pronunciation. I don't see any great merit in the broad kiwi vernacular, or anything wron with it either. Trying to claim that those who speak…

Joe Wylie

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:55:03 +1200

Walker quoted at length, in the affected accent New Zealanders used in broadcasting in those days

Walker (feel free to kick me if I'm wrong) was South African born, Oxford educated. It was the Brian Edwards/ Ian Johnstone/Austin Mitchell etc. era of imported accents.

Peter Darlington

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:48:15 +1200

TVNZ CEO Rick Ellis and Theresa Gattung met to discuss Telecom operating the kind of cacheing network this kind of distribution requires. It was not a very happy meeting, perhaps because TVNZ's view was that Telecom should do the decent thing and peer with all other networks at the regional…

Russell Brown

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:41:09 +1200

Good to hear the fundraiser went well! Those of us with family members with autism will welcome this new addition. My brother-in-law is now in his early thirties and severely autistic. In the 1970's there wasn't much help around, let alone recogntion of the condition. Thanks Russell.

After I spoke,…

Andrew Smith

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:32:46 +1200

Good to hear the fundraiser went well! Those of us with family members with autism will welcome this new addition. My brother-in-law is now in his early thirties and severely autistic. In the 1970's there wasn't much help around, let alone recogntion of the condition. Thanks Russell.

Public Address

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:32:46 +1200

Discussion from blog post.