You would presume right. It's great that CL is paying its…

I would presume that if your ratings continue to…

Very nice story, thanks Sacha.

Really enjoyed the full JC interview. Nice to get an insight into some of the pressures and demands as well as…

It'd be very interesting if Mr Roughan was forced to face these hungry kids in person. Bonus points if…

When I was a TV director I learned that lesson fast – your editor makes the programme. Your job is to bring as much…

Yes. Like Marmageddon, everyone seemed to get suckered by that one.

Like many New Zealanders I have to deal with the jokes from friends overseas (well, they're mostly jokes) about living in the past, "turn your watch back 30 years", etc. And…

I'm a big fan of that. In particular, when you make TV, you learn how much art…

I would record through MYSKY about 5 hours of sport every day. Some days a bit less, some days it'd be closer to 24 hours (like during the weekends), and then watch it back either fast forwarding through…

I think it varies from product to product. Smokers, for instance, are…

Here's a thought. The impact of advertising is both weak and cumulative. By the time you have reached middle age, your brand preferences have been set by long repeated…

It gets measured somewhere yeah, but not part of the ratings I'm quoting no. And you'd have to think it would either balance out in the end (person watches X and tapes Y, other person does the…

It doesn’t, really. I don’t agree with it, or the gist of it, but only put it forward to illustrate that just this week, while RB is applauding the great work of CL, someone else was saying to me exactly the opposite. And the key…

No, it's not actually anywhere near that much. The drop-off to the other channels is such that (in the example I used), 0.9% watch Prime, 3.8% watch ALL Sky channels combined, and 1.2% watch something else. So it's…

Yoofs always moaning about something. ;-)

That statement deserved some analysis.
If you are not poor it means you have more stuff than the "poor" which, in a far and equitable society, you actually have some of their stuff.
Money can't buy happiness…

But having seen first hand the one sided hatchet job he did on our school (twice) over school violence/bullying and the restorative process last year, which was totally unfair, I'll take…

Personally, I find it slightly more disrespectful that if you wanted to see excellent local documentaries Brother Number One , When A City Falls and an early version of Maori Boy Genius you were shit out of…

No-one who's ever done tech support for their parents is…

Yep

I wouldn't mind all the timing being faffed about if we weren't falling behind by half an hour a week, every week. But it's apparently against their religion to keep up with the UK episodes.

(Yours, Disgruntled…

So if I understand that means ~30% of New Zealanders are watching TV1, 2 or 3 at 7 pm. So how many are watching all the other channnels combined? Another 20%? Do half of…

As I've said above, these are two different discussions – not that I'm not fond of a bit of thread derailment :) But I agree entirely. What I've been…

I cite the 25-54 numbers because it’s traditional to use the demographic that channel is aimed at – using the 5+ figures almost always favours TV One (apparently due its older audience who don’t switch around as much). Also,…

You know, I've listened to so much stupid shit in my life that I thought I was…

Yup. There are 600 homes with 900 peoplemeters and that is it. Fricking voodoo programming and it's time they came clean.

Well said. Maybe it would be an idea to do an hour a week of relevant stuff, rather than 2.5…

Thanks for coming here, Graeme. That line did sound…

An Ian Wishart would have been questioning…

What I've personally been enjoying most about Campbell Live lately is them following stories over many days so we get a complex issue like child poverty or the Dotcom fiasco explored in more depth than a single segment or a news hour can…

It's entirely your prerogative to prefer one programme over another, but I wonder if you've taken…

I agree entirely.
The relationship between the fact of too few lifeboats (the company finagled shipping regulations to avoid having too many lifeboats spoil the look of the decks) the fact of poor crew training and policies that led to lifeboats being launched half empty.…

Yep, but also vice versa. Without wanting to start any firestorms, facts in and of themselves are of limited use without being contextualised, and often, narrativised. I don't think that this denigrates the status of factual information, but instead highlights the care that needs…

Bwahahahahahaha!

As a complete aside, while it is true there were too few life boats overall on the titanic that is not why so many died.

Many lifeboats were only half-filled due to time delays to guide the women and children first into boats, or…

In the sort of news I read, the buoyancy of the Titanics doors has been featuring recently.
Mythbusters and the Titanic's door

Nature of news/current affairs production is they're always selected and shaped. The integrity of the selectors/shapers becomes even more important, and over time viewers judge for ourselves where they are coming from. Any pretence of…

poetry

JC had a minor car accident on the way home from doing that…

grrrrrrr

Fact are facts. Sometimes we can get the facts wrong and that is called a mistake, which is just fine, we all make those. But don't denigrate factual information just to justify presenting human opinions.

I think your point would have been made better by noting…

You're right, Bruce, that "misanthrope" might be the wrong word. Something shorter should suffice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=monyiOsoKxg

If my memory serves me correctly, John Campbell…

And any of these types can be done well or badly.…

Misanthrope might be a bit strong, but Mr. Roughan has the rest of it pretty accurately…

Thanks John, for your comment as a whole,…

There's always politics.

Why doesn't National fund Solid Energy to keep the mine running for a few years to see if the market picks up? An ideological belief that the market is king and the state has no role in sustaining employment.

Why don't parties…

No such thing. Whenever there are people involved they will bring their values, personal prejudices and cultural assumptions to any decision. Even artificial intelligence would be programmed by humans. So usually 'objective world view' means 'aligns with mine'.

I, like most working journalists, use not only the word “story” but “yarn” (there is no higher praise for a fellow journalist than “good yarn”). As you imply, we’re using…

Good point.

And thanks for coming here and contributing, John.

Indeed. Out of his own mouth.

Perhaps for the simple reason that one without the other, hard news without soft news usually provides only half a story.

In my experience, many journalists particularly those in newspapers, pitch hard…

The fact that Roughan can write this with a straight face, on the assumption that everyone would nod and agree that this is a bad thing, is astonishing.

It's all too obvious that he's writing from the security blanket of, for lack of a better analogy, the golden curtain.

Actively pursuing news isn't the same as manufacturing it and I much prefer it to copying…

Exactly. That story highlighted the insanity of the insurance rules in a personal clear way. And it seems like they've realised they can do that really well in the time they have.

I absolutely LOVED them for the coverage of red zone life post-quake. Including the house-moving story of our own David Haywood. That's real, important stuff.

It wasn't always so, the corngate saga was terrible not because Campbell ambushed the PM, politicians should expect that and to…

You know, I actually used to admire him. He could be pretty good.

But these days his columns are sullen, mean and poorly argued. They're just embarrassing sometimes.

If it were biased towards power, then it would be propaganda.

Current Affairs on behalf of the underdog,…

That debacle was such a shame. And that was one time Clark DIDN'T…

Given the "its poor peoples fault" default of so much…

Appearing to do so while actually doing the opposite is a key skill for establishment journalists like Holmes. Supporting someone who arguably diverted the revenues of a public school into their own pockets, for instance. Those revenues, which could have…

Because well-off old white men have such a hard time getting their view across in our media otherwise. #sob

Fox news does the opposite: it reinforces the lies of the powerful.

I'm sure Campbell Live would be talking to govt ministers a lot, if the bastards would ever front. But they don't seem…

I actually like Campbell Live for another reason too: he seems to me to be the…