__"And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments…

He's just another bully. I don't have a lot of time for the Herald,…

Where "long" means October 2009?

Actually, scrub that – the Ironbridge letter above implies that part-payments were available for the previous 20 year license term.

So no great conspiracy, just Granny playing tabloid instead of…

The facts are as follows: In mid 2009, the radio industry negotiated a lease renewal for the spectrum used for broadcasting radio signals in NZ. Unlike the previous 20 year lease, the Government initially requested full payment upon the lease commencement in October…

nice work. mine asked, "if ur planning to legislate to use rape as a method throughout corrections, will it only apply to men, or are women to be included?

likewise, as yet no answer.

TV1 News has a rather revealing comment from Joyce at about the 30s mark of this 2m clip:

"Tipping the whole radio industry up, or half the radio industry up, to somehow guarantee payments and throwing a whole bunch of people out of work. Well…

Up to their eyeballs with all that leveraged equity bizzo so no one will lend them any more money at viable rates if at all, I'd guess.

These licence payments were a long-forecast core cost of…

Reusing, surely.

So, you could ask a National MP then.
;-)

A question one should not ask unless one is prepared to be given an honest answer, I suspect.

are pithy questions of morality and fidelity excluded?

Only if you're expecting pithy answers.

How about…
“What are you wearing under that?”
Best said in a low gravely voice whilst rubbing your thighs.
:-P

http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/reply/

uh, no. More like 'Ey, Steve-o my old chum, any chance you'd let me repay that $20 I owe you…

If you had borrowed the $20 last week on the proviso that you were to pay it back this week…

I'll have to try this one out if I ever see him down the pub. 'Ey, Steve-o my old chum, any chance you could deferred payment option me $20 to tide me over to pay day? No, no, no.…

I'm curious what MW's interest rate would be if it'd borrowed from commercial funders. 11.whatever % sounds pretty steep to me, especially in light of an almost-certain OCR cut.

russel, russell, russell... please refer to page 57, stanza 12 of the Market Manual.

there are no greedy or stupid private firms.

"And lo, the Market did create unto Man the perfect means…

Transferring cash to the borrower.

But it still stinks. Eg, why don't the owners of MediaWorks pony up? They're fully capable.

I'd be interested to know who the other eight broadcasters who have taken up the deferred payment plan…

Not all that much, really.

Tbh, I think it's the right move. It wouldn't make sense to kill off Mediaworks by demanding immediate payment.

Even though Mediaworks' problem is basically that it was acquired by a greedy, stupid private…

Well knock me over and fuck me to a gentle rumba beat. National gives it’s right wing hate radio supporters a $43 million taxpayer bailout to keep up the good work?

Oh, and didn’t…

Well yes, it does. Otherwise we couldn't afford things like this... $43m lifeline to TV3 owner

Yup. The whole thing seemed to cut him to the quick. So he's following his own metaphor, that blogs should be like ruffneck bars, and is lurching like a drunk from one to the other, hoping to ingratiate himself with the publicans by slagging off…

Which, it seems proper to note, makes plenty of money for Sky — the religious beliefs of its chief executive notwithstanding.

I guess what I'm asking is: does TVNZ have to return a profit, or does it have to return the maximum possible profit short of broadcasting hardcore porn? Because surely it could return a bit less of a…

I mean who’s to say we can’t have a few good but marginally less profitable programmes in the schedule and make up for it with, I don’t know, Jersey Shore?

I think that could work…

In other words...they just provide a service with no quick…

with some facial hair and a bicycle

That's facial hair and a fixed-gear bicycle, thank you. Or a BMX.

Hey, that film has an invisible opposition too

As in Berlusconi stupid?

Just sayin'.

Edit: apart from all that mozzarella fior di latte which they make. Doh.

I know basically nothing about making cheese, but I'm happy to put money on the bit of the process that Italians really outstrip us on is what I'll call "post-cow". Whether that means they're better or worse than us…

As free-to-air channels battle for survival, pay television giant Sky TV is headed for what market analyst Sarndra Urlich calls "an embarrassment of riches".

Urlich…

Television New Zealand head of digital services Eric Kearley says the division is "here to make money" and the future is with pay TV.

"There has been a lot of talk about media…

The bigger issue here is not my daughter watching 84 hours of TV a week (she doesn't) but that for the times during the day when she did watch TV there…

For that we have Parliament.

For sure. But how much longer can that last?

I think New Zealand actually makes a fairly gentle sort of reality TV. We're quite good at the public-service obs-docs, not given to the cruelty-based formats.

I felt pleased when idiot shows like Celebrity Treasure Island faded from favour,…

So long as you did so ironically, we're okay.

I confess. I ... enjoyed it.

Better still, enter him onto a game show. And not a pretend game show either. ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCamiWs-KMs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47-1MNVc8-k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ceegnWSENQ

Or throw perfectly cooked date scones

Quickly, all of you! He is fraternising with reality television! You must stone him for his ideological impurity!

I don’t know how to break this to you, but last night I watched Master Chef.

Although I would argue that my responsibility was diminished by having just seen The Clean play. I was high on that shit.

And some reckon their recent decision to bend over further might haunt them.

So Rupert Murdoch has got his way – again. Not for the first…

I call it a recession.

Most channels are crap, the movies I have already seen or I don't want to see them, the news is an infinite rotation of boredom once a story has broken – the only thing of interest to me is the sport…

If you think the corporate media campaign (Fairfax and APN) supporting tax cuts and the National Party from 2005 to the present was evidence of WHY we need a public…

It's now BBC Knowledge and Richard Driver is about $6 million richer.

The BBC's intractability — or, rather, that of its commercial arm, BBC Worldwide — is an interesting feature of this debate.

The BBC might still do a…

But a much bigger reason is that we spent a lot of time and effort developing farming practices from scratch rather than simply doing what great^10 grandaddy did. We have a very good set of skilled workers in the primary industries (milk/wool/trees/fruit).

If anyone in NZ had that many ancestors…

Ideology. Next!

Yup. Sky will leave their satellite dish behind when a subscription is cancelled as it is not worth the cost to them to send out…

Whereas Italian farmers are idiots? Nah, sorry. Some of them are driven by subsidies into wasteful and nonsensical behaviours, but by and large they do good work, and the majority looks after their animals well,…

Harsh Gio, very harsh. Our primary producers are really very good at what they do. Yes part of it is because we have lots of land, which is a good reason for having primary production as an industry. Another reason is lots of…

My subconscious switches to blasphemy automatically whenever I think of the guy.

Aheheheheheh.

Do you know something we don't, Gio?

As far as I can tell the easy way is to download the plans from teh intertubes and plonk it on the section the wrong way around like our neighbours did.

And we have no grass at all,…

Now called BBC Knowledge, same library apparently and not tied up with BBC Global so theoretically more NZ content that their overseas offering.

Actually Islander you can get Freeview, just maybe not the terrestrial HD signal. The satellite service uses the same Optus D1 bird that Sky uses.

I don't know. I know it was never really up for debate. Whereas certain Warner executives flew into the country and hey presto, here's a massive handout on top of a pile of existing massive handouts. But yes, at…

Feltex's problems weren't a consequence of a lack of government support. More terrible management, near-criminal investors and a collapse in the market for carpet. How much…

Because our land is cheap and plentiful. There is still no inherent relationship between low prices and sustainability.

How big are your friggin' lawns?. You must be one of those rich pricks.
;-)

Designing buildings? that would mean bringing in…

Neither has the opposite. Spectacularly so, in fact.

Another way of looking at it is: is it a good idea for industrialised countries to shun our (relatively) sustainable primary products in favour of producing their own via subsidies and grossly…

They don't even have to do that. They could simply be more expensive because they're not big enough or not good…

Dear lord.

I don't think so. Depression itself is not well defined. Stagflation is a much more specific term, and could be experienced at the same time as a depression. It doesn't describe everything that's happening, just a couple of indicators.…

I'll bite. To some degree if you can buy local that's great. And if the only reason overseas goods are cheaper is because they pay slave labour rates then definitely buy local.

But if you insist on always buying…

Thank you, I have been here a while. ;-)

[citation needed] I think. I can't see why. If the captive purchaser is legislative, ie. Government then they have the power to control this. They could, in fact, control inflation, to an…

Welcome to socialism! Although even I would have to note for honesty's sake that we've had a few problems with the "ad infinitum" part.

But yeah, the idea that it's cheaper to buy overseas doesn't…

I have been arguing against this kind of thinking for years. If you pay someone to mow your lawns the money goes out of the family purse, if you pay your Son, or Daughter, to…

It would probably have to be old drama. Drama's effing expensive to produce.

Sorry, can you take me back to the part where the Greens are saying that buying local or going organic should be compulsory, as opposed to incentivised?

Maybe they should. Or maybe they didn't think people would take it to mean 100% of government purchasing must be from local suppliers, when that's plainly impractical and ultimately leads to a closed market with sky-rocketing prices courtesy of the legislatively-captive…

I have no idea if 'hardly anyone' watches it. All I know is that I do, a lot, and that it's the only channel that you can…

Except that stagflation isn't a made-up word. In fact, it's sufficiently not-made-up that Firefox's dictionary (which doesn't recognise Firefox, as a matter of amusement) considers it valid.
It…

In my observation, this is a pretty good list for civilised argument, and my views have been challenged…

Just to quibble a bit here, and use Craig's caution about the majestic plural, the 'we' here represents the 550 households on the Peoplemeter panel (which is dominated by Pakeha, middle-class and older viewers) who may be watching more television, on the behalf of…

Good point! Maybe when the earth-quake news is over…

Perhaps although it's not a noun that can be used to describe what we are in. We're not in a…

Compulsory under any circumstances is begging to be shafted. But where the difference in price is less than some arbitrary limit (say 10%), or a higher limit if the purchase relates to some prescribed list such…

http://unarmed.shlomifish.org/909.html

I say…

And yet surely by buying products locally the government actually benefits from the increased company tax, as well as associated economic effects (e.g. if a given order is large enough that the company hires more…

I don't think we can be in a depression when we also have rampant price inflation. We've also had stagnant growth more than economic contraction. This might not matter to the average punter, but it's fairly important when officials are deciding that we should…

13.…

So... Christ Trotter basically?

Just had a vision of Suzy Cato reporting on the earthquake... weird.

Well, what I would do and bear in mind some people think I am totally insane, would be to get a…

We never saw TVNZ6's Kidzone as a means to occupy our four-year old for 12 hours a day. It was however brilliant to know that we could sit our wee-one down…

Who’s queen?

That's not what I said. I'd just hesitate to say that a) people don't watch tv or b) that they don't watch live TV just because I…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59OJ17raqWw

In fact, you may want to look at his new series How tv ruined your life for more on television’s state of affiars today.

You mean, like Gerry Brownlee? Some body voted for him...

Well, I'm certainly putting in my part.

That's vastly overstated too, apparently. There was something in the paper not long ago.

Yup. But we aren't watching it as it's broadcast. We record it on hard drives and play it back while skipping the ads. We buy TV series on DVD and Blue-Ray. We watch movies on DVD and Blue Ray. We watch live sports and…

Basically ... they're not. We're watching more TV than ever.

Although the audience is being spread more thinly and…

Well, they seem to think it's fine to pay for laying fibre to the home just to sell it to Telecom at cost when it has the chance of becoming profitable. Now that is the same as NZOA funding…

So, I guess the e-mail informing me that Public Address Radio can been cancelled due to NZoA's cheque bouncing? Might want to qualify and nuance just a little bit.

We certainly don’t vote for governments…

This seems to be the perceived wisdom, but can anyone point me in the direction of some actual figure for NZ that back this up this notion of audience numbers dropping?

With broadcast viewer numbers dropping steady advertising revenue is getting harder and harder to maintain. I don't see a viable model for paying for the production of new TV programs. And the dilemma is worse for time sensitive programs…

Further to my points made above, Natural History NZ and…

Yeah, why did we buy that Freeview kit again?

(ok, it was a cheap USB stick, but still...)

Yeah, sorry, that's a ludicrous argument. "Your enjoyment of [trivial thing] is what's wrong with the world today!" Sorry Steve, was I on your lawn?

The idea that we can't have nice things (in…

It is a damn fine kid's show. "I'd love to stay, but my monkey needs me" is perhaps the finest line ever written for TV.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TVNZMedia7#p/search/3/-EQ4AjEzvYc

Crap can be fun. Information is only one function of television but like all the others it has been affected by the other forms of communication, media and entertainment that have emerged. I don't think it's controversial to say that many people…

Not in Australia they haven't. While there are regular grumbles from the right (and the ABC do themselves no favours by providing a home for several superannuated old hippies with nothing new to say, like…

Well TVNZ didn't have to make them but it would have been nice if they had, at least shown them (in something other than a totally…

I’m still waiting for an excuse to drop "dreck-i-tude" on people who aren't on the America's Next Top Model crack, so we’re even.

Yeah, DeepRed's "I haven't had a TV for years, therefore I know that the programmes are crap" doesn't sound quite logical to me. (I wouldn't dream of…

I assume you linked before The Guardian changed the story to reflect the actual state of play. Spielberg hasn't optioned the book. The studio he co-founded (and sold his interest…

So would I. I was actually meaning the plasma TVs and other things that people do spend their imaginary dollars on, rather than the things they don't.

Which I find deliciously amusing, when those evil corporate pay cable fucks are producing some of the most ambitious and satisfying television ever.…

what else can we do? Reinvent many wheels? The caterpillar drive?

And, I would STRONGLY disagree that The Arts are fripparies – without that component, we're just another kind of chimp, hooting in a sad political way-

Underwhelmed you may be but he's right, if you are talking about the market serving demand.…

That might solve distribution but not funding their production, would it?

I wasn't around in Muldoon's days, but this Listener editorial says yes.

Then again, in the Seventies there was no Internet.

This idea is not lost on me, believe me.

Other than in the afternoon on the Maori channel, you mean? Drinnan reported this today:

But in a new initiative TVNZ revealed it would start a 24-hour Kidzone channel on Sky TV in May providing a venue for social obligations outside 7.…

I know, it's hard to argue against a decrease in hours kids can watch tv, but my 5 year old is pretty put out…