Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Media3: Where is Broadcasting?, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
It’s all pigs around the public trough up there in Auckland isn’t it?
I can't believe John Drinnan hasn't exposed the potato salad scandal yet ;-)
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Hard News: Media3: Where is Broadcasting?, in reply to Rob Stowell,
The key will be to insist that it’s public service television, it’s allowed to sometimes be boring, it’s never infotainment or half-and-half commercial- and commit to it long-term without looking at the ratings every five seconds.
There's no virtue in being boring. Public service TV should embrace difficult, serious and minority topics, or present in ways which which may bore some people, but it's not necessary to be a bore.
I've been thinking about this a bit lately, because I've been finding Media3's move to an actual commercial slot quite refreshing. I'm more inclined to think about what might grab and interest those younger viewers coming out of Nightline. We've all lauded Campbell Live for its embrace of journalistic values, but it's also often entertaining and sometimes (in a perfectly acceptable way) calculated.
I was reading David Byrne's 'How Music Works' yesterday, and thinking about this. I like his appreciation of stagecraft.
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Hard News: Media3: Where is Broadcasting?, in reply to Stephen Judd,
““Labour will take a fully-costed policy into the next election to establish a sustainable new public broadcaster.”
(From context, this clearly means “public service” not just publically owned).
I was going to look that up, thanks. Clare Curran does so much hand-waving it can be easy to forget there's a reasonable sort of policy commitment there.
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Hard News: Media3: Where is Broadcasting?, in reply to Sacha,
the free food is really good
I really miss the potato salad.
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Hard News: Media3: Where is Broadcasting?, in reply to Myles Thomas,
In response to Craig, it’s unfair to slap down Labour. Maharey has said the plan was to explore alternate funding sources for TVNZ 6 & 7 in the Inquiry Russell alludes to, specifically a levy on commercial broadcasters such as Sky. This wouldn’t have been popular with the powerful Sky/TVNZ lobby so better for Maharey to make the idea come from the inquiry rather than his office.
And Maharey probably couldn't have been expected to know that National would simply kill off the inquiry while it was still in progress. That was breathtaking.
But with more conviction, Labour could have laid in a commitment to fund the channels pending future revenue streams. And they could have done in it a simpler way than the opaque money-go-round that it turned out to be.
But National's decision to kill off the channels smacked of spite than any consideration of the arguments. The bogus viewing figures that came out of Coleman's office were mostly a result of official ineptitude and were relayed by equally inept media, but I don't think it was like they wanted to know.
Radio spectrum about to be sold off for the next 20 years
We really do want to sell the 700MHz spectrum to telcos and pocket the proceeds after DSO. But there are major, major problems there.
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Hard News: Media3: Where is Broadcasting?, in reply to Tony Siu,
You have to pay for drinks now?
These are dark days.
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Hard News: A good soldier dies, in reply to Graham Dunster,
If you mean Jim Anderton, hasn’t he also had a chilling effect on the drugs legislation?
Anderton gets a bit of a bad rap on the drugs thing. Like Dunne, he was a drug warrior who got somewhat colonised by the weight of evidence.
Once he'd been persuaded in 2002 of the virtues of an expansion of the needle exchange programme, he backed it strongly -- up to and including an amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act that reversed the onus of proof on possession of needles, meaning the police had to prove needles were illegally obtained, rather than users proving they weren't.
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Hard News: Media3: Where is Broadcasting?, in reply to Chris Waugh,
I also wonder what would happen if we found ourselves with a government that had the balls to pass a law forcing an end to the highly concentrated ownership of media in NZ. That’s another one on my wishlist, and another I’m not holding my breath waiting for.
Good thing. Because you would suffocate yourself.
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Hard News: Media3: Where is Broadcasting?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
No it won’t, Chris. I know Murdoch is the anti-Christ around here, but I don’t recall INL’s print titles magically becoming the paragon of excellence when they were flicked off to Fairfax.
It won’t change much, if anything. This, from News’s COO:
We and Sky have always enjoyed an excellent, arms-length working relationship and we expect this to continue unaffected by the sale. In particular, we do not anticipate any change to current arrangements regarding access to content and collaboration on technology.”
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Cool Return, in reply to davesparks,
*cough* Pretty Lights *cough* ; )
Heh. But to be fair, he predates and transcends the whole E.D.M. thing
…which I enjoyed as much as you I think, and the extended “filthy break” in the middle of act two was I reckon just a thoughtful gesture for us old timers so we could go and get a breather and come back in for the last run.
I lost track of my mate. Turned out he’d popped next door to D.O.C. for a cheese toastie and a sit-down for a while.
BTW Gramatik plays here soon, and this has been on loop for me a while:
Ooh, so he is. Guess I’ll be capable of another late one by then :-)