Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Sacha,
Consult most teenagers about how they see it.
I am put in mind of our young fogey commisioner's incredulity at the news that our Media3 TV commentator, Joe Nunweek, did not own a TV.
Thing was, of course, Joe was the only critic of Seven Sharp to watch the whole first week before crafting an elegant, insightful review of the programme.
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I can confirm the hallowed British Broadcasting Corporation is more than keeping its end up as a net contributor to the global shite supply.
+1 on that. The Beeb has been mostly phoning it in for years on drama. And let's not start on the comedy ...
Also, don't be hating on Shortland Street. It's basically ground zero for much of the New Zealand screen drama since -- in acting, writing and direction. The SPP house style reached its zenith with Outrageous Fortune, but it was born in Ferndale.
We also forget that Shortland Street put brown people on screen and made them stars, presented gay characters and had them loved. It's as disruptive as anything else our television has ever produced.
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
But there’s also narrative reality (things like The GC) and competition reality (like Survivor) and many many hybrids of those and other sub-groups. All are, essentially, documentary in nature though.
I would strongly disagree that Survivor et al are documentaries in any form. They're unscripted drama.
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Is The Shearing Gang fundamentally different from reality TV staples like Motorway Patrol, Airline, and Bondi Rescue? Day in the life of group of people employed in a particular line of work?
The big difference between Shearing Gang and Motorway Patrol is who controls the content. Programmes that observe the work of state agencies do so at the pleasure of those agencies. This can reach critical levels in series like TV3's Drug Bust, which is all spectacle and no questions asked.
That's basically the difference between a documentary and what's known in the trade as an "obs-doc".
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Richard Aston,
What are these? and is public broadcasting an ideal that makes sense if TV is your only moving media view on the world – aside from films. How does public broadcasting sit in the rapidly expanding digital world ?
There are plenty of good cues from the CBC, the BBC, SBS -- and Radio New Zealand, which launches an online-only project at 5pm today. Content should be intelligent and shareable and fill the gaps the market leaves. Imagine the local radio landscape is there were was no Radio New Zealand, no iwi radio, no free frequencies for student and access radio to use.
The big problem is that public-service style programming doesn't attract enough of the viewers commercial TV needs to reach. Ad that the group commercial TV has little use for is basically half the population and everyone over 55.
Commercial TV attracts -- and needs to attract -- audiences in the tens and hundreds of thousands at any one time. The audience for any locally produced stream, podcast or whatever is a fraction of that. The good part is that on the internet, you don't need to fill a virtual Eden Park every week (which even a specialist show like Media3 did) to be viable. The Herald will be happy if 2000 people watch one of its live events streams.
There are exceptions: music video has almost wholly moved from TV to the internet. NZ On Air doesn't even both to report TV screenings for the music videos it funds.
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But to me there does seem to be one difference about the film industry that makes it a valid target for help from the taxpayer. It does seem to be an industry of highs and lows. If the capability is allowed to disappear during a low there is no capacity to take advantage of a peak in demand.
It’s the same logic that argues we help farmers during a drought.
I’m past the point of repeating myself now, but, yeah, I’m not comfortable with the idea of subsidies in general – the national benefit in our decades of largess towards Rio Tinto/Alcan is bloody marginal – but I can see merit in moving here, given that it’s a developed, skilled sector pretty much going over a cliff inside a year. And saying how it would be better if we developed our own IP doesn’t stop that happening.
Then again, this isn’t the only export industry being killed by the exchange rate.
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Hard News: Friday Music: The Next Kids, in reply to LIISA,
Your HTML will not work in the comments, but thanks for the pointer.
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
But fear not – at the same time we see the rise of cable channels, and subscription-based providers like Netflix. They do not have the same demands. They can fund shows on their merit (whatever that may be) so long as their overall offering is enough to keep viewers engaged in their subscription.
Which works well enough in larger markets. And for Sky, which has a hit with high-quality American drama on SOHO. But it's a big ask to expect subscription to fund local production in a market the size of this one.
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to Sacha,
a well paid job working in factories
that is China’s future
Yes. The idea of manufacturing as a substitute for screen production is mad, actually.
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Hard News: Movie Disaster, in reply to bmk,
Not sure – working off the premise that the 40k worker has a 35k job. I didn’t come up with the example but odds are they would get another job.
We should probably debunk the idea that a set0builder would work for a year on a LOTR-type production and only earn $40,000. They're skilled workers and I would think the more accurate number would be two or three times that, given the shifts to be worked. An unskilled labouring job at $35,000 would be a significant step down.