Posts by Alfie
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Mike Sabin has a new job as chief executive of a Chinese-owned, 1000-hectare luxury resort in Karikari. Just saying.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to nzlemming,
Alastair Thompson has a worrying summary of other changes in the media world.
That's a great analysis which partly explains the great race to the bottom amongst our main news organisations. The Herald newsroom is now run by a marketing woman, TV3 News answers to a money man and TVNZ must surely be controlled by a group of neoliberal primates.
I love Thompson's reference to the rise of "Stuff the Nation" being behind the desertion of some of Fairfax's better journos.
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Former TV3 journalist and Al Jazeera news presenter Kamahl Santamaria adds his support to the Save Campbell Live campaign.
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As usual, Bryce Edwards has a useful summary of the media and blog coverage of the Campbell Live affair.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Logically the PM in particular should stop making any radio and TV appearances.
John Key appeared on roughly half of the stories on last night's TV3 News -- even on a sports story! While I'm used to seeing him get more coverage than is healthy in a democracy, asking the Minister for Everything to comment on every bloody story is bordering on the ridiculous, even for the new, Nat-friendly TV3.
Here's a Herald link to Key's inane 'people prefer fluff' comments aired on Newstalk ZB this morning.
A subdued, unquestioning population must be a politician's wet dream.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to izogi,
What are the criteria for the ratings system to determine that a show's been watched by someone? Would people who watched for the first 10 minutes, then switched off, be attributed as watching the entire hour? Or is it possible to track people watching the entire thing.
I can only speak for my parents' experience which goes back a decade or more. Both TVs in their house had a little Neilson box on the top. When a TV was switched on, the box started flashing a message: "Who is watching?" You then input person 1 or 2 (via preset buttons) or defined any guest by gender and age. The box already knew which channel was selected.
Annoyingly, it would flash the "Who is watching?" message every 10 or 15 minutes. Unless you were anal and complied with the little machine's demands, it decided that you'd stopped viewing. The machine dumped its contents down the phone line to Neilson every night.
My parents lived in the Sounds and could only receive TV1 clearly and sometimes a rather fuzzy version of TV2. They couldn't stand Paul Holmes but watched his show every night and thought they could 'fool' the box by not inputting any person. I had a theory (unproven) that the box was actually measuring 'opportunity to view' rather than whether or not people were paying attention to a given programme, but I still don't know if that was really the case. In any event, I'm sure monitoring technology has moved on from that system nowadays.
I mentioned earlier that despite Neilson's policy of changing the viewing panel every 18 months or so, my parents were part of the viewer panel for 8 years. I should add that they were only removed from the panel when they eventually passed away.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Simon Bennett,
It's the fault of an advertising industry that determines that only a particular segment of the population are worth marketing to via TV advertising.
And broadcasters who increasingly see maximum profits as the sole reason for their existence. Including, sadly, our state broadcaster.
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Hard News: What would a harm reduction…, in reply to Sandy Mulqueen,
Any national drug strategy which doesn't include legal cannabis is a waste of time and doomed to fail.
Hear hear!
Matt Bowden's optimistically named 'drug safety testing' site sounds like there might be even an element of public good involved. But that's not necessarily the reality.
Coincidentally we ran into an old friend last week who previously acted as a human guinea pig for Bowden's legal highs. The intelligent, high functioning and personable guy we knew a few years ago is now a complete mess. He has regular seizures, his marriage and his life have pretty much fallen apart. While MB's products may not be the only factor in his downfall, he certainly attributes a good deal of the blame to those chemicals.
Campbell Live (remember that show?) has highlighted the addictive nature of synthetics better than most media. And I've yet to see/read a single good report about synthetics. As drugs go, they're down there at the evil end of the bucket.
What's the chance of a crowdfunded campaign succeeding in having good old cannabis approved via the Psychoactive Substances Act? It's less harmful than any of the chemical substitutes, and the 'fatal' dose has been estimated at about 30 kilos... from a height of ten metres.
And a plea to the media. Could we stop calling these drugs "synthetic cannabis" please? They're chemicals with no connection whatsoever to cannabis.
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I'd say they'd listen when John Key calls.
Of course they would. And it's little surprise that Key would like to see Campbell nobbled. Just think how many ministers have been made to look like fools during CL appearances. For a start Hekia Parata couldn't handle a serious interview, then Simon Bridges came across as a first class dork with an attitude problem.
While I have credibility problems with the way Mana presented their tale, I have no doubt that this is what went on behind the scenes.
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Here's some news which is relevant to the impending legal threats. CallPlus (that's CallPlus, Slingshot and Orcon) has just been sold to Australian telco M2 for $250 million.