Posts by Damian Christie
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Hard News: Moving on, in reply to Sacha,
so Freeview is a platform?
Freeview is a platform yes, but if you're referring to my earlier response, no it wasn't set up to provide public service broadcasting. It was set up to enable the switch off of analogue. TVNZ 6 and 7 were put in place to try and encourage people to switch over, because with just the existing channels you were getting on your analogue set, why would you?
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Hard News: Moving on, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Yes, but it should be. And money? You could set up an NZOA youtube channel in 20 minutes. Why would that be a terrible idea?
1. It's not in NZOA's current remit to use it's money to set up a platform.
2. It's not in TVNZ's current remit to do anything other than make money.
3. Why change the first but not the second, then instruct the first to try and do a watered down version of the second that no-one knows about?
An NZOA YouTube channel is a fun idea, but it's not a solution. People - most people - don't sit down and watch YouTube on their TV in the evening. And just because we're talking about making television that isn't lowest common denominator, doesn't mean it should be inaccessible to the masses.
TVNZ 7 didn't not work (excuse the double negatives), it stopped being funded, largely on ideological grounds. It had been building a good audience given its relatively new status.
I don't think true public service TV in NZ will ever be more popular than the existing channels. BBC One is the biggest channel in the UK, and state funded, but it still plays Street Patrol, East Enders and Homes Under the Hammer in primetime. ABC1 is third in Australia (after Seven and Nine) and still has cooking shows and so forth in primetime. The funding both receive dwarfs anything ever given to the digital platform in NZ.
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Hard News: Moving on, in reply to Sacha,
Wasn’t that what Freeview was meant to be?
In a word, no.
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Hard News: Moving on, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Past time NZOA got their own platform, IMHO.
As Russell said above, they've got work with what they've got, and it's not in their remit to throw a chunk of their funding into creating a platform. Just as it's not in TVNZ's either, unless it serves the sole (and relatively new) end goal of making money.
There's a state owned network right there, and a funding agency - we don't need one to become the other, just for the former to get some direction with regard to what it should be asking from the latter.
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Hard News: Moving on, in reply to Martin Brown,
To those suggesting digital/online as an option, it's really not, not yet and not with our small population.
Which is not to say Russell couldn't interview some media types each week and post it online, but to get something even vaguely close to the relatively low budget of Media 3 takes thousands, and more likely tens of, each week. Below that you start looking like Bomber and/or Perigo's efforts at televisual self-publishing, and to be blunt, why would you?
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Sorry to hear that Russell, but yes, the sort of run you (and we at BB) have had is nothing to sneeze at. Television years make dog years look pathetic. :)
On to bigger and better things. Beer soon :)
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Hard News: U: It's about the combos, in reply to Aidan,
Don't quite understand
No, just simply that I'll see something on TV I wouldn't mind watching, from the start, but since I didn't record it already, and will probably forget to watch again in 50 minutes on +1, I'll just record the +1.
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I've already expressed my disappointment at this decision above, but on the time-shifting vs +1 thing...
I have MySky, have had since it first launched. But I make a reasonable amount of use of the +1 channels. Quite often, it's the Sky +1 channels for 1 or 3 (501, 503), which I then use to MySky record something that I missed the start of, so that confuses the model somewhat I guess...
As B Jones pointed out above, +1 can simply be handy, to catch something you don't necessarily bother with enough to record but wouldn't mind watching rather than whatever is on an hour later. Also, we don't have Sky in our bedroom, which is where Harry watches a bit of morning kids' telly while we have our coffee and try to cope with the fact it's 6am.
The only upside of 2+1 for us - Tiki Tour will now be on twice a morning :)
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I'd add that the only people forced to move under that situation are not the actual rich ones who will stump up, but those who are on paper rich, but actual earn middling incomes.
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Cracker: Johnny Foreigner & the Auckland…, in reply to BenWilson,
It would be like being unable to pay the rent and having to move, as happens to poor people all the time
Except it doesn't. Or it hasn't. Rents in Auckland are such that for a long time you can rent in Ponsonby, as most of my younger studenty friends do, but when you buy, you end up in the burbs. Rents increase by $10 or so a year. Property prices - as I've discovered looking at buying one - aren't linked to rent. Not saying it doesn't happen, but I still have a major ethical objection to people who bought a cheapish house in a shitty suburb being forced to move because speculators around them have driven prices up to ridiculous levels, and we decide to tax that.