Hard News: For want of some purpose
118 Responses
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I'd like to see content funding unlinked from broadcast control - but only once we have real broadband to make competing distribution viable.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Same went for the Charter, which I have had issues with previously. It is all part of Labour 5’s larger problem; too much wool, not enough steel.
I've come to acquit the previous government on the charges of setting up TVNZ 6 & 7 to fail, but Russell is perhaps far too generous describing how it was all meant to be paid for as weird. It's all very nice talking a good game about how wonderful "quality public broadcasting" but what's the point if you're not going to swallow hard and make the case that cheap and nasty is as cheap and nasty does? Nor is engaging in short-term thinking and then throwing your hands up in horror at the entirely predictable results. The politics are very clearly in Labour's favour, I guess, but I do hope the promises flowing over the last couple of days are going to treated with all due skepticism.
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Will de Cleene, in reply to
I seem to remember the UHF sell-off left a few polytechs and community organisations with spectrum- sometimes for very little (I think highest bid won, but only paid the amount of the next bid- and sometimes that was nothing.)
Yeah, the second bid process was supposed to stop stupidly high bids. Unfortunately, the policy requires a market bigger than NZ can ever provide:
very thin markets at the time of the auction resulting in large differences between first and second placed bids (in one case the high bid was $100,000, while the second place bid was only $6)
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I’d like to see content funding unlinked from broadcast control
You mean apart from some guarantee that said funded content is actually going to be broadcast?
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
Yeah, the second bid process was supposed to stop stupidly high bids.
To the contrary, the second bid process was designed to ensure the highest possible price was received.
Unfortunately, it relies on there being more than one serious bidder to work properly.
If you have a tender process where the person who makes the highest bid gets it for that price, they try to second guess other bidders so that they don't overpay. And the others try to second guess others as well, which you factor in etc.
Top bidder gets it, and second highest bidder's price should mean that everyone bids what they see as the true value, because you won't risk overbidding.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
You mean apart from some guarantee that said funded content is actually going to be broadcast?
Which is the key point. The number one thing NZ On Air needs to fund a show is a broadcast commitment.
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Commercial television hates old people. Target demographics for advertisers top out at 49, and the programming reflects that.
I have never understood this. I would have thought the group in society with most disposable income would be people in their 50s and 60s, kids off their hands, no mortgage, take a trip a year and dammit yes I wouldn't mind a new watch/car/spa pool/barbecue &c. Why the feck do advertisers fall over themselves to target people who, once they've paid mortgage, power, rates and insurance have $100 left for groceries? Apart from the sellers of rest-home care, snake-oil cures for joint pain and incontinence pads (not really fiftysomething products) no one seems interested in this market. Genuinely interested to know why.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
The number one thing NZ On Air needs to fund a show is a broadcast commitment
I wonder how long it will be before having content accessible on the web becomes an acceptable equivalent to 'broadcast'. (And whether NZ On Air might start funding websites that don't stick to the forms of moving images and sound).
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
The number one thing NZ On Air needs to fund a show is a broadcast commitment
I wonder how long it will be before having content accessible on the web becomes an acceptable equivalent to ‘broadcast’. (And whether NZ on air might start funding websites that don’t stick to the forms of moving images and sound).
That was Sacha's point I think- and it might be happening already, in a sideways fashion. Are NZ on Air funded music videos still required to have a broadcaster?
With youtube committed to competing with broadcast, and internet television peeking round the corner, it's a major consideration. -
Joe Wylie, in reply to
Apart from the sellers of rest-home care, snake-oil cures for joint pain and incontinence pads (not really fiftysomething products) no one seems interested in this market. Genuinely interested to know why.
A dastardly plot to fend off the tyranny of the demographic bulge by keeping those godawful boomers marginalized?
Back in the heyday of Rob's Mob TV was dominated by ads for Fiji cruises and La-Z-Boys. Or did it just seem that way?
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
I have never understood this. I would have thought the group in society with most disposable income would be people in their 50s and 60s
Me neither- especially when you consider this now encompasses the 'baby-boomer' generation which <gross generalisation warning> has pretty much demanded the moon on a plate since they were in nappies :)
Isn't it a demographic that holds an increasing proportion of the nation's wealth- and also increasingly active, and determined to spend it all before the kids hit 35? -
Sacha, in reply to
Yes it was, ta. The current model is based on scarcity. If there's a genuinely functioning distribution market with low access barriers, then a broadcast commitment wouldn't be needed. Content subsidies will be.
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Sacha, in reply to
the group in society with most disposable income
The wealthy also seem to expect the rest of us to fund their preferred forms of culture - like opera and ballet. Not that logical.
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Islander, in reply to
ave never understood this. I would have thought the group in society with most disposable income would be people in their 50s and 60s
Not wrong - but we are a very variable group.
A lot of us dont like travel(we've already done a lot normally); we already have a lot of stuff - and if we're downsizing our homes (as I am), we're not really looking for *more*stuff.NONE are interested in continence stuff (that's my mother's age-cohort) and equally, none of the females are interested in tampons et al (been there, done that, welcome menopause! (a decade ago, actually.))
What tv could sell us is - gardening stuff, books & dvds, cunning technology, interesting foods & wines etc.; aids that assist the arthritic (osteo kicks in, in the late 50's/early 60s) but not the junk nostrums - we are a *highly* cynical generation by now...
but we get that info from the magazines & websites devoted to our cohort/s, and we rely on the info we receive from confreres & family members & friends for exciting new restaurants & gadgets et al-
maybe tv has done it's market research and learned we are A Lost Cause...
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Russell Brown, in reply to
That was Sacha’s point I think- and it might be happening already, in a sideways fashion. Are NZ on Air funded music videos still required to have a broadcaster?
No. Home Brew have had one NZ On Air-funded video that you'll never see on the telly.
NZ On Air's mandate was amended a while ago to allow it to fund some digital content. We've seen the "mobisode" soap (whose name I forget) and a couple of digital ventures (including a video game that is unfathomably supposed to teach people to be music managers), but I think The Audience is the first really good one. They're saying today they attracted 50,000 unique users in the first month, which is excellent.
And I gather we'll be hearing about another project soon ...
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Russell Brown, in reply to
maybe tv has done it’s market research and learned we are A Lost Cause…
You might be right. The things you say the 50+ market is interested in are much better suited to being marketed via other media than TV.
Talk radio is deluged with ads for stupid magnetic mattresses and bee products, but that's possibly because the audience is deemed to be a bit stupid for anything upscale.
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Islander, in reply to
he wealthy also seem to expect the rest of us to fund their preferred forms of culture – like opera and ballet. Not that logical.
The wealthy are not necessarily the people born between 1946 & 1966: that latter group has more disposable income than on-coming groups but ISNT especially interested in opera & ballet - that's the environment for city dwellers who like conspicuous display (and I totally agree, expecting others to fund their especial tastes is pretty bloody stupid. Your's, an impoverished & irate writer-)
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Target demographics for advertisers top out at 49, and the programming reflects that.
Actually, just to be accurate, both TV1 and now TV3 (which shifted its demo upwards recently) target the 25-54 demographic. So you’ve got another few years before you’re ignored completely Russ. :)
Stupid though, as you point out, there’s a huge amount of money in that older demographic, but from various stories I’ve done, it seems it’s as much about the people the ad agencies want to pitch their cool new crazy campaigns at, as much as who’s got the money. Maybe there are arguments to be made about advertising towards older people who are already brand-loyal (TV1’s 60+ audience share seems to reflect that, as Holmes found out to his detriment), but I saw some stat somewhere that 1 in 3 big screen TVs are going to people older than that target demo…
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There are a couple of reasons the viewers took a while to roll up. One was programming. [--snip--] The other, much more important, impediment to 6 and 7 was the lack of external promotion.
I can't speak for all those people who weren't given programmes they wanted, or weren't told they existed, but for us the biggest incentive to start watching TVNZ6 and TVNZ7 was actually having them available at all. Once we finally bothered to buy a digital TV and could fluently flick back and forth between them and other channels on equal terms without any impediments, we watched them frequently. Digital guides seriously changed our viewing habits, just through being able to see what's on everywhere now (or soon) without caring about the politics or tech behind the channel, and with that we watched a lot of 6 and 7. (Having a PVR has been the next big thing that's changed our viewing habits, but that's another story.)
I'd always introspectively assumed the lag of viewership increase would have been closely proportional to the number of people who'd properly switched to digital TV. Do you not see this as significant?
I hadn't thought that merely owning a set-top box would cut it as far as putting the channels on equal terms when selecting programmes to watch, especially if it's only available on one TV in the household, or if there are still incentives to flip back to the analogue signal from time to time. They'd have to be as completely available as any non-digital channel.
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Sacha, in reply to
The wealthy are not necessarily the people born between 1946 & 1966
never said they were
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Islander, in reply to
No - but the implication was there so I clarified the matter-
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
for us the biggest incentive to start watching TVNZ6 and TVNZ7 was actually having them available at all. Once we finally bothered to buy a digital TV
Ditto.
My feeling is that TVNZ7 numbers would have increased markedly as analogue shut-down rolled closer- and viewer habits slowly caught up :)
I know a few folk with analogue TVs and Sky boxes, who may miss Freeview entirely, though. That's the bogeyman: less incentive to use Freeview which will languish, leaving Sky owning the nation's de facto digital platform. -
Will de Cleene, in reply to
Actually, just to be accurate, both TV1 and now TV3 (which shifted its demo upwards recently) target the 25-54 demographic.
I wonder how much of this is down to demographic realities. The average NZer is around 43 years old, compared to, say, Saudi Arabia where the average age is something closer to 20. NZ has a bulging middle age spread and not the usual wide youth base with a tapering apex as age increases.
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Sacha, in reply to
Understood. There is a high overlap between age and wealth in every society - and here that includes many people older than boomers. I'd be surprised if audiences for those cultural forms tend to the young and brown (unlike the ones who prefer hip hop for instance).
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On The Panel this afternoon Jane Clifton puzzled at the strong reaction to the closure of TVNZ7. She didn't think anyone would watch cheaply made talking heads television. And when persuaded by the other conservative panelist that they do, she airily assumed that those programmes would be picked up by other channels. (She didn't seem to get the point that having a non-commercial public service channel is an important thing in itself and is valued by a large proportion of the citizenry.) That from a television reviewer, and a columnist from a publication which refused to print TV7s listings.
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