Posts by David MacGregor
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The advertiser's withdrawal from the Radio Live schedule was probably a significant PR opportunity for them to be seen to be doing 'the right thing'. In fact the media value from the reporting of their withdrawal was probably more significant than the air-time they cancelled (as you say their corporate voice was only being heard by a marginal share of the audience anyway). Cynically - a shrewd move.
The message they implicitly send by their action is far more important - that they are participants in a society that is increasingly transparent - touting the latest baked bean special at Countdown is transitory - but making the point that they are an engaged participant in the community they serve is lasting. -
All this whinging about TV makes me wonder if anyone is out there dancing to architecture?
The media landscape has changed.
Build something new that suits it - and don't make it a shrine to Keith Bracey. -
Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to SteveH,
I read somewhere that people's diets are surprisingly malleable.
After eating something we state distaste for prior about 14 times - it simply becomes what we eat and will state a preference for it.
We don't eat what we like. We like what we eat. -
The mainstream TV reality is that most people who want a ‘lean back’ experience – what ever is on their flatscreen when they get home at night are quite happy with it. I agree with Finlay MacDonald about Netflix solving that problem. For now I am happy that there is a really good selection of interesting documentaries on YouTube. If it’s on YouTube it must be compliant with rights, right? (After all – it’s not that outlaw outfit Mega!).
Seriously though, program makers need to reframe the reality. If your paradigm is based on a kind of MIPCOM marketplace and broadcast economics – pack up your tent and go home. The kind of content that aired on Media 7/3 could easily be made with light equipment, very low overheads, narrowcasting through the web and possibly a subscriber model. Essentially podcasting. Other revenue streams like syndication with outlets like the On-Demand channels…who knows, I don’t know the economics. I heard that a number of marquee name journalists in the states are going out on their own bat. Niche content might attract lower numbers but the old trope: Where their are niches there are riches must have some currency? – even if it’s just NZ currency.
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The obvious issue (well to me anyway) is about IP.
I agree with everything you have stated but the truth is that Hobbit and Avatar style productions don’t belong here. We might be the skilled minions but that is all we are. Pitching for production isn’t much smarter than growing trees or milk powder. There is no residual – other than creating a skilled work-force in boom times who become un/under employed in the fallow times.If we were smart we would do something like the US did during the depression to create work for artists – instead of concentrating on offering discounts. – a Works Progress Administration kind of thing. It would be a more constructive endeavour than public/private schemes building new prisons (just another form of farming).
Movie ideas aren’t hard – James Cameron proves that – Titanic and Avatar are based on out of copyright/no copyright ideas. Kids are flooding out of tertiary institutions with design/film/communications (whatever that is) degrees. Put them to work. Instead of going it alone make it a hive. Call me a communist (Joyce’s new incantation) but we’d clean up and make billions.
Oh, and stop with the Top of the Lake/Piano/Boy daliances...make them out of profits. The world understands Ironman.
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Cracker: Lundy and Me., in reply to Damian Christie,
The whole point of your post is about guilt and innocence and the reason it will be re-litigated. It's a bit of an Aunt Sally argument to throw in yesterday's stabbing (perhaps it was Aunt Sally running from the house that fateful day? Or a straw man in a wig?).
Flippancy aside. Lundy is now not guilty of the crime. He is the accused. It is probably more fair to say, in the light of proceedings, that he was found guilty in a very limited legal sense.
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Cracker: Lundy and Me., in reply to Damian Christie,
Problem was, every person we furnished with the information, every scientific opinion we sought, from a forensic pathologist to an expert in immunohistochemistry said they agreed with the findings presented by the prosecution. (We didn’t ask about the stomach contents evidence, and I agree it seems pretty weak).
I took it from this statement that the patchwork of expert evidence - and I mean that simply as a number of things sewn together to make a whole - amounted to conclusive proof of guilt in your mind.
A human being can have all the elements of DNA and yet if one sub-microscopic part of the genetic sequence is disturbed an otherwise utterly viable being might simply not make it past the early stages of life - at the dissection the bone scientist, the brain scientist, the skin scientist (you get the picture) can all pronounce that, from the evidence they examine of the corpse, it would have constituted a healthy human - aside from its apparent lack of life. It might take Dr House to piece together the fragments in a save the day Hail Mary diagnosis - albeit to late for the subject of this tortured metaphor.
I don't know whether Lundy is guilty or innocent. The Privvy Council think he is innocent (if we take innocent until proven guilty as the standard). Like everyone else I have to rely on the media's reporting of the matter to form my worthless opinions. I can say for certain that I wouldn't set Lundy in front of the BNZ's emotion detector. The bloody thing doesn't work. Or maybe we should. Then toss a coin to determine if we should seek a suitable goat whose entrails will provide the evidence required (with results vetted by an Armenian goat entrail reading expert). -
Having a number of experts in arcane, specialised scientific fields pronounce the accused innocent or guilty seems like a curious basis for arriving at an hypotheical verdict. Examining an article of clothing or some tissue allows the expert to conclude, with some informed credibility about the question they are asked – e.g. ‘Could this be brain tissue from the deceased and what is the statistical liklihood of it being from a different person?’, but to extrapolate that into – ‘Does this mean, in your opinion, they are guilty?’ has no value whatsoever. It is for the jury to decide, when presented with this evidence – in the context of other evidence and their evaluation of the witness testimony…
Truth in the judicial system is and always has been hit and miss depending on the biases and prejudice of the day. Humans have always been as wary of ‘otherness’ (not like us – women living alone with cats an warts must be witches and when bad things happen it must be because of them – in parts of Africa witchcraft is still a vital part of society and affects crime and punishment), we are also hardwired to look for patterns – as described above – so we look for reasons, sometimes unreasonably – as in the prosecution’s insistence on their drive-time patter and the jury’s acceptance of it. The less said about the evidence of psychics the better.
This is an extraordinary case. As was David Bain’s, Allen Arthur Thomas’ and, no doubt, innumerable others in New Zealand where the police are so determined to secure a conviction for their own complex web of reasons, the media – increasingly – portray the accused as if they were simply players on a reality TV stage – for the crowd’s amusement and we, the mob (ranging in informed ignorance from Sensible Sentencing Trusters to outright anti-establishment conspiracy theorists) are swept along and drive the whole bizarre process. Politicians poll our meta-mood to determine the degree with which to decree some hardening of posture on ‘law and order’ – not to reduce crime or modify its effect on society – but to demonstrate their superhero ability.
Where’s Atticus Finch when you need him? Oh, that’s right, that turned out badly too. -
The US is going rogue - and we want to be their best friends. It's a funny old world.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Shutdown_Blues?src=soc_fcbks
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We seem, collectively, to accept that columnists like Jones, Jeremy Clarkson and A.A. Gill (who all hail from a certain cohort - ah, let's just call them white, middle aged and with access) are some sort of 'antidote' to panty-waist reason/political correctness or even balance. They play to a crowd that feels marginalised and increasingly irrelevant in contemporary society - white, middle aged men mostly. They hide behind the smoke-screen of a sort of John Cleese in-character ranting that was once funny because it was a parody but isn't when it is 'the thing' itself.
On the other hand being worthy but dull won't cut it in today's media circus either.
Jones should observe the Marquess of Queensberry's rules when addressing matters in print: A man hanging on the ropes in a helpless state, with his toes off the ground, shall be considered down. Re-prosecuting the victims in his column is hardly 'a fair stand-up...match'