Posts by Damian Christie
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The Minister of Police, explicitly soliciting violence, possibly rape
Late to this one, sorry. I remember hearing some time back Mark Bennett on Radio Pacific making much the same comment regarding some equally (relatively) trivial offence - sort 'em out in jail, let him be someone's girlfriend inside etc.
I would never normally bother, but in this case I wrote in and pointed out what he was saying - suggesting violent rape was a fitting punishment.
I wonder - and this is certainly not to excuse a Minister of the Crown who should always be held to a higher standard in her public comments - whether this concept is really just a form of shorthand - "they'll get theirs", or perhaps "karma, dude" - and if reminded of what they're actually suggesting, they suddenly realise how ridiculous it is.
(Much like the arguments I had with many who suggested that stabbing to death was a suitable punishment for tagging... Um, are you sure? How about just think that through for a minute...)
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@Morgan
TVNZ7 will still be TVNZ7 if it has advertising...And it seems like running costs are quite low, so just deal with a few less minutes of awesomeness per hour, and we don’t need to lose the great programming we’re now enjoying.(Or go PBS-style pledge-drive. Or convince the central government to continue funding it, good luck with that.)
It's all been looked at by those in charge, who of course would love to keep the channel. And surprisingly to most outsiders at least, it just doesn't work like that. A channel needs a huge market share to be commercially profitable by selling ads - TVNZ 7 would need minimum of about $15m a year apparently to maintain a reasonable standard, and projected ad revenue would only be a fraction of that ($2-3m is the estimate, and that's assuming it doesn't cannibalise TVNZ's other channels).
Subscriber doesn't really work either, unless the audience is a lot larger (and willing to pay a lot more) than anyone could possible imagine.
Which leaves Govt funding.
@Hilary - TVNZ 6 has gone (unrelated to the funding cuts, or at least unrelated to this week's decision by the Govt) but a lot has been merged into TVNZ 7 (which is of course, now, soon to be gone) so should've made TVNZ 7 stronger still. Of course it depends which bits of TVNZ 6 you liked, and whether those are the bits that've moved.
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@Ben - thanks mate - hey can you flick me your email address via feedback, I'll send you a secret wee link you can have a look at until they sort out the YouTube thing. I ain't gonna stand in the way of people who want to see my show!
@Gio - I'm being realistic - if full-time lobbyists can't convince the ideologues in cabinet, what chance do I have? Which is not to say I'm not going to stir up a bit of shit if I can, we all know John Key's nothing if not malleable to the prevailing public mood...
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@Gio - thanks, and it's definitely a bummer, but as I said above somewhere, nothing's ever secure in this industry, and a run this long (not to mention unprecedented advance notice that it's going to end) is still something to celebrate.
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(A press release will no doubt come out at some stage - but because they don't need to, because it's an act by omission, there's no hurry. But the decision has been made.)
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@Hilary - no, it's funded until the middle of next year. The Government isn't cutting it, as such, simply not re-funding it when the money runs out. For them it's a lovely conflation of economic excuse with dogmatic principle. They (or at least English and Joyce) don't believe in public service broadcasting, and there's no time to cutback like the present.
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@Ana. It will cease, is the simplest way I can think to put it. No way of commercialising it (and even if there was, that would ruin it's biggest selling point) as only the biggest channels still make money, and with the rest of TVNZ expected to act like a commercial enterprise and return a dividend, it can't be internally subsidised. So it will cease.
And yes, it's great fun going through the clips. As I said, a real honest privilege.
@Hilary. Yup, I will be out of two jobs in TV. But as someone whose first job in telly lasted two weeks until the show was cancelled, anything that lasts more than a fortnight is always pretty impressive to me. Backbenches will have run for four years at the end of this year, longer than any job I've ever held. Over the same time, many, many talented full time staff at ONE News and the various current affairs jobs have been axed in two or three waves of restructuring. I feel very lucky.
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And no - not Geoff Robinson, the first reporter is a guy called Roger Hall. Presumably not the Roger Hall.
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@Ben - I've just spoken to our web guys, hoping we can get it up on youtube - a few hurdles to jump, but should be possible. If RB can do it for Media 7, no reason we can't for Hindsight.
The "Hindsight extra" item shouldn't be geo-locked tho - that's the extended 1971 obesity clip with the full song, Selwyn Toogood, the whole shebang.
If all else fails I'll flick you a secret special link to the first ep ;)
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@Stephen - :) thanks. That I think is one of the wonderful things about the TVNZ 7, that we get to make television for no other reason than because we think it will be good. No focus groups, ratings, sponsorship commitments and so forth. Which is not to say stuff on the other channels isn't good, there's just a lot more emphasis on mass-produced-proven-ratings-winning shows.
Unfortunately, this week it has been announced (although still no official press release that I can see) the Government won't be funding TVNZ 7 any more. Shitballs. So I guess that's probably the end of that.