Posts by Myles Thomas
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Finlay Macdonald,
Don't give up on PSTV just because it's been virtually destroyed by successive govts. It is still incredibly powerful enabler for democracy, engagement and culture. And it can be permanently resurrected with a switched on Minister of Broadcasting. Yes books, lectures, online to that too but not as powerfully.
Your kids might benefit from lack of telly but there are millions watching the shit that is currently screened. Don't they deserve more than crappy copies of foreign formats? Where are the kiwi values in The Block? Instead of humble, egalitarian, stoicism it is consumerist salespeople on a effing journey! And let's not discuss the politics behind emergency service ob-docs.
Our media affects our reality (not reflects) and if you are happy to stand by and wring your hands while the TV watching millions lose local scripted content to Netflix et al, local values to reality TV and public engagement in national events then that's a pity.
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Brent Jackson,
Research has apparently shown that the older you get the less attention you give advertising. It makes sense. Getting older we are less prone to fads, wanting to fit in or accepting what we are told to think (in general).
Advertisers want your money but they know their ads are wasted on you.
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
Public service TV doesn't have to be high brow. Look at the BBC. It's about providing a balance, something for everyone, a service.
NZ public service broadcasting as it exists is filling a massive vacuum with limited resources. If there were more resources then PSB could cover a lot more ground.
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Legal Beagle: Fact check: Q+A on mayoral…, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
What they know is irrelevant. It's how knowledgable they sound. A great deal of confidence in one's own opinion goes a long way with these shows. It looks and sounds like serious analysis from experts but usually it's the opposite - a five minute conversation out the back based on half remembered notes from a drunken rant the night before, from the usual suspects. Laziness on all levels.
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Could someone please tell the Herald that Ross Clow is the likely winner in Whau. All of Sunday the Herald's 'updated' supercity results showed Noelene Raffils as winner and still do. So 14 hours after council posted the new results, Auckland main news website still didn't include this fairly significant change. I would've thought Noelene Raffils being in doubt and a likely recount was newsworthy but there you go.
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I was in the crowd and I can see myself a couple of times in those crowd shots. I was 14 and excited to be allowed out with friends. I had a plan to meet Dad at the information centre at 8. Herbs were awesome in the sun, it felt weird to be dancing to 'nuclear waste is a comin down...' with a whole lot of confetti raining down on us. But hey, shit was weird back then.
Don't remember the Mockers sorry.
Then DD Smash came on but the power cut out which got us a bit restless. All of a sudden a quart beer bottle smashed at my feet. Shit, how did that get there? None of us had booze nor anyone around us. We figured it had been thrown by some of the scary munters up the back. It had been full of beer too. Oh well.
It's funny but back then odd shit happened and we just accepted it. It was like I had expectations of lawlessness and munterisms that wouldn't happen today. Maybe I'm just older or was it something to do with being from West Auckland.
We waited and clapped for DD Smash. Someone came out to calm down the crowd or the concert would be cancelled. That got us riled up but the band played on. Dave Dobyn said something to the hooligans at the back to calm down or the pigs will shut it all down. And shortly after he announced that the show was finished. He certainly was strong in his words but the truth was the fault lay with cops for closing down the party. What did they expect would happen? That everyone would head home quietly. Idiots vs hooligans.
Anyway, our group decided to get the hell out of there. We ran to the car park behind the Wellesley Street Post Office heading to Wellesley st. But it was a no exit and everyone had to jump over 8 foot high verticle bars set into the ground (awesome urban planning still there to this day). Thankfully a helpful adult gave my girlfriends and then me and my boyfriends a lift over. Then I had to track down Dad. A phone call home and we arranged to meet him at the same place an hour of two later.
It turned out Dad had had an adventure too. Bang on 8 the first rubbish bin hit the iconic plate glass of the Information Centre. He was right there, he saw the guy do it. He hung around waiting for me and then dispersed to safety. Finally we met up amid the carnage of Aotea Square. I was breathless with excitement.
Walking back to the car up Wellesley street the lights were out on Albert st and a traffic cop was directing traffic, the young man in front of me passing the cop's motorbike swiped his gloves off the seat. No-one blinked an eyelid.
Little things were so different back then; everyone hated the cops; the cops were arseholes to everyone except Nats, business people and farmers; casual drunken threatening behaviour was everywhere, men in singlets looked at you funny, the tv regularly played the fault graphic with a kiwi tripping on the power cord, traffic cops directed traffic at lights with their nice white gloves...
Thank god that part of NZ is over.
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The TPPA could limit our local creative industries also. It would make local quotas for TV or music illegal (unfair favouring of local suppliers). Although we don't have quotas at the moment they've worked really well in Australia and we might need them in future. This method of assuring local culture creation could soon be lost to us.
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The really bad news is that none of the new frequency space created as a result of DSO is to be set aside for PSB. We did have at least one non-commercial regional channel (triangle in Auckland used it) but even that's going ( and so is triangle). Meanwhile the main broadcasters get space for up to 9 channels for each of their old analog one. It's a huge bureaucratic and governmental cockup which I'm just getting to the bottom of.
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Has anyone else in central AK not received ballots yet?
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Hard News: Moving on, in reply to izogi,
I reckon the answer to your question is in the ratings for One,2, 3 and Prime. TV3 is consistently a better channel than One or 2 yet after 30 years still struggles to beat TVNZ in the ratings. Prime has amazing foreign series like Doctor Who and Downtown Abbey which would be massive on One but barely rate on Prime. And dear old TVNZ 7 took 5 years to build enough critical mass to enter the public consciousness.
Yes PVRs and On Demand are changing things and for us online dwellers it's particularly significant. But we sometimes forget there's a vast percentage of NZ who don't timeshift their telly. There's something very relaxing about sitting on the couch and flicking on the telly to whatever's on (one of the great pleasures of TVNZ7) and lots of people still do that.
Then there's the digital divide. I heard at last year's NetHui 20% of NZers still don't have access to broadband (maybe someone can confirm this?). These people are not represented in the media argument as far as I can tell. Broadcasting Minister Craig Foss has openly confessed to watching everything via his AppleTV and I think there's a danger that we construct media policy based on our own technological preference without looking at the whole picture.
As for being number 1, absolutely. Being at the top of the list helps a lot (as it did for the Liberal Democrats in Aussie). And SKY TVs channels are always trying to get lower channel numbers because it increases their viewers.
Any new public service channel needs as much of a helping hand as it can get. Hitting the ground running with an established audience on TVOne would pretty much ensure it's survival. The obvious problem with taking the ads off TVOne is the loss of revenue.