Double entry

Should journalists moonlight as prostitutes? ponders this TVNZ story. At least one TVNZ worker says yes.

Freeview ready for planned obsolescence

By the sounds of John Drinnan's Media column in yesterday's Herald, National are planning to not only kill off TVNZ7, but also seem to be winding down Freeview in much the same way Telecom killed Tivo. It looks like Sky TV will become the monopoly distributor of digital TV content in NZ, and National is relaxed with that.

Good news from Maori Television's Ian Taylor, who is keen to approach the channel's board to see if they'd like to rescue Media7 from certain death, seeing how NZ On Air has become a cross-subsidisation vehicle for commercial popcorn, reality shows and cop porn.

Brought to you by drugs

New Zealand and the US of A are the only countries in the world that allow advertising of pharm products in the media. Unlike the US, which spends money hand over fist on meds, NZ is not full of rich hypochondriacs being sold on meds that ideally their medical professional is best set up to understand. Contra-indications and all that stuff.

TVNZ sales and marketing have run out of finance companies to sponsor their news, so they're reaching for the pharm boys:

Today's news is brought to you in association with Vannair™,  an asthma medicine. The government mandated warnings are partly obscured, clipped to include such great advice as "Use strictly as directed. Do exceed maximum dose." Click the image to embiggerate if you don't believe me.

Don't blame the pharm companies. It's their business to plough profits from the ill and infirm any way they can. They're not afraid of a wide variety of tactics, including this little bit of baby prostitution I tripped over when I was in Lynn Mall earlier in the year:

Buy Nurufen for Children or you're a bad parent! They don't mention the (nearly) dead babies in the ad, do they? But then, over-the-counter drugs are always under-reported compared those dangerous illegal ones.

This just in from TVNZ News. TV ad revenue is up! Huzzah! Pass the Botox!

More News From Nowhere

One of the essential roles of public broadcasting is to accumulate the local yarns, news and contemporary culture for future reference. So many stories slip through public grasp into oblivion, like tears in rain. The past is fading fast. For example, lessons learned by lives like Palmy Co-op founder Gordon Brown or NZ's first gonzo ambassador Joe Walding, are already gone and precious few artifacts of their existence will endure.

So when the interweb comes along, digital platform, etc. etc., you'd think you might rejoice that the Very Large Online Library has finally arrived. Putting aside the copyright trolls, there are few hurdles to spreading the public record far and wide. The present can be preserved. Then why does TVNZ not provide an index for its fabled TVNZ ondemand programs?

I'll give you a f'rinstance. While some might find The Court Report a cure for insomnia, its content carries more import than the casual channel surfer might be aware of. The issues discussed continue to be of import weeks or years after their recording, yet it is treated as fish-wrapping paper by disappearing off the site within a month. Down the memory hole they go.

The TVNZ YouTube site is loaded more towards tabloid crap than documentaries and current affairs (Close Up is neither of these things). Media 7 has taken the effort to 'Tube it right from the start, but there is no YouTube record to fall back on for TCR.

The Court Report is already run on a spaghetti string. Is TVNZ so out of whack that they can have middle management and marketing gurus out the wazoo but they can't hire a librarian or two to archive this stuff and index it for the intelligent stuff too? Not a priority, is it? Just the fluff then?

Jeez, stoners get hassles for short term memory loss. I guess it's OK if we do it collectively, eh.

Evil Boy

Paul Henry has pulled the pin and TVNZ are left wondering what to do with the advertorial news and current affairs show Breakfast. Just as Outrageous Fortune was always the Cheryl West Show, Breakfast was the Paul Henry Show. The niche that Henry's escalating village idiot persona drew on ended up swallowing his cushy job.

A left swinging dick like Oilver Driver couldn't save TV3's Sunrise, and Henry the right swinging dick might just bury Breakfast. I don't really care either way, but the housewives deserve something to dilute the soap operas. Maybe they could try an all-chick line-up for a change. If not, TVNZ really needs some non-threatening entertainer in there who is more Selwyn Toogood than Les Patterson.


EVIL BOY (official) from Die Antwoord on Vimeo.

Song backstory at MoJo.

Repartee machine

What was said:

 Click image to embiggerate

What TVNZ thought was said:

 What John Key should have said:

What Paul Henry's apology said what he meant to mean:

Make your own highly rating insult:

The Magnificent 7

Russell Brown's Media 7 this week featured a yak with TVNZ News Boss Anthony Flannery on the intriguing future for news gathering:

There are some job losses but TVNZ News Boss Anthony Flannery is upbeat about a new strategy that will see reporters going into the field better equipped to deliver stories to air faster and to service the growing range of platforms that carry news content.

There will be changes too inside the Television Centre with "centralized hubs" where coverage will be planned and stories will be processed and delivered to the growing number of different streams that carry daily news content. 

He's not wrong.

Congratulations to Vic Uni Law School, Gibson Group and TVNZ 7 for their new show, The Court Report. HT to Steven Price. Probably borrowing the Back Benchers' offsite studios on their days off, the show has lawyers questioning lawyers on current affairs in front of a live audience of baby (student) lawyers.

It's a bit rough around the edges, but so what. The details will smooth out. The Court Report is a welcome addition to TVNZ's new style of programming "flavours". There's Media 7, analysing media affairs in front of a live audience. Back Benches gets truthful and nasty with pub politics. The Ad Show has the dope for the Advertising & PR darlings.

So yeah, a deeper dig into Law is very welcome. The first episode looks at NZ's archaic adoption laws, with Dean Knight seeing little hurry from Simon Power on the matter.

But there's a real wealth of subjects to cover in the future. Hell, Family Court stories alone could take up a season. Take divorce. If there's one thing that I think separates my generation with ones that came before or after, the boomers and the Y's, it was the change in the divorce property laws.

It wasn't until the Matrimonial Property Act 1976 that wives even got an anticipated divvy of the property. My father, an accomplished divorce lawyer, divorced my mother in 1974. He saw this law coming and jumped early. He used to crow about it years later, proud of the fact that Mum didn't get a spare cent out of him. He kept the house and money, she kept the kids. He dismissed Mum's lawyer as pedestrian and made the judge laugh.

But I digress. Things have changed. All I'll add is, watch out doctors/ nurses and accountants. I reckon you'll be next in line for your wonk of the week show on TVNZ7.

Read my mind

I was thinking Gollum but, damnit, Mike Moreu is spot on:

Sesquidecimation at TVNZ

An angry Bill Ralston told Morning Report where the TVNZ cost-cutting redundancies should have come from: "TVNZ has 35 HR staff. TV3 has none." Methinks the Ralston Group should be put back on the CanWest channel.