Public Address

Hard News: The future: be careful what you wish for

Russell Brown — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:47:00 +1200

For long-term mediawatchers, there is a particularly tasty irony in the news that Sky Television was not aware that TVNZ was negotiating to be a partner in Coliseum Sports Media's snaffling of local screen rights to English Premier League football.
NBR's Chris Keall reported it thus:

TVNZ's involvement has caught media on the hop - and possibly also Sky TV, TVNZ's partner in the slow-selling igloo. "The next igloo board meeting would be an interesting place to be fly on wall," a Sky TV insider tells NBR.
TVNZ's involvement with news to the pay TV broadcaster. Sky TV corporate communications…

Up Front: An Open Letter to the Labour Party from a People of Christchurch

Emma Hart — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:23:00 +1200

So Lianne Dalziel has finally declared that yes, she is running for mayor. There'll be plenty of time to talk about the mayoral race later. The other thing this means is that there'll be a by-election in Christchurch East. What I want to do at this point is just have a quiet, general word with the Labour Party about Not Fucking This Up.
It's been clear for a while that you'll need new candidates in East and also in Christchurch Central. I'm mostly going to pretend that I haven't heard any rumours about who those candidates might be, except for…

Hard News: Media3: Game On

Russell Brown — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:05:00 +1200

One day last week, my sons were very focused. They were, like gamers all around the world, watching the live webcast from E3, the big video gaming conference in Los Angeles.
You'll probably know this if you're interested, but the main event was was the showdown between Microsoft and Sony, who were both introducing next-generation gaming consoles. By popular acclaim, Sony won and Microsoft was left dazed and bleeding on the canvas. You really would think Microsoft would have learned about obstructive digital rights management by now. Alternatively, some people held that they both fell flat.
Unfortunately, Microsoft's problems didn't…

Field Theory: Part of the Game

Hadyn Green — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 12:06:00 +1200

While "watching" the game last week via texts from Megan's mum, we heard no homophobic slurs. I did notice something odd though.
We were at a birthday party for a friend who had asked us all to dress up "fancy", so our group of friends were in suits and evening dresses. When I mentioned that I thought I might pop down the road to the pub to watch a bit of the rugby, I was asked by a number of people: "But you'll be dressed up?" Nicely dressed people don't watch rugby, apparently, only homophobic socially-backward fuckwits do.
I've talked…

Hard News: Friday Music: Bring Back Boxes

Russell Brown — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:23:00 +1200

There are a few key attributes to a good music venue. The room needs to be acoustically sympathetic. The sightlines must be good -- so that everyone (or nearly everyone) who has paid can see the stage. It should be possible to get to the bar and the toilets without undue difficulty.
The first places I started going to regularly were somewhat like that. They weren't designed as music venues, but The Gladstone and the Hillsborough Tavern were (the latter especially) big, rectangular boxes.
Nightclubs, on the other hand, often benefit from a labyrinth design, from being a series of…

Hard News: Media3 will be away for a while

Russell Brown — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 06:33:00 +1200

Media3 will be taking a break for a while from the week of July 3, which is when our current season ends. Like other shows on TV3, we're funded by NZ On Air for a specified period of time -- in our case, 20 weeks -- and then we re-apply.
Until now, through the Media7 years, we've been a team show that's on most weeks of the year, so this is something of the end of an era for us.
I don't know exactly when we'll be back, but it's safe to say that I'll be more than usually available…

Hard News: Not good enough, Eden Park

Russell Brown — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:25:00 +1200

I've been to Eden Park eight times this year, the past five to watch rugby, and I can honestly say that abusive behaviour -- let alone the kind of harassment reported in this story in the Herald today -- is not typical.
Eden Park crowds are a generally agreeable lot. There are plenty of women and children at games. There may well be forthright advice to the referee (I am often willing to offer such help myself), noisy expressions of schadenfreude and loud encouragement of the home team. Being loud is one of the fun things about being the home…

OnPoint: Quickfisk: Youth Unemployment

Keith Ng — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:44:00 +1200

Somehow I got entangled in a Twitter three-way between Hooton, Rob Hosking and #heyclint over youth unemployment figures today, and my 2 Degree 3G was crapping out on me again, so I was in the Twitter-equivalent of a vegetative state, watching them fight around me.
I haven't been following this, so I don't really know what HORRIBLE RIGHTWING LIES Hooton has been telling, but Rob brought out this graph which piqued my curiosity.

The chart on the right really does seem to show that youth unemployment - although well above OECD average - is going down. Does it?
Spoiler: No.…

Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?

Russell Brown — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:45:00 +1200

In 2006, I was lucky enough to get in on an analyst briefing at IBM's Alamaden Research Centre, near San Jose. It was a memorable day. The place itself -- a monumental California modernist building on a hilltop -- is striking. And they kept a copy of the whole public internet downstairs.
The idea of IBM's WebFountain project was to dynamically capture the internet and mine this very large dataset -- about half a petabyte -- in search of trends and concepts. IBM would sell this knowledge to corporate customers with an interest in knowing what was about to happen…

Field Theory: What goes with beer and sports?

Hadyn Green — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 15:29:00 +1200

Friends, is the answer to the question of this blog title. Chips is also acceptable.
In April a group of friends and I rented a house in Martinborough while we attended a beer festival. We brought a bunch of board games and a bunch of booze, but as we were looking around the house I noticed a Sky TV box. Checking the house guide I confirmed they had Sky Sports.
Excitedly I told Megan about it. I couldn’t remember the last time I had watched rugby with her. Possibly during the World Cup. Neither of us could remember the last…