Public Address: Hard News

Kitchen Hacks

Russell Brown — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 11:25:00 +1200

You may recall that I looked at starting a food blog last year. We even got as far as crowdsourcing a name: Feed (h/t Sacha Dylan), but it became clear to me that it was going to be hard to achieve the kind of revenue that was going to justify the effort and expense of doing it properly.
But I've been thinking, perhaps I can take a different approach. My sense is that plenty of you care about food and want to talk about it, so what I'm doing here is writing a food post and having a lick of…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Friday Music: Schooling Up

Russell Brown — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 09:17:00 +1200

There's been a lot written about Lorde in a relatively short time, but I think the interview that revealed most about what makes her tick musically was Jim Pinckney's story in The Listener, which contains this passage:

“When I wrote Royals, I was listening to a lot of rap, but also a lot of Lana Del Rey, because she’s obviously really hip-hop influenced, but all those references to expensive alcohol, beautiful clothes and beautiful cars – I was thinking, ‘This is so opulent, but it’s also bullshit.’”
I’m curious to know O’Connor’s thoughts on Del Rey, one of the most polarising…

Media3: We have much to discuss

Russell Brown — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 09:46:00 +1200

In his story in this month's Metro magazine, Chris Barton characterises the media environment around Auckland's Draft Unitary plan as one where shrill, even hysterical, news coverage has been set against an official communications effort from "possibly the worst communicators in the universe." He's not far wrong.
In this week's Media3, we'll take a look at that fraught media debate. I'll be joined by Metro editor Simon Wilson, New Zealand Herald Auckland City reporter Bernard Orsman, and Radio New Zealand's Todd Niall. There may be cross words spoken, but, as ever, I hope we create more light than heat.
Also…

Friday Music: Enter Audioculture

Russell Brown — Fri, 31 May 2013 10:00:00 +1200

The noisy library of New Zealand music has opened its doors. Months in the making and years in conception, Audioculture.co.nz is live. It's more fun than an encyclopaedia and more orderly than a fanblog and its purpose is to capture the stories of New Zealand popular music and the culture that grows around that music.
The site launches today with more than 250 pages, grouped under "People", "Labels" and "Scenes". We plan to add another 300 pages in the Audioculture's first year. So this isn't the end of the project -- it's very much the beginning. Not only will the…