Posts by Marcus Turner
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@Giovanni
There's a real question here about whether somebody's worth is appropriately measured by the amount they're paid.
I don't have answers, but it may be that a person will do their job for reasons other than money.
I certainly haven't found that the size of a person's salary correlates with my esteem of them.
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@Sofie
I have many more questions than ideas.
Do news programmes ever make a profit? Would a newspaper make a profit if it didn't include lifestyle segments etc.?
If it doesn't make a profit, then who will pay for it? If someone is paying for it, will the news programme be compromised?
I do sometimes wonder about even the BBC, which I think I've seen held up as a sort of model for reliable, balanced, objective journalism. What influences have come to bear on its presentation of a story?
I think all news is presented from a point of view. (I have some idea of the point of view of many British newspapers, for example, and take that into account as I read their news.)
I personally find television news difficult to watch. Every so often I try again, but find the experience unsatisfying. I even get angry, sometimes.
But I think that what I want from news and current affairs is not what most people want. I judge that because most news and current affairs on television and in other places is presented in a way that persists.
I wonder if the "take home message" here is that a number of subscribers don't like the way news is presented. Simply that. This could be a minority view; I really don't know, and I haven't seen any studies that measure it.
(Sorry if the discussion has moved on in the time it took to think about this and write it.)
I'd like to say something about name-calling. I've found that I'm more easily pursuaded of an argument if the presenter focusses on the argument rather than making an ad hominem attack of any sort. I'm a bit surprised at the amount of name-calling on this blog, from people who otherwise seem really clever, insightful and compassionate.
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@Jeremy
How is the present system set up for failure? And how is success/failure measured, in this view?
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@Sofie.
Thank you. Thank you for saying these things. They resonate with my own thoughts, and prejudices.
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@Steve: I'm not sure whether History Channel in the US carries ads, but I think they do. Do they not have any ads in NZ?
History Channel will act in the best interests of its business. "Sensational" seems to work best, over many different genres and channels in US cable TV.
I don't know how about viewing in NZ, but I've been led to understand that even the most loyal viewer of a US cable channel typically watches that channel for about half an hour or less, each night.
It seems US cable channel viewers typically don't decide what to watch in advance; they sit down and begin to channel-hop until something interests them. To hold their attention, the programme must, within a short time, explain what it's about and offer the viewer something to look forward to. This explains why some "appointment viewers" or viewers who watch the whole programme find some programmes repetitive.
(I understand that there's quite a lot of competition to be near the top of the channel listing on a cable service, since the channel-hopping viewer will typically encounter these first.)
"Sensational" is an understandable product of the business model. And it seems to work.
Who might fund a television channel, and for what reason?
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@Rich: I think your point is well made. That long-term/short-term thing is central to so much in business and politics. Shareholders, directors, chairpeople, politicians and voters each have their own opinion about this and act/vote according to how they see the relative importance of long- and short-term gains/values/goals.
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@Steve: I think the key concept is "icons". I've heard it said, for example, that much of the audience of History Channel is not particularly knowlegeable about history, but they do recognise icons, such as Hitler, pyramids etc. These "icons" attract viewers to a show because they're a "known quantity". Others - elsewhere on TV - include orangutans, sharks, mummies and UFOs. (This is all associated, I think, with what someone wrote earlier about emotional responses.)
@Wammo: I don't know much about the details of what's available from NZ ratings agencies, but I do know that it's possible to get very detailed information from surveys in the US, including age-ranges, gender and changes every 15 minutes, at least. This information is for sale. I guess it would be up to the purchaser of advertising to insist that (1) they're getting the audience they want and (2) they can be shown to have received that. I think that in cases where the promised "eyeballs" haven't been delivered, the channel provides them by "giving" more advertising elsewhere in the schedule. I'd suspect that advertisers do demand the accountability you suggest, since they're obliged to justify their budgets, too.
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@Graeme: One of the things that interested me in the Atlantic article was the point you made; i.e. that the news in newspapers (just as on TV) doesn't make money, but is subsidised by other content. The "unbundling" of news from the other parts of newspapers has exposed this. I'm very (vitally, I guess) interested in where news - on TV or anywhere else - goes from here.
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Further to my earlier comments about newspapers, here's an interesting article about business models, news providers and Google: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/04/how-to-save-the-news/8095/.
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@Bart. this "paying on the spot" intrigues me. I know you can pay to watch individual movies on Sky, but I also know that in most places, you can't subscribe to just one subscription TV channel. For some reason (presumably to make a workable business model based on differing individual tastes) you can only subscribe to "bundles" of channels.
I wonder if whatever drives this will also work against the "pay on the spot" model you describe?