Hard News: DUM DUM DA DAT DA DAT DADA DAT DA DAT DA!!
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Good to hear the fundraiser went well! Those of us with family members with autism will welcome this new addition. My brother-in-law is now in his early thirties and severely autistic. In the 1970's there wasn't much help around, let alone recogntion of the condition. Thanks Russell.
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Good to hear the fundraiser went well! Those of us with family members with autism will welcome this new addition. My brother-in-law is now in his early thirties and severely autistic. In the 1970's there wasn't much help around, let alone recogntion of the condition. Thanks Russell.
After I spoke, and could get a drink or three down me (I needed it), I talked to half a dozen people with direct family contact with people on the spectrum: kids and siblings mostly. One of the barmen had a family scattered with aspies and autists. It does bring home how many people are touched by this.
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TVNZ CEO Rick Ellis and Theresa Gattung met to discuss Telecom operating the kind of cacheing network this kind of distribution requires. It was not a very happy meeting, perhaps because TVNZ's view was that Telecom should do the decent thing and peer with all other networks at the regional peering exchanges, like it used to. Gattung's view was that instead TVNZ should pay Telecom for the privilege of reaching Telecom internet customers. There was not a meeting of minds, even a little bit.
I was at the Nelson Broadband Applications Conference in 2002 and had breakfast with Chris O'Donoghue from TVNZ and Rick Ellis who was between TVNZ's at the time. The two things I took away from that meeting were that 1. He saw TVNZ's initial stab at digital television, kiboshed by the Labour Govt, as a real missed opportunity, he was a real believer. And 2. He had a basic understanding of broadband issues and was a believer in getting the setup right in NZ. So I can well believe that him and Tezza wouldn't be seeing eye to eye.
He was most proud of his recent gym routine though, to be honest. Reckoned not working for TVNZ was doing wonders for his health...
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Walker quoted at length, in the affected accent New Zealanders used in broadcasting in those days
Walker (feel free to kick me if I'm wrong) was South African born, Oxford educated. It was the Brian Edwards/ Ian Johnstone/Austin Mitchell etc. era of imported accents.
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Following on from Joe Wylie, I don't think the accents were affected at that time at all.
People have always used a wide range of pronunciation. I don't see any great merit in the broad kiwi vernacular, or anything wron with it either. Trying to claim that those who speak 'differently' is an affectation is itself an affectation imho.
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Dammit! I can't get Finlandia out of my head now.
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Boy do I remember that movie - I think I must have seen it 3 or 4 times, at least twice with school classes. I lurrved it then, and I'm sure I'll love it now. What would I have been wearing? Very possibly a pink and burgundy crocheted poncho and a vinyl pinafore - I mean this was 1970!
Also great to hear of the success of the Hustle for Russell - happy to help as you know with the website. And yes, it's amazing how many people are dealing with it personally. I had a great conversation with an adult aspy the other weekend who was thrilled that now more people get him and where he's coming from - and we can all talk about it!
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I don't think those accents were affectations either. Many people take speech training while at school if they enjoy public speaking or their parents believe it useful, so for them (and I include myself in this group) this type of accent is how we speak in formal situations. It is automatic, which often amuses people when they hear me answer the phone.
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Trying to claim that those who speak 'differently' is an affectation is itself an affectation imho.
If the people who speak differently are purposely speaking differently from how they usually speak, its an affectation. If they normally speak that way it ain't.
However, if the broadcaster doing the hiring specifically hires people who speak in a specific manner, or with a particular accent, then that's not an affectation, but (in this day & age) elitism &/or some form of bigotry. And also an incitement to affectation.
On the other hand, I, like most people, have a 'telephone voice' which I don't notice til my children mock me. Its not unreasonable for people to be expected to use their best diction when speaking to the nation, and the (not so) unspoken rule of the time was that the BBC received pronunciation was the benchmark for good diction.
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Walker (feel free to kick me if I'm wrong) was South African born, Oxford educated. It was the Brian Edwards/ Ian Johnstone/Austin Mitchell etc. era of imported accents.
Ah. I had an idea he wasn't born here, and Googled around a bit but couldn't find it. Walker, BTW, ended up in very senior PR jobs, including working for the Queen during a particuar period of unpleasantness.
But there was a particular tone that New Zealanders assumed whenever they got in front of a TV camera, and it wasn't the way they spoke off-camera. You can even hear it change over the years in some of the long-term presenters like Angela D'Audney.
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Ben - snap, phone voice mockery.
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Yeah, that interview would have been about the same time I was getting smacked over at school for 'talking posh'. I quickly munged my own accent in order to fit in better. There was definitely still an 'accent hierarchy' around in the seventies and eighties.
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Jeremy, phone voices made NZ great, which no reasonable person could refute, surely!
That Muldoon video is great. Nearly 15 minutes of conversation about the differences between possibly different types of Soviet naval vessels. Anyone else find it almost surreal to see a news item / interview without any humour (or attempts at it), stupid intro pieces that relate nuclear ships to real kiwis in their homes?
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You can even hear it change over the years in some of the long-term presenters like Angela D'Audney.
which was one of the reasons, as I recall, Pete Sinclair clicked so well with a generation. He didn't try...he simply was and he sounded like it. Oddly, when he moved to Mastermind the affectations did begin, perhaps because he though he was speaking to a different demographic (rather than simply his earlier demographic grown up)
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My Grandmother became afflicted with a more or less permanent phone voice as a result of the years she spent working as a telephone operator back in the days when the calls were connected by moving plugs around the switchboard. I had always wondered why she sounded so much posher than the rest of the family.
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that film, and that sequence, probably had a major impact on the way I have seen my country since.
Now, I'm pretty sure I'm to young to have seen This is New Zealand, and yet it sounds really familiar.
So this makes me think that it's not just Russell that the film had a major impact on. I wonder if it has shaped a whole generation's view of New Zealand (or better or worse).
Has this cinematic promo film become the prototypic image of New Zealand, from which all other images since have sprung from?
I hope it screens in Auckland! I really want to see it now.
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Now, I'm pretty sure I'm to young to have seen This is New Zealand, and yet it sounds really familiar.
Same. I remember a short clip - sweeping NZ landscape accompanied by the same piece. Did that, perchance. play at the pictures before the main feature? Or possibly when the TV schedule started in the mornings?
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Or possibly when the TV schedule started in the mornings?
Ha, I think that's it! Soaring music over the alps first thing in the morning while waiting for the cartoons to start...
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Re the film - I'm too young (b 1970) and yet I immediately knew what Russell was talking about. So I must have been shown it some time in the 70s.
Re the accents - didn't the NZBC of old put a lot of work into imposing some sort of RP on to all its announcers? And didn't they stop in the 1970's? That's what I recall being told.
As for Angela D'Audney, she went to Epsom Girls Grammar with my mother, who spoke very similarly. I think you'll find a great many women who went through EGGS at that time all sound quite refined to the modern ear.
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Ha, I think that's it! Soaring music over the alps first thing in the morning while waiting for the cartoons to start...
"It's our New Zeeeeeland. We're so proud to be here. We bring the best - the very best to yooooou!"
I can't remember all of the lyrics to the rest of the song, but it had bits like "from this lovely land of ours" and "from mountains high, to lakes so deep and blue" (No mention of urban areas - interesting). I tried looking for it in YouTube a few months ago, but with no luck.
From memory, this played when TV started each morning - kind of the opposite of the Goodnight Kiwi. I don't think it was an except from This Is New Zealand, mainly because it looked newer than something filmed in 1970.
But I bet it was directly inspired by This Is New Zealand, and further strengthened this particular aspcet of our national idenity
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"It's our New Zeeeeeland. We're so proud to be here. We bring the best - the very best to yooooou!"
May have preceded that. Karelia is entrenched in my psyche, alps are in there, but the overriding memory is a rushing river in the bush.
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Robyn and Heather - are you sure youse guys aren't describing the old Toyota ads that used to screen circa 1990?
Welcome to our world, won't you come on in... -
May have preceded that. Karelia is entrenched in my psyche, alps are in there, but the overriding memory is a rushing river in the bush.
Me too. Joanne, I was 20 in 1990, and that stratum of brain cells is still fairly functional.
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Good point about the absence of the urban. NZ (and Australia) are two of the most urbanised countries in the world but I'm guessing relatively few people's heartstrings as NZers or Australians get routinely pulled in such a maudlin way by images of Onehunga or Karori or wherever else.
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But not the spelling stratum, Steven?
(I'm not normally quite this petulant, but you know who else calls me Joanne? The NAZIS)
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