Posts by Alfie
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Perhaps Julie Christie should read Martin Van Beynen's Why The Bachelor demeans us all in the Press.
The Bachelor and its ilk are like air pollution. We don't have to live in an industrial zone but we all have to breathe the air at some stage. In the same way, this corrosive show works its way into the general discourse and culture. It sucks the oxygen out of an atmosphere which must sustain us all.
These programmes eat away at the general spirit of the nation. They bed-in stupidity and make it hard for honesty and true creativity to survive.
Such a programme lowers even further the common denominator of viewing taste and tolerance. A contrived and dishonest show which extends the extreme end of rubbish programming and drags the average down with it. If it is successful the effect is even worse. Once programmers see the pap they can get away with to win an audience, they will naturally do it again and so we have a nasty self-perpetuating and descending cycle.
Well said, sir.
-
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to izogi,
The format would surely appeal to much of the audience currently watching Seven Sharp.
If you can't beat em, join em? Surely not all television has to sink to that level of brain-dead drivel?
-
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
Serious question: who here regularly watches Campbell Live? And by that, I mean the full episode, live to air.
Hands up... we do... via MySky, every weeknight. Not in real time and we sometimes fast forward through some of the fluffier stories, but nowadays it's the only real nightly current affairs show in the country. CL is not afraid to call ministers to account along with shonky corporates, insurance companies, etc. Since TVNZ gave up on serious current affairs, CL is the only thorn in the side for those who'd prefer a more subdued media. Lose CL and it's the Henry/Hoskings "All hail the great leader!" show.
This may be a conversation for a diffferent time, but Neilson ratings are based on the viewing habits of 450 households. While statisticians might argue that's a valid and representitive sample, I have my own opinion about that. My Mum & Dad had a peoplemeter when they lived in the Marlborough Sounds, where they could only receive TVNZ. That skewed the viewing figures by around 0.25% before they even turned on the tele. Neilson argue that they rotate those 450 people every 18 months or so, but that never happened in my parents' case. They were influencing the viewing figures for at least 8 years -- in TVNZ's favour. I wonder how many other peoplemeters were sited in remote areas? Since then, I've distrusted Neilson ratings.
-
Hard News: The other kind of phone tapping, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
The BBC was looking for antique valves...
While we're discussing BBC trivia, I have to mention something which surprised me when I worked at Lime Grove in the mid-80s. I scored a job as an assistant film editor with their current affairs show Panorama. I'd worked in lots of sound-mixing suites before my spell at the Beeb, and still love that part of the filmmaking process.
We'd finished editing a story and headed down to the sound suites. They looked pretty familiar, apart from the sound desk. The faders were all upside down. In other words, you push the faders up for off and slide them down to increase the level. Apparently this was a hangover from early broadcast days. The theory was that if a soundman died at the wheel, he'd be more likely to push the faders up than to risk overpeaked audio going to air.
Only the Beeb would consider allowing their soundies to die so gracefully.
-
I enjoy Jimmy's film reviews and it's obvious you two have done a great job. As parents we all hope that our kids turn out healthy and happy. Our ADD child is now a very happy circus performer, magician and gym teacher in the UK -- a very big world away from the withdrawn, bullied child he was during his schooldays.
It was sad to read yesterday that despite a greater understanding of autism in the wider community, a school in Canberra saw fit to put a 10-year-old boy with autism into a cage -- an evil and misinformed variant of the "naughty chair."
The world still has a long way to go when it comes to helping special needs kids to lead fulfilling and productive lives.
-
Hard News: The other kind of phone tapping, in reply to Jeremy Crowley,
The main reason that people tapped the phone as kid's was because the combination of 3 x 2c coins was rare especially in the era of the 10c & 20c mixture.
I'm from an earlier era than you Jeremy. I was tapping phones in the early 60s and in that pre-decimal time we could still buy a penny mixture at Jones' dairy on the corner. In those heady days we all lived life in black & white and a local call cost 2d (tuppence).
I still have half a dozen of those wonderful, heavy, black bakelite phones in storage, some of them brand new, complete with the original Post Office tags. They're such beautiful, anachronistic objects. I keep hoping they'll shoot up in value one day, but that hasn't happened yet.
I must say that I'm finding this thread to be an absolute delight. ;-)
-
Hard News: The other kind of phone tapping, in reply to Howard Edwards,
We live in Coatesville which is about 10 minutes drive from the Albany Mega centre (i.e. hardly the wop-wops) and our cellphone coverage is abysmal - some days it is impossible to call out or call in.
Ditto here in Blueskin Bay. While we're only 25km from the centre of Dunedin, Vodafone cell coverage is all but non-existent. VF did offer to sell us an expensive signal enhancer which uses VOIP, but to make it work, your cellphone needed to be plugged into the box -- just the same as a landline. We ditched our cellphones and rely on the landline instead.
Likewise, Chorus tells us that we're never going to be upgraded to UFB. Hell, we can't even get ADSL2 out this way. Despite Dunedin "winning" the Gigatown thing, it's still copper all the way for us poor country folks.
-
Hard News: The other kind of phone tapping, in reply to Ianmac,
There was a phone box in London somewhere where Kiwis in the know could phone home bypassing the coin system and talk free. A queue would form late at night for the privileged few.
There were actually dozens if not hundreds of phone boxes like this. When I lived in London in the 80s I had a kiwi mate who used this trick. You still had to put coins in the phone, but he'd insert a thin strip of metal with a slightly bent base first. He made the call, then once it was over, withdrew the metal strip and got all of his coins back. Because British Telecom were slowly "fixing" their phones to prevent this scam, my friend was working his way around the telephone boxes of South London until he found one which worked.
While I'm reminiscing about the 80s, we lived for a year or so in a big house in Earls Court which had a coin-operated telephone in the hallway. One day the phone inexplicably started to provide free calls, anywhere in the world. Our flatmates were a mix of kiwis, French and Canadians so that little phone ran hot for several weeks until the landlord finally clicked.
Ahh... those were the (pre-Skype) days.
-
Heh! I remember doing this as a kid in the phone box up the road from our house. The hardest part was getting the timing right. Once you had that down pat, free phone calls were yours for the asking.
Mind you, the attraction wasn't that the calls were free -- they only cost a penny or two back then -- and besides, we all had home phones which worked locally for free. It was the fact that we'd aquired this secret knowledge which tricked the Post Office technology which really appealed to us. Boy, were we clever!
-
Winston Peters has confirmed that he'll resign from the NZ First list.