Posts by Dylan Reeve
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More evidence that Colin Craig is a very sophisticated parody – taking Stephen Colbert’s character to an even more ridiculous extreme.
Truthiness indeed.
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Crapnuts (not my word, it's my expression of frustration) - I'd started to type my reply when there were no comments here, I'd have been the first...
Metadata, Snowden and Prism were my suggestions.
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The Evidence act basically says an informant is entitled to protection (although not absolute). It then defines informant as a person who provides information to a journalist for inclusion within a news medium.
I'd think, therefore, that the informant's opinion and belief also should be considered. Presumably the person who provided the information was under the impression that Slater could provide the protection expected from a journalist.
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Presumably if the police were monitoring the Facebook page it was in their interests that Facebook not take it down?
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Danielle,
What does “passive” mean in this context? People don’t think about it? People don’t discuss it? People don’t deliberately seek it out? People who watch mainstream TV aren’t very bright?
It's the veg out thing. For a lot of people TV is something to unwind. They want to be entertained without having to engage much. This brings us easy to digest entertainment (various types of reality most obviously) but it's also a problem for broadcasters, because it makes viewers even less likely to pay attention to ads.
Within the TV industry there's a frantic struggle to understand a concept often called "transmedia" (or the more easily understood, "second screen experience"). Basically it's been widely observed in many many studies that people are now, almost more often than not, watching TV while using another device - phone, tablet, laptop.
Having identified this, the broadcasters and producers are trying to come up with ways to occupy both screens. The idea being that you're watching a TV show and using the show's app/website to further engage with the story and, crucially, advertisers. It's a huge emerging industry.
Of course I think it's fatally flawed because the point of using the second screen is to multi-task. It's viewers doing other things while they watch. Although it should be noted that #hashtags are related to this idea, and quite successful. The difference being that they engage viewers within one of the activities they are already engaging in while viewing, rather than trying to displace those activities.
Interestingly, on-demand services (like Netflix and Hulu) get much higher engagement - people aren't watching as passively - because viewers are actively seeking specific content in their own time.
People think the internet is the future of TV. I think that's ultimately undeniable, but it's the matter of what form that will take. There's a perception that we'll lose the idea of linear programming and everything will become non-linear on-demand like Netflix or YouTube.
I don't think that's true. For the people who are using TV simply as a form of passive entertainment the idea of having to seek and choose specific content is alienating. Remember the feeling of frustration when you walk into the video store and can't even decide where to begin looking? Imagine that every time you sit down to watch the "boob tube" after a long day at work.
Ultimately there's a lot to be said for being able to sit down and flick through random channels until you find something interesting. But that's augmented beautifully by having an almost infinite video library at your fingertips too. It doesn't have to be one or the other. It's just a matter of figuring out how those two models co-exist.
What were we talking about again?
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I wrote out all my words about this sillyness...
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Where do shows like those cross the dividing line between reality TV and documentary?
There are lots of terms in use in the industry to separate different types of reality TV.
Those show would all probably be classified as "obs-doc" - observational documentary - it really is not much different from traditional documentary. The narrative style within them may vary but the overall content and production techniques aren't much different.
But there's also narrative reality (things like The GC) and competition reality (like Survivor) and many many hybrids of those and other sub-groups. All are, essentially, documentary in nature though.
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I am playing devil’s advocate somewhat in these posts – I am a supporter of public television.
But I don’t think that commercial TV as it stands currently owes us anything other than popular entertainment. For better or worse that’s the TV environment we live in, and expecting it to be anything other than what it is seems unreasonable.
Anyway, I'm out now - my rendering is finished and I've got some TV to make :)
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to Kumara Republic,
The peoplemeter has become a relic of the analogue TV age, and AC Nielsen et al haven’t bothered to update their methodologies & technologies.
They are trying, but it's a complicated business. They are pretty good at measuring the number of people viewing a given show (on air or on demand, even some time-shifted data) but obviously they can't really determine engagement.
As it is, it's the best way we have to measure the reach of television.
Also, TVNZ 6 & 7 had surprisingly high viewer numbers, so I’ve always thought that anti-intellectualism dressed up as fiscal restraint was the real reason for shutting down TVNZ 6 & 7. Especially when said fiscal restraint has turned out to be anything but – it seems if you happen to drive a Rolls and wear D&G, you can ask the Govt for as much dosh as you like. On the other hand, the previous Clark Govt simply didn’t go far enough with TVNZ 6 & 7.
I liked TVNZ 6 & 7. And while their numbers were surprisingly they high they weren't objectively high. Both channels had very limited reach. But that's not really an issue.
What was an issue was exactly what I've spoken about - when show or channels are somehow publicly funded then that public somehow feels like the shows are accountable to them. Unless we all agree that it's worth spending money to make certain programs, regardless of audience, then those channels also face the same sorts of pressures.
I despair that anti-intellectualism has become a national sport that’s taken on a life of its own. Little wonder that scientists and other smart people often have to jet overseas to even get work in their chosen fields.
There is similarly the opposite of that, I guess we could call it intellectualism - we suggest that somehow that things like reality TV or popular pulpy TV are somehow bad or a lesser thing. Why shouldn't we judge entirely on the audience response? A lot of people are more than happy to watch The Block and the X Factor, why should we suggest that is a problem?
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Hard News: The Future of Television, in reply to James Blackman,
Ahhhhh another person who has become bound by the concept of “mainstream costs”
While obstacles are put in the way economic public tv will never be a reality here – or anywhere. There ARE ways to produce television cheaply – get rid of the happy hours ad long lunches for a start!I work in TV. I understand the costs very well.
But I've also worked on super low budget music videos and many other micro budget projects. I've made short films on an effectively zero-budget every year for more than a decade.
But ultimately even if you can get the equipment cost down to zero you still have to pay people if you want to be serious about production. People are the cost, and people have to feed and house themselves.
Production cost isn't really the issue. Audience and "monetisation" are the problems at whatever level you look at. Lot of people can address these issues in different ways, but ultimately for what we recognise as TV there isn't a lot of options - it's a fairly simple equation.