Posts by Dylan Reeve
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Cecelia,
There’s so much brilliant TV out there on Netflix (USA), Amazon Prime and Hulu Free that why would I bother watching TVNZ and TV3? Apart from The Nation and Q&A there’s nothing of any depth. News can be heard on RNZ or read and watched online.
And that's part of the bigger issue that broadcasters are facing now. People are choosing different ways to consume content.
It's not a new problem, just look at how the internet fundamentally changed newspapers - content was online for free, and classifieds (a mainstay of newspaper revenue) dried up.
Broadcast TV remains the most popular option for NZ (and worldwide) but that's changing fast and making the future very uncertain for an industry that is largely based on selling eyeballs to advertisers.
-
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Russell Brown,
It would make more sense to sell TVNZ and use the money to set up a new public television service connected to Radio New Zealand.
...and then continue to fund it's operation from levies imposed on the broadcasting license of commercial broadcasters.
-
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Shaun Lott,
Yep, I totally get that. The problem to my mind is that we have put ourselves in a place where only $ and hence only ratings count.
I guess CL is actually being lamented as a (the?) last bastion of high-profile public service television in a country that has largely given up on such an endeavour.
But MediaWorks (and TVNZ) are wholy commercial. Their job is to make money.
Making good current affairs TV might be worth something for reputation points, but if that doesn't convert to viewers then it's not worth it for them.
What we actually need is a proper public broadcaster. Until then it's hardly reasonable to demand that a business make bad commercial decisions just because we like the idea of something.
Maybe the criticism will change TV3's mind, but then maybe it won't - because if they kill Campbell and put something else on we'll all have forgotten our outrage in 3 months anyway and if they haven't lost overall viewership then it was probably a good decision.
If Campbell Live does go off air I sincerely hope John gets to ply his craft elsewhere, but the problem is that without that public interest broadcaster there isn't an obviously place to put the show.
-
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Shaun Lott,
Well, this is the actual question isn’t it? (At least as far as the ‘dinosaur thinking’ of Mediaworks goes.)
The "dinosaur thinking" thing is silly. Viewers are their product. They sell viewers to advertisers - that is their revenue model.
Saying that ratings aren't important in that context is like saying that sales aren't important to a business... "Sure, people aren't buying your products, but heaps of them come and look at your shop, and they tweet about it, and a photo of your products was on the Reddit front page last week" -- if those things aren't resulting in sales then they aren't much use.
If Campbell's popularity on social media and among the newsphiles of the country doesn't equate to ratings then it's essentially worthless to TV3.
-
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But actually it’s the wrong question.
Media today is a mesh of facebook/twitter/instagram and yes the actual show as it airs.
I do watch the show live about once a week.
But more importantly I follow its reporters and engage with it on the internet in multiple forms.
Thinking about TV in the narrow blinkered vision of the live ratings is dinosaur thinking.
Those things are great, but they don't matter. None of those things make any money for TV3 (although the value of your online views may be slightly positive, but negligibly).
The only thing that matters to TV3 is their ratings. The number of people watching (according to Neilsen) determines the amount they can charge for advertising. If you're not watching the show (with its ads) then your engagement isn't valuable - at least measurably.
Live ratings may be only a part of the picture, but ultimately they are the only part of the picture that has value on a show like Campbell Live.
If TV3 thought they could attract higher ratings (thus higher revenue) with some packaged US sitcom (which would cost much less to license that Campbell costs to produce) then it ultimately would be a poor business decision for them not to put it on.
Obviously they value local content to some extent so the replacement ideas we've heard about are NZ content, but still they will be chose based on a) lower cost and b) higher ratings potential.
And, of course TV3 also have a daily serial drama (soap) series being commissioned, perhaps they're hoping it may have a shot at the timeslot in the future?
-
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
Campbell Live seems like one of those shows that people like the idea of in theory, but not enough people actually watch it for that theory to work in practice.
This. This is the problem.
It's the same with people decrying the lack of "quality" TV shows but not watching those shows when they are offered.
Sadly all TV in this country lives and dies by the ratings.
-
Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Jeanette King,
Some people suggesting this might be a poaching opportunity for Māori Television … After all, MTV is the closest we have to a public service channel.
Definitely.
Sadly Maori TV has a much smaller potential audience, and not sure they have the budget to carry a show like Campbell's.
-
I look at this situation and I think - "wouldn't it be amazing if the likes to Netflix or Lightbox could take on something like this?"
Ultimately the problem with this is that TV in New Zealand is purely commercial and all about ratings. However the maths works differently for services like Netflix where they simply need a wide enough variety of content to convince as diverse an audience as possible to pay a small subscription fee.
Or could a collaboration of sponsors put a shot like Campbell's on YouTube or something?
Ultimately though good journalism isn't cheap, even more so when that journalism is presented in video nightly.
-
Hard News: CWC 2015: Contains graphic horror, in reply to David Ritchie,
Are they trying to appeal to lowest common denominator with graphics and layout designed for low-end 4:3 tvs?
For better or worse it's still pretty common internationally to protect for 4:3 - basically in many countries analogue broadcast always means 4:3 (unlike NZ where 16:9 analogue was common for a while) - also many set-top boxes are configured for 4:3 center-cut on older TVs (or, invariably even, incorrectly, on just about every hotel TV I've ever seen).
-
Whaledump for lyfe!