Hard News: The digital switch-off
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Just what we need from SKY -another tedious 80s music channel is coming.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU1103/S00161/music-channel-to-celebrate-80s-00s-artists-mtv-programming.htm
SKY usually adds some crap channel as part of the basic channel lineup then a month later announces a price increase to cover "increased programming costs."
About time someone had them up about that.
Why can't SKY give us instead 24hr Al Jazerra which Stratos has rights to but never seems to make up its mind it we can really see it (It was showing at 11pm weeknights, brilliant for Libya coverage then vanished. BTW Their website is dreadful and even requires Outlook to subscribe to the programming update info so who knows when its now on).
But of course the rightwing Americans running SKY who drive Fox News would see Al J as the devil.
But back to the discussion: To be honest, TV7 always feels like cheap and nasty because it is run on the smell of an oily rag. For example, the TVNZ news on it looks like a training ground for young up and coming employees and if it really had any public service news philosophy, it would have gone 6am to midnight on the quake coverage including covering live news briefings from ChCh.
The big picture is not the end of TV7 but the end of TVNZ and as I never find anything on it to watch or record and hate the celebrity BS, I'm now uncomfortable with my taxes involved in some way. I got SKY to see BBC and CNN news and the documentary channel etc.
I spent Christmas in Australia and now so miss SBS and ABC. A feed of SBS would have been a nice addition to the digital lineup on Freeview and a replacement for 7. -
Islander, in reply to
and Steve B - actually -NO!
My nextdoor neighbour did the sums, and bought a Freeview set - and after 3 excruciating weeks of tinkering with the Sky dish & her receiver and her tv set
(not just by herself, but also with the aid of a family member with expertise in these matters) finally -&literally- jumped on the Freeview receiver. Costly jump, but apparently *very* satisfying.
As far as I know, no-one round here has Freeview...We do live in a strange area (bluffs and hills in the way which theoretically shouldnt block a satellite, but - seem to...)
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Sorry for the late post, but I just wanted to say I'm really rather gutted. TVNZ 7 was basically the only channel I ever watched, and it had a great crop of shows. It was fantastic to see so much homegrown, intelligent stuff. And of course National national'd all over it. Such a shame.
All the best, Russell. -
Russell Brown, in reply to
As for Sky etc – where did the Doco channel go?????
It's now BBC Knowledge and Richard Driver is about $6 million richer.
The BBC's intractability -- or, rather, that of its commercial arm, BBC Worldwide -- is an interesting feature of this debate.
The BBC might still do a very god impression of a public service broadcaster, but it is basically hostile to public broadcasting anywhere else. TVNZ 7 could (and, i think, should) have launched with more BBC content content and ideally a relationship with with the Beeb, but perhaps that was never really going to be possible.
Via BBC Worldwide, BBC public service-style content is extraordinarily difficult to acquire -- it's either too expensive, buried in unattractive packages or simply not available at all to other public broadcasters.
The BBC Knowledge move suggests that the plan all along was to leverage pay TV. Like Documentary, BBC Knowledge will receive a share of overall subscriber revenue by stocking a Sky channel with with its back catalogue. It's easy, steady money. And anyone who can't afford Sky can get lost.
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If you want public broadcasting in New Zealand then you don't vote for the National Party. Easy enough to do.
If you think the corporate media campaign (Fairfax and APN) supporting tax cuts and the National Party from 2005 to the present was evidence of WHY we need a public broadcaster, then you don't vote for the National Party.
If you think the tax cuts themselves were imprudent - at the very least - then you don't want to be voting for the National party.....
I clearly remember Michael Cullen saying tax cuts were a very bad idea because one day a rainy day would come and we would need the money. Well....it rained...and National is oblivious to their own role in ENSURING the resources aren't there to meet the need....due to their tax cuts.
If you want a sane transport policy NOT geared to pouring taxpayer cash into infrastructure and bus/truck-owning corporates....then don't vote for the National party.
If you think climate change is something every person on this planet should be competing with each other to show leadership on....(instead of lolly-gagging at the back of the Reluctant Bus)....then don't vote for the National Party.
If you understand that Peak Oil actually occurred in 2006....and you want a sane public transport policy for the oil-poor future that is as certain as sunrises....then you don't want to vote for the National Party.
I could go on......but the list is already long enough to make it screamingly obvious that only people ignorant of all these things could vote for the National Party.
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DexterX, in reply to
I could not justify SKY TV on any basis.
Most channels are crap, the movies I have already seen or I don't want to see them, the news is an infinite rotation of boredom once a story has broken - the only thing of interest to me is the sport - but we go to the pub to watch that when we really need to.
With child minding our 3 year old has her own personal DVD player, has her own Library of books and discs and goes with us each week to Video Ezy to select her weekly viewing. She does not watch actually wtach TV and given the choise she prefers to sit on my lap and watch You tube.
We spend more time listening to the radio or online than involved with TV. which is fast becoming History and perhaps expanding Public Address to a Waynes World online current formant oprlinking in with one has some merit.
Russell's World. Hard News Time. -
Steve Withers, in reply to
The Blair government was in the thrall of Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black. They did a lot to dilute and diminish global access to the quality programming of the BBC....because it blew the inferior commercial product out of the water, as often as not. To allow that to continue would see VERY bad press from the media barons.....so Tony Blair and his government folded. Plus, the BBC was causing trouble over their lies about Iraq...and they needed to weaken it and make behave.
Now the UK has a Tory government that is even MORE hostile to media not owned by a billionaire they can cozy up to.....
The same is happening here in NZ. The National Party of today is actively hostile to the ONLY significant media (TVNZ and RNZ) not owned by foreign corporates. In this sense, they are demonstrating - once again - they cannot be trusted without collective assets.
I need no more proof. Thirty year of watching these stupid people do this to *our* assets is more than enough.
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Steve Withers, in reply to
I don't knowingly give Rupert Murdoch one cent. If he owns a single SKY share (and I think he owns a lot more then that), then I refuse to have it. It doesn't hurt that their content is crap....and I have too much going on in my life to sit around watching OTHER people play games of any kind.
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DexterX, in reply to
So what are we in right now?
I call it a recession.
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Sacha, in reply to
Now the UK has a Tory government that is even MORE hostile to media not owned by a billionaire they can cozy up to
And some reckon their recent decision to bend over further might haunt them.
So Rupert Murdoch has got his way – again. Not for the first time, the politicians have bent over backwards to accommodate News Corporation's commercial ambitions. Not for the first time, all other voices have been roundly excluded from any say in the grubby little bargain that Britain's most powerful media tycoon has managed to strike with a government apparently so desperate for the great man's blessing that it's willing to bend the rules to smooth his path.
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When they find themselves alone at the polls in some distant election, with the Murdoch media ranged against them and their traditional media allies squeezed close to death by the power of monopoly, ministers will rue the day they allowed themselves to be bulldozed into cowardly submission.
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Because our land is cheap and plentiful.
Jeez, when did you last buy a dairy farm? :)
But it's a good point. There are dreadful subsidies that benefit no-one, damage the land, ruin economies. There are subsidies that clearly benefit one group, nation, region over others. And there are subsidies, I'd wager (without being able to name one, sorry!), that help the sane, efficient and economical allocation of resources.
Ideology itself can be the enemy sometimes. -
Russell Brown, in reply to
Russell’s World. Hard News Time.
I don’t know how to break this to you, but last night I watched Master Chef.
Although I would argue that my responsibility was diminished by having just seen The Clean play. I was high on that shit.
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Danielle, in reply to
I don’t know how to break this to you, but last night I watched Master Chef.
Quickly, all of you! He is fraternising with reality television! You must stone him for his ideological impurity!
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
We spend more time listening to the radio or online than involved with TV. which is fast becoming History and perhaps expanding Public Address to a Waynes World online current formant oprlinking in with one has some merit.
Russell's World. Hard News Time.I believe Al Gore has such an outlet called Current TV.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
You must stone him
Or throw perfectly cooked date scones
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
You must stone him for his ideological impurity!
Better still, enter him onto a game show. And not a pretend game show either. ;)
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Quickly, all of you! He is fraternising with reality television! You must stone him for his ideological impurity!
I confess. I ... enjoyed it.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
I confess. I ... enjoyed it.
So long as you did so ironically, we're okay.
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Sacha, in reply to
or with some facial hair and a bicycle; that would be acceptable also
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But yeah, actually, I also enjoy Highway Patrol and Piha Rescue.
I think New Zealand actually makes a fairly gentle sort of reality TV. We're quite good at the public-service obs-docs, not given to the cruelty-based formats.
I felt pleased when idiot shows like Celebrity Treasure Island faded from favour, although I suspect that may have only been because it became impossible to find idiots to appear in them. And while Genevive Westcott's You Be the Judge died amid justfiable public scorn, UK digital channels have that sort of shit wall-to-wall, even now.
Master Chef, commercial orgy that it is, is fun if you're a foodie, and it's not using precious tax dollars. So what the heck.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
I think New Zealand actually makes a fairly gentle sort of reality TV. We're quite good at the public-service obs-docs, not given to the cruelty-based formats.
For sure. But how much longer can that last?
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nzlemming, in reply to
We're quite good at the public-service obs-docs, not given to the cruelty-based formats
For that we have Parliament.
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John Holley, in reply to
We are with you on the Captain Mack (though you can get the DVDs via Captain Mack's web site)
The bigger issue here is not my daughter watching 84 hours of TV a week (she doesn't) but that for the times during the day when she did watch TV there was a safe, quality free to air option with a strong local production content.
Now you have to pay to get that. Who does this disadvantage? Obviously children in lower-socio economic households - who have also recently been disadvantaged by the changes to early childhood funding.
What we are seeing across a broad spectrum of Govt funded services is a gradual shift to user pays which will disproportionately disadvantage the poor in NZ.
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Don't think anyone has already linked to this Herald story about TVNZ's deliberate strategic shift towards pay tv.
Television New Zealand head of digital services Eric Kearley says the division is "here to make money" and the future is with pay TV.
"There has been a lot of talk about media revolutions but the real revolution has been the move from ad-funded television to pay. As a broadcaster if we do not get into pay we are kind of stuffed," said Kearley.
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The TVNZ strategy is if you can't beat Sky TV join it, after realising that it could not convince the National Government to amend its Sky-friendly policies.
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Freeview was once a free to air bulwark to slow Sky's growth. But it has a secondary role in TVNZ's digital strategy. Kearley says: "We still support Freeview - but we are not going to launch channels that we cannot make money from.
"We are a commercial organisation and shareholders have made that clear and we try to deliver dividends. That is non-negotiable.
"It has yet to be proven content would boost uptake for Freeview," he said.
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And Drinnan has a story today that Sky has too little debt for the liking of the financial markets, and nothing useful to buy. Game over?
As free-to-air channels battle for survival, pay television giant Sky TV is headed for what market analyst Sarndra Urlich calls "an embarrassment of riches".
Urlich of First New Zealand Capital says Sky is under-leveraged with an inefficient balance sheet. Profits had boosted Sky's asset levels but there were no apparent acquisition targets and little prospect of a boost in dividends or a share buy-back.
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