News this week that the state broadcaster will drop the TVNZ U youth channel at the end of the month went mostly unnoticed. As the channel itself was – which was why they pulled it. Not even three years. Not exactly a killer blow to local music, entertainment and youth culture – Rose Matafeo was never going to be this generation’s answer to Karen Hay after all – but the more you consider the timing of the demise of the other TVNZ freeview stablemate, TVNZ 7, and the withdrawal of Triangle/Stratos (now Face TV) from the FV platform the more it looks as though FV was a set top set up – a ruse of using temporary channels to convince people they were getting more when they turned off analogue. What happened instead? They pull the channels as FV is rolled out and analogue stops. FV can’t be called on the hype because that phase is over, it’s too late now. They treated those channels like a PR item that would end with the campaign – the campaign to accept FV. They should make Pio do an updated ad with all the channels that have been cut as the feature. How many were there when you started out telling everyone there would be more choice and how many now, Pio? And since he’s so keen on extolling the concept of ‘if it’s fair, it’s got to be free’ maybe he can waive his fee?
So there are really not that many more channels than there were with analogue only now instead of the reception shadows and lines we have to put up with digital fade that blanks the screen completely when any clouds appear. Some areas where there is only satellite the built-in
tuners don’t work – I’ve been told. It is an underwhelming and anti-climactical beginning of a new era. An era where 4G and whatever else G inherits the old TV frequencies and the phone networks (via their internet services) provide TV-like entertainment to the masses. That is the other side of the equation. Traditional broadcasters have their FV cartel to preserve their ‘television’ status and limit competition, so the culling at the TVNZ ranch was more of a reorganisation of niche viewers than anything else. They are circling the wagons: unfortunately not around the charter and the now defunct non-commercial 6 and 7, but around their Sky properties where their strategy is purely commercial. They leverage the public good legacy of their archives to achieve a private good in the form of the Heartland channel, but have stripped their FV presence back. They are on the defensive and every foray to include online audiences – and U floated along on that social media cloud – brings them closer to the
realisation that the delivery and distribution of content is moving away from their closed systems and across to the internet.
C4’s low budget version of a youth channel outlives U and the kids camped out in the foyer at TVNZ for one simple reason: TVNZ isn’t cool. It’s about as cool as Peter William’s haemmrrhoid cream. They are not so much down with the kids, as down on the kids, so any
attempt to connect with youth was always going to have its training wheels on.
The bright-eyed, skinny white kids they chose to front U are like Christians off to Parachute. They behave like they may have been a bit tipsy on half a shandy on the later shifts though. So I’ve been told. Oh, the naughtiness. I don’t really watch it, only when there is a vacuum in content at the time when everyone else seems to be running ads. For the most part, in between the kids mooching around and talking shit about nothing and typing away on twitter, U is a stream of foreign reality programmes tending to the trashy, interspersed with American popular music videos. That is what the kids are into, according to TVNZ. I’m not sure the programming is anything more complicated than that.
U has theme evenings, like Guts Monday, Pash Wednesday and so on; each show traversing more shallow ground than the next as mindless hours of bubblegum television chews itself to an entropic content fade. At this point U is wholly populated by people you want to punch in the
face.
The polygamous union of the American trioka of heinous teenage stereotypes – the nerd, jock and slut – are honeymooned nightly in a suite of kitsch ostentation. The worst traits exhibited if not exhalted. Fake and nasty is so in right now you dirty bitch. So much hair-pulling, so much white pants, so much ‘oh no she didn’t’, so much ‘oh yeah she did!’ The sight of wannabe TV stars (because none of them seem to be actual TV stars) having their petty grasping and antics on full display is no less distasteful just because they are from Chelsea and speak in Home Counties accents than if they were Hommies from a Charleston trailer park. This shit all smells the same.
The seamless thoughts from video games to the news to fashion to music via generation Y or Z – or whatever the Christian club is (and I hope they have a wonderful time at Parachute) – is just so much static. I can’t believe they are still running promos for their facebook etc.,
given shop is closing because no one cares anymore. What anyone says to them is of no value now, if it ever was of any value at all.
So, no. No I won’t be missing TVNZ U. I miss the variety on the heavily eroding Freeview, but not this one in particular. It’s like hearing the Truth is closing down: you’re sad another newspaper is shutting, but you’re not shedding any tears for a smutty shit rag.
I will however be slightly better off when U gets a bullet because the FV channel 6 that it occupies will become a one hour delay of TV2, TV2+1, which I probably will find useful at some point. At some point in the future if things get any worse TVNZ will eventually make channel 1 into TV2-1, which is TV2 an hour before it is on channel 2, and the job will be done.
How’s that Freeview looking now?
I haven’t bothered with Freeview and probably wont for some years to come as the few hundred dollars it will cost has always got something else’s name on it.
But you are right, it has turned out to be a big sham. The chances of free television in New Zealand ever having an alternative to poxy TV1, TV2 and not quite as poxy TV3 was always going to be small. Basically, no good alternative to payer TV was ever going to be allowed in the current cultural/economic model, first developed by Labour back in the 1980s, that forces people to pay money for good content, and inhibits public good broadcasting (which of couse would be a threat to the first).
To give some idea of how outrageous and cavalier, and contemptuous free tv is towards it’s viewers, I notice they tacked repeats of Graham Norton on to the new show with not such much as a “how’s your father”
Plus they repeat absolutely second rate movies in prime time for the second, third and fourth time.
Add to that the deal between Sky and TVNZ – Igloo. Example being BBC which was free overnight on One you now have to pay for as well as other shithouse channels. The gatekeepers will have all the best $hows – all that will be left on freeview will be scraps like ‘reality TV’, what passes for news nowdays fear mongering light documentaries, soaps and generic cop shows.
TV being addictive as it is – now the drug dealers are watering down drugs so the addicts are picking over high cut street grade crap – unless you have money to pay for the gooood stuff. If there is a rehab for TV addiction get me there quick I am sure ALL this shit is not good for my mental health.
Time to turn it all off and dig the garden I think!
You can watch whatever you want on the internet, generally for free, even if it is region locked.
It’s not that hard or expensive to stream it to your main television, either.
Who cares if it’s illegal. Our government has been bought by media interests anyway.
You may care when the GCSB aims its microscope on NZ internet crime of which copyright crime is listed as one. Can you pay the corporate fines for that? If not then its off to the gulag debtor prison for you! If I watch someones stuff on you tube that I (and the account holder) am not licensed for will I go there too… will it end?
Way too much misdirected anger here.
Pio is an actor. It is a job for him to do the ad. Are you suggesting he works for no pay?
I didnt watch U that much, but it seemed to me to be a poor man’s MTV from the few minutes I watched of it.
A youth media network is probably more suited to an online platform, with groups from the schools and universities generating their own content, especially with these places packed with people studying IT and media arts (like this poster did back when every man and his dog were studying them). Pity the student unions flogged off their radio stations – would have been a good starting point.
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