A brief word on The Block NZ

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Is it just me or did The Block manage to sum up everything that is wrong about our culture and economy?

Fetishised property speculation as mass entertainment in a country of homelessness & poverty.

I wonder if State House tenants tuned in? The auction will be the closest they ever get to home ownership.

It’s as equally harrowing as the thought of all those hungry children watching MasterChef or MKR.

I wonder if those hungry children lick the TV screens.

Public Broadcasting doesn’t just mean broadcasting something to the public. We need a better media and a better public space for public interest debate.

17 COMMENTS

  1. The Block is just the latest expression of house-porn which started with Location, Location, Location. When Phil and Kirsty explained how everyone could find their dream home, do it up, and profit, middle-New Zealand was transfixed. Since then we’ve seen the property market bubble, burst and be fit for bursting again.

    Prices of extremely average houses (let’s call them shit-holes) have skyrocketed for no other reason that people are treating them as investments. This constrains the supply of housing in a way our forefathers hadn’t considered. The number of people owning more than one home, some owning enough to call them portfolios has risen dramatically. This leaves less for others and drives up the prices to the insane levels seen now due to scarcity.

    Only when people start treating houses as homes again will we see their availability start to return to normal and prices start to reflect their true value once more.

  2. Yes, and I got a grotty shock when flicking the telly onto ch3 just before the spews news, and saw a guy in bed with two girls one on each side of him, in a creepy show with beds full of young guys and girls, I was nearly sick. This was just before the 6pm news, how revolting, then it said’ Dream works the home of big brother! ‘ So now American t.v is normalising the young people to think it is cool to spy on a room full of testosterone and oestrogen overloaded young people and see what they do EWW YUCK! CREEPY/CHEAP AS FUCK! Also it just isn’t cool all these competitive ‘false’ reality shows feeding off young people’s energy for entertainment, I find it really gross actually.

    • Most shocking thing is, there are enough “mercenaries” and self serving exhibitionists happy to sign up to participate in such shows. That is where it is at now, it is beyond repair really, as the mad cap nonsense is now the accepted “norm” for too many.

  3. A month or so ago, I was invited to participate in a survey. TV1 or TV3, I can’t recall, but I had a spare few minutes so thought I’d see what the questions related to…

    All went reasonably well until the 5th or 6th question. Which was my favourite programe – and there were about six reality-TV-based options.

    All of which I despise with passion. Food porn, house porn, “Survivor”-with-near-nekkid chicks porn… *ugh* Spare me.

    But curiously there was no “None of the Above” or “Don’t Know” option.

    To progress on to the next question I was “forced” to make a selection. To me it was like asking, which would you like to have for breakfast; cow faeces, dog faeces, chicken faeces…

    I terminate the survey on the spot.

    There was something intrinsically dishonest at what I was being asked to answer and I wanted no part of it.

    • Survivor is actually a good show to learn about group psychology and practical application of game theory. And yes, I do know it’s edited to all hell and made to fit whatever narrative the producers want, but still…

      As for The Block – never watched a single episode but I can imagine it being as bad as the cooking shows with dramatic music played whenever someone drops an egg.

  4. These shows have always been all about rubbing people’s noses in the wealth and/or perceived success of others. And frankly we DO lap it up: witness the throngs that form just to SEE royalty (either literal or celebrity). It’s all about exploiting the populous with the forever out of reach carrot, preying on false/impossible aspirations (we should know it’s false, because clearly our economy would utterly collapse if we were all property speculators and celebrities).

  5. Cheap, venal, cheap, low value, cheap, vile and cheap. They are the televisual equivalent of ‘Women’s Day’ magazines and the modern equivanlent of the lions vs christians. But they are a tool – like the gladitorial games – to keep the plebs happy covering both “cor aint they nice I’m rootin for them” and “cor look at that nice stuff, I’d like that too”. I suggest reading Farenheit 451: much like the wife who can’t get away from her ‘friends’ on screen, the mindless masses are addicted to it.

  6. Get a hammer and start smashing those houses up. It is actually my conviction that most people out there are just so brainwashed, they go along with all this stuff, and sign up to the selfish, me first, hey, look at what I have done, kind of trips.

    It is all about ME, and ME and MY GIRLFRIEND, and WE are middle class wannabe snobbies, who are working “hard” to “get ahead”, “stuff the rest”.

    Take a hammer to what they do, and smash it to pieces, unless they offer the homes they build to the poorest, to sign up, and at least be allowed a draw from a pool of most needy. I know TV3, and the new version to be started by TVNZ, will NeVER sign up to that, they want to promote and propagate selfishness, as their commercial advertising “masters” expect them to.

    This country is a joke, really, all this talk about “egalitarianism”, a mythological thing of the past, that is if it ever existed. There is so much class division now, that is why there is no unity, and why the left of centre are struggling, because the minds of people have been “massaged” by commercial advertising, consumerism, selfishness and division. All talk about “New Zealanders” and “us” sounds totally hollow to me these days, it is a society destroyed and betrayed, for mammon, none else.

  7. Terrible but true. Reality TV is on the rise. I have to say when I first watched the apprentice I learnt a lot. Firstly the best applicants normally got fired and the less abled strategists won in the end. The employees who had the ideas, took risks and lead others often would make a single mistake which they owned up to and that was there downfall. The winner often hung back and ‘got on’ with everyone, did not seem like a threat and was ‘ a nice guy (or girl) then when the idealistic ones fell, they were the last ones standing. In life things are often the same. To achieve an optimal result in my opinion you need to team up idealistic ideas people team up with strategist/team players and they collaborate together. It is very hard to get ideas people as popular team players. Others hate radical ideas! Anyway I have to say I confess to watch The block but agree it is a terrible program that demonstrates what is wrong with the country. However we mostly all live in houses and most people can’t afford a builder/designer so this is there way to imagine what they could do if they had the skills/money to improve their home. You do not want to be such a kill joy that having nice things is wrong. It is not either or, it is less get the homeless homed and the hungry fed.

  8. It’s all part of the right-wing brainwashing machine: convince everyone that everything in society is a zero sum game where the only way I can win is if you lose. Forget co-operation and group effort – you’re on your own.

    Imagine how amazing a show would be in which they all worked TOGETHER to make something fantastic… an incredible meal, say, or a cheap-to-build home. But no, the peasants must be persuaded to regard each other as rivals. That way, the 1% will never have to face a united opposition.

  9. Reality TV seems all part of distraction media .

    With no decent public broadcasting / documentary channel we don’t get good investigative journalism to see the real effects of World change and corporate greed ie: Climate change , species extinction ,fish depletion, deforestation , overpopulation , tax avoidance ,TTP,overconsumption,water wars ,peak oil and so on. On planet Key TV ,this stuff just doesn’t exist.

    All we get is TV fluff , some pretty giraffes in Christ Church and a chance to redesign a new flag .

    TV 7 wasn’t shut down because no body watched it , it was shut down because more and more people were watching quality , informative advertisment free TV and this was undermining the advertising revenue for TV 1,2,3,4.

    For the 2/3’s all of kiwi workers who now live on part time , casual,temp,or contract work ,the insecurity of income means home ownership is sailing over the horizon, let alone trying to save a 20% deposit and then pay around $800 in interest a week for a dump.

    The empty fridges John Campbell saw in 250,000 kiwi homes are indeed in stark contrast to the well stocked fridge of the Free Range cook, who just poped out in her swanky helicopter to pick up some fresh shcoobie mushrooms from a Wanaka mountainside for her new Italian side salad. Darling , you must try it , its devine…..

    Well done Bomber.Bang on.

  10. Well, the media is owned by financial institutions mostly. They want their shows to be littered with product placement so they can make a killing before the media shrivels up and dies and the Internets commercialization takes over

  11. just stop watching tv. I have not bought a tv in over 19 years. My last one was a tiny box that became useless with the digital age.
    You will realise very quickly that in fact you miss nothing.
    You still have the movies, the radio and the internet.

    life is too short to waste it on tv.

    • Yep, the standard of NZ television is uniformly appalling. I have a TV in my lounge but hardly ever bother to turn it on. If someone removed the TV I probably wouldn’t even notice for a few days. I wish they would reinstate the national TV licence, so I could refuse to pay it. I would love to explain to the judge in court – Your honour, I refused to pay the licence for two reasons: 1. The programs are a load of rubbish and 2. I refuse to contribute to the making of the daily National Party spin session, aka TV 1 news at six.

      • And come with Mandatory Labeling;

        THIS PROGRAM MAY DAMAGE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH !!

        Violence begets violence.
        Stealing begets stealing.
        Deception begets deception…. and so on.

        Monkey see,Monkey do. Proven science.

        Image is ALL Powerful.

        Cheers.

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