MEDIAWATCH: TVNZs descent into meaningless lifestyle crap continues at pace
New Life section among changes to 1News.co.nz
1News.co.nz has launched a new Life section, offering stories about psychology, work, play, parenting, health, food, gardening, architecture and style.
The Life section is one of several new additions to the website, with quizzes, email newsletters and fresh video series also introduced.
The Life section, led by award-winning magazine editor Emily Simpson, launched this morning with some clever op-shopping tips from stylish thrifters such as Miriama Kamo, and a look at the new success-oriented self-help books aimed at men by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dan Carter.
Simpson said the Life section was an opportunity to showcase sharp (and sometimes funny) writing, and the 1News.co.nz audience could expect to see famous as well as fresh bylines, including John Campbell, Emily Perkins, Indira Stewart and many more.
“There will also be beautiful photography, delicious recipes, cost-of-living tips and life advice. The section aims to be a smart take on all the good things in life.”
Ugh.
TVNZ, our public broadcaster has extended into meaningless middle class lifestyle wank in their pursuit form dollars.
Ugh.
It’s like the Spinoff BUT SMUGGER!
How the Zombie Christ do they manage to make it more condescending than The Spinoff?
Part of it is the naked stress of the last election and rise in abuse towards Journalists. This desperate effort to find ways to bond with their audience beyond politics is an attempt to humanise TVNZ which is understandable but ultimately damaging to the issues they are covering because depoliticised news media is a capitulation of Fourth Estate obligations, not a championing of them.
The other part of this new lifestyle section are the economic dynamics of measuring audience.
MediaWorks has received a lot of media attention lately regarding the new media environment struggles, but at least they have a plan for turning things around.
NZME, TVNZ, Stuff, RNZ and TV3 have more problems than MediaWorks.
Radio, Newspaper and TV ‘audiences’ were always a mismatch of diary readership surveys and polling.
Generating these audience numbers was always more an art than science with clients believing a million eyeballs saw their advert or a million ears heard their advert.
The brutality of online viewing stats however alongside the inflated numbers social media sold as ‘impressions’ robbed radio and newspaper of their audience numbers.
Online is all that matters now and the stats they generate provide more than the old school radio and newspaper surveys.
TVNZ suffers this problem as well. Their online arm can generate precise ratings they can sell on, their TVNZ ratings however are drawn from the always questionable TV monitors which the advertising industry are less and less impressed by.
TVNZ has to generate more pap to draw advertising models to and their depoliticised middle class Lifestyle section is the perfect virtue signal for that.
Ugh.
We face a Hard Right Romper Stomper of a Government who are going to bash the bejesus out of drug addicts, the disabled, beneficiaries, workers, renters, prisoners, the environment, the 300 000 living in electricity and housing poverty and the 600 000 reliant on Food banks each month – and a depoliticised living room of middle class aspiration is where our public broadcaster is deciding to move towards because viewers are fatigued.
Neato.
I know.
MORE smug than The Spinoff!
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It has seemed to me for some time that TVNZs template is something akin to The Womans Weekly, Womans Day etc. No room for hard hitting current affairs programs fronted by hosts like Brian Edwards, Lyndsay Perrigo etc. A crime really given that John Cambell is available. Still it will make a change from the never ending diet of Australian reality and English game shows.
It isn’t a public broadcaster, it’s a low-quality commercial TV station that happens to be state-owned.
Meanwhile, Prebble’s policy of handing over the commercial licenses to a couple of monopolies has been challenged by… precisely zero parties in Parliament. Still it continues, and apparently even the current domination of television by unregulated over-the-top broadcasters — almost entirely controlled by a few foreign conglomerates — cannot motivate any opposition from the Parliament.
And how about the scandalous situation of cable television (and its satellite simulcasts) remaining a virtual absolute monopoly for nearly all of its existence? There has barely been any mention of the issue in the press, for three whole decades.
Certainly the broadcasters and newspapers are doing their best to ensure the nation’s reputation as a backwater full of ignorant little villagers may live on unimpeded!
Public broadcasting viewers are declining so rapidly it’d probably be best to just dump it.
The world is a decaying shit heap of climate disaster, overpopulation, resource depletion and increasing conflict from the personal to the global level. Capitalism is in its death throes but marches on intent on concentrating wealth and power in the fewest possible hands.
So magazine style content by TVNZ is just what we need.
Television has become background noise, lightweight, short-segment fluff for people lounging on the couch to occasionally look up at when distracted from using their smartphones or canoodling with their furbabies. TV for people who are near a television but not really watching it.
There is the odd exception, but good luck wading through the shit to find it.
Next development, they – the PTB – will make a cute tv that follows you round begging you to watch it and making sad noises when you ignore it. We will be so used to being isolated from real people, and having children will be discouraged if we cut down on birthing units enough, and housing to be able to do the nurturing and caring and guiding the young ones.
So a sublimation of that instinct will be filled by this charming, harming little ‘toy’ that fills the brain with lightweight stuff and you can pretend that life is dreamy. That’s my prediction if we don’t get a grip on life and hold it and think about each other and what to do together with thinking similar people. Form your own hamlet, it could be vegetarian or not!
Those being bashed will eventually start to fight back then we will understand that MMP is doing us no favours whatsoever.
We need to move to STV.
Or perhaps rearrange the deckchairs.
It’s necessary of course.
One could not stampede a moderate country down the road of tax cuts for speculators were a competent media pulling Luxon up every time he stated that ‘NZ’s low and middle income earners need those tax cuts’.
Essentially it’s Rogergnomics – the Goodbye Pork Pie economy – wrecking the state (in this case a professional media) so that grifters can rip bits off & sell them.
We have a shit MSM because that’s what the looters need.
An informed public would see them hang.
Yawn. More of that rubbish and they will be merged with RNZ to save duplication costs
Does anyone wacht television and listen to radio?
Labour’s failure to recreate public broadcasting will its most enduring. The depths our “public broadcaster”has sunk to is a warning to people in other countries. TVNZ news is pitched at NCEA level one english, it’s not just awful, its appalling! I remember watching a news broadcast on arriving back here afer 38 yrs away. There were 2 newsreaders, male and female. I thought it was satire! The girl reporter they cut to mentioned something about the spanish president. Should I have complained to broad. standards or phoned a truancy officer.. The news and schedules are pitched to the 12-35 year old weapons of mass consumption. We used to have decent current events/affairs prog. and decent news, someones been serially pissing into the water supplies of the countries maternity wards over the last 40 yrs. I lament this situation to colleagues, however most people no longer know what proper public broadcasting is unless they have lived overseas. The lesson is that once gone, public services can never be regained.
awe, but fellas! Didn’t ya just lerv that little ensemble Hurrily was wearing during that promo shit for 7 Sharp when she turned to Newsboy as he was wearing a blokey number, and went “a wha wha whar” deep and meaningful commentary,
I was truly taken aback. I wondered where I could buy copies of every Woman’s Weekly and epose of her journey from accidental encisive journalist to Her soul searching and the struggles she’s faced as a STAR.
We should really be in awe of Her wonderment. I’m worrying about Jesus Christ given the struggles He must face between honest journalism and having to prop up one or two colleagues he lervs.
It’s a hard row to hoe by gum.
Slap an award on Her, call Her the Mother of the Nation and put Her out to pasture with one or two other heffers in the wonderful rapa, and be done with it. Perhaos even a special place in broadcasting history.
Possible even a Damehood for services to broadcasting pap and smaltz.
OR not
In steps The Daily Blog with a couple of journos in the hard news division, a Russian news editor exRNZ, New Zealands best cartoonist exNZH, some long form Rogan style interviews, a page 3 girl, a page 4 hunk, a Murdoch style sales promotion cash lottery if you jump the paywall may be even a red cent from NZOnAir.
I hadn’t realized that TVNZ still did broadcast TV and actual channels. I’ll have to make an aerial and have a look.
Don’t watch unless I have to it’s so brown washed it’s virtually unintelligible and what you can understand is a slew of unquestioned Labour green talking points.
– is John Campbell crying again now National is back in does anyone know?
You are so fucking racist. What have you got against Maori’s? Or LGBT for that matter. Pretty sure that you said they should be strung from a lamp post.
Television is a convenient medium for the entertainment of the masses – and that’s pretty poor save the odd good movie – but is particularly ill suited to in depth inquiry unless its independent docos, which is problematic also when the commercial channels are tribal and tied to sponsors.