MEDIAWATCH: Fair Go and Sunday go while Seven Sharp stays? There is no God!

I will write something far more constructive on Monday, for now, let’s be mean.

Sunday: Look, we need long form journalism and we need it on a Sunday night dammit! The problem was that Sunday always pulled its punches! Compare any story on Sunday with Bryan Bruce’s documentary last year on the cost of food. Bryan actually goes to the heart of the problem with the intelligence to analyse it, Sunday is bullshit emotional journeys, celebrity interviews,  overcoming struggles blah blah blah.  It’s current affairs for Soccer Mums. Need to keep it but total change from soft focus to hard focus.

Fair Go: It’s a classic and because TVNZ is a Broadchurch, you need something for Christian family entertainment. Doesn’t deserve the chop.

Midday News: Real blow for young journalists and the wider capacity for news.

Late News: Same as above

How come genuine news capacity and two necessary shows are getting the chop when Seven Sharp and Re:News stay???

Seven Sharp is lightweight garbage that costs a fucking arm and a leg while Re:News is the most tediously woke terrible shit you’ve read in your life.

Last month on Re:News was an opinion piece by a non-white hairy girl who was complaining about NZ beaches where she feels self conscious.

I know, why am I reading this?

Re:News is a platform for sociological experiments in alienation seeking attention for the “I/Me” pronoun generation.

Seven Sharp on the other hand services Soccer Karens and the husbands who fund them.

What they should? 

• They should cut journalists and producers from Sunday and deliver a far harder journalism and prove their worth for the Sunday timeslot.
• The should cut back on Fair Go but keep it. If Helen Clarke can keep Concert FM, she should save Fair Go!
• Dump Seven Sharp, send Jeremy to host the late news and make that a more studio based show. Send Hilary to Breakfast. Launch a new studio based 7pm current affairs panel show with hard hitting interviews on the days newsmakers.
• Keep Late night News but with Jeremy as host
• Dump midday news.

Studio based panel TV is far cheaper to make and there is enough talent to do that successfully in NZ week nightly.

TVs power is that it is live.

What will they do? More ‘Lifestyle garbage’.

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 already extended into meaningless middle class lifestyle wank in their pursuit of dollars.

It’s like the Spinoff BUT SMUGGER!

How the Zombie Christ do they manage to make it more condescending than The Spinoff?

Part of all this 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.

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.

This all as Newshub goes under and David Seymour starts a war with TVNZ!

David Seymour blasts TVNZ reporter, attacks media industry

Act Party leader David Seymour has attacked the media industry – and singled out TVNZ political reporter Benedict Collins – implying it is hypocritical to ask for government money while criticising politicians.

Seymour spoke with Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking following criticism of his proposed public sector cuts.

But the conversation shifted when Hosking asked Seymour whether the downfall of some media organisations recently was their own fault.

“That’s not quite true, the media landscape is changing,” Seymour said, detailing how advertisers aren’t spending as much money through media.

But Seymour implied it was hypocritical for the media to ask the Government for money while at the same time criticising them and celebrating slip-ups.

“But it’s also true, I saw a report on 1News, Benedict Collins grinning down the camera about Chris Luxon’s apartment costs.

“These are the people that cry, ‘Oh you’ve got to give us sympathy, and you’re inhumane and you should be kinder to us’.”

It is the third time in the last two days that Seymour has taken a swipe at TVNZ’s coverage of the news.

The Television New Zealand Act stipulates TVNZ’s editorial independence from the Government, saying no shareholding minister, or any minister, can give a direction to TVNZ in respect of its programmes, content, or any complaints about its content, or “the gathering or presentation of news or the preparation or presentation of any current affairs programme or content”.

Earlier in the week, he posted some previous social media comments about him made by the co-chair of Health Coalition Aotearoa, Professor Lisa Te Morenga, and noted: “@1NewsNZ was shown this before it ran a story at 6pm quoting [the HCA], but chose not to inform its viewers.”

He then also noted that TVNZ’s columnist, John Campbell, was “quoting and linking to a left-wing blog that is promoting wealth tax-supporting David Parker for Labour leader.”

His comments come the same day as TVNZ signalled dozens of job cuts and possible changes to some of its biggest news and current affairs programmes.

As 68 TVNZ staff and whanau get kicked in the guts right after Newshubs 300 staff and whanau get kicked in the guts, Seymour is starting a war with TVNZ.

There is a vested political interest in killing off Fourth Estate Journalism for the Right, less journalism = less accountability.

Fast tracking Trans National Mining Interests to raze our Environment.

Throwing the homeless off emergency waiting lists to make the emergency waiting lists look better.

More meth precursor drug access.

More sub machine guns.

8000 tobacco deaths for tax cuts.

13000 more children in poverty for tax cuts.

Disability benefit cut by $2300 per year for tax cuts.

Getting us involved in a new American war.

Ramming through laws misusing urgency.

Gang Patch bans that are against the Bill of Rights.

Attacking worker right, renter rights and environmental rights.

Taking free lunches away from poor children.

This is what we have become in just 100 days and National/ACT and NZ First do not want any scrutiny of the things they’ve rammed through and they certainly don’t want any scrutiny of the pro-donor hand outs they are about to push through as economic policy.

Seymour is starting a war with TVNZ because he will want to amputate TV2 and sell it off as a permanent mutilation of Public Broadcasting that he can point to as a great achievement for Free Market cruelty.

Aotearoa New Zealand is better than this Government is making us.

Comrades.

As much as we are collectively shocked and horrified at the brutal right wing draconian madness that is being rammed through Parliament with bugger all over sight, can I assure you all, it’s about to get waaaaaaaaay worse once the lobbyists have fleshed their election talking points into actual policy.

I do not think we are ready for this jelly.

There needs to be an urgent political summit of the Left to work out how we are going to collectively resist this.

The Washington Post byline is ‘Democracy Dies In Darkness’, and in NZ,  David Seymour is the one turning out the light.

The irony of the Political Right blinding the Fourth Estate Guard dogs of Democracy while cookers scream Labour bribed the media would be inanely funny if it weren’t such a dangerous slide into Kiwi Settler Fascism.

 

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