The single one thing that would forever change 7pm current affairs
I watched The Project and Seven Sharp a couple of weeks ago, and I just don’t know what those shows are anymore…
…this looks like it’s being filmed inside TVNZs womb.
The bewildering lack of insight on issues that matter has reached such a shallow level, you can only tell something matters when Jessie cries on The Project…
…we have existential crises facing our nation, yet nothing at 7pm is preparing any critical thought whatsoever for those issues.
Why?
Why has 7pm current affairs been dumbed down to The Project and Seven Sharp levels?
There’s one simple true reason.
Bloody Shortland Street.
Here’s the real reason why The Project and Seven Sharp are lightweight infotainment shows masquerading as current affairs, it’s all to do with the 7pm advertising timeslot.
Advertisers want the easily manipulated demographic and that is dominated by Shortland Street, The Project and Seven Sharp are vehicles created by the sales team to compete for Shortland Street’s advertisers.
The one thing that could bolster 7pm current affairs in NZ is if TVNZ moved Shortland Street from 7pm to 7.30pm and start their own TV2 current affairs.
TVNZ could move Seven Sharp to TV2 and TVOne could go back to doing actual current affairs at 7pm.
That way we could have a serious current affairs show at 7pm on TVOne (hosted by, Oh I don’t know, John Campbell?), some lightweight infotainment show (Seven Sharp) on TV2 and Newshub could decide to either do real journalism or continue with the thing they have now.
If we made 7pm a time slot of current affairs, we could get a broad spectrum of that across the channels.
If these networks want access to NZ on Air funding, then the big networks (including Māori TV) should be forced to sign the 7pm Public Broadcasting Mandate which states all major TV Networks will run current affairs at 7pm.
One of the problems with the free market media landscape is its fractured nature which creates no town squares with an audience. There can be no fourth estate watch dogs if there’s no one around to warn.
The 7pm Public Broadcasting Mandate would require TVOne, TV2, Duke, Newshub, Prime and Māori TV to run their own 7pm current affairs shows so that there is a specific space built into every TV schedule where the important issues of the day can be debated without the advertisers spiking style and content to the dumbed down infotainment we have now.
This one simple move would force the broadcasting behemoths to change and would provide New Zealanders with a space to actually hear the important issues we confront. There’s little point in spending more money on public broadcasting if the goalposts are forever warped by the advertisers of Shortland Street.
I so rarely watch free to air in the past 5 years, and could count the occasions on one hand.
Why? Because it is an advertisement riddled shit fest!
TV as in TV3 etc is dying largely because the owners, politicians and media barons became so consumed in manipulation, money, believing their own fake corrupt awards and worst of all their own ego driven self importance that they totally forgot the audience.
I definitely no longer give a shit if TVNZ and its crappy Mediaworks clone went into liquidation. Maybe then arseholes like Mark Richardson etc would have to find REAL work!
Yes agreed Martyn; Jessie Mulligan is a very conceited person who is so full of his own self importance he makes me turn the channel off.
Jessie Mulligan is featured also on ‘Natrad’ (Radio NZ) aslo as he does the afternoon show on that ‘hollowed out’ & ‘dumbed down’ public radio network also.http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons
We need a revamp of the whole media stystem in NZ as we are being totally controlled by the Cororate world and Labour need to remove Clare Curran from the broadcast portfilio as when we asked her in November 2017 to get rid of the National Party appointee as CEO for RNZ, she wrote us a letter refusing to do this and acted as though we had insulted her, so now Clare urran has allowed National Party policy to run RNZ!!!!
So get rid of Clare Curran and put a real labour MP in charge of our public media RNZ/TVNZ and we may see some improvement.
This public Media ministerial position needs to go to someone who supports the labour coalition policies not National’s policies as Clare Curran obviously is working for.
Then we can make those “transformational” charges this Governmenrt needs to make.
It’s calling programming for a reason. Best to focus on people who actually value truth.
It’s easier to sell to people who are interested/want what you’re selling. Trying to convince the 7pm MSM crowd is a poor allocation of resources.
But thank you for checking in on this garbage so we don’t have to.
As XRAY has pointed out, television in NZ is primarily a medium for selling stuff.
Honest discussion about any aspect of our various dire predicaments does not help sell stuff; in fact honest discussion would deter people from buying: hence there is no honest discussion about anything of significance.
What is the solution? Undo all the ‘reforms’ (retrograde changes) of the 1980s.
Well, we already know there is no political will to fix anything (we have a business-as-usual government) and that cowardice rules at the Beehive. So, the populace -or that sector that still watches television- will be subjected to more of the same until the system collapses.
“The one thing that could bolster 7pm current affairs in NZ is if TVNZ moved Shortland Street from 7pm to 7.30pm and start their own TV2 current affairs.
TVNZ could move Seven Sharp to TV2 and TVOne could go back to doing actual current affairs at 7pm”
Or — move “seven sharp” to 2am in the morning where it won’t bother us anymore.
I can’t wait fot RNZ-plus. Intelligent tv/radio!! And tvnz and tv3 can broadcast Naked Masterchef DoingThe Block on Survivor Fucking Island until the slobbering, gibbering masses have had their fill of reality-porn (and the barebreasted variety).
NZ Television and NZ Current Affairs are mutually exclusive.
Or we could accept that mass television watching will continue to die, along with the generation for whom it was the dominant medium, and isn’t coming back? Trying to go back to informing people at arm’s length via mass media is like trying to make TV presenters go back to pseudo-Brit accents and badly pronounced Te Reo Māori. It’s futile. We can build new forms of media that both inform *and* organize people at the same time. Our opponents are already getting on with it, which is why we aren’t winning the propaganda wars (just look at Corbyn being thoroughly outflanked by desperate UK corporatists getting out their anti-semitism nukes). Just saying …