Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Mash-Up! | May 22, 2006 09:12

The "Telecon" ad mash-up that hit the wires on Friday afternoon is a bit unfair to Telecom. It's also an instant Kiwi classic. Let's start with the unfairness. The spoof ad opens with the now-infamous Theresa clip, posted here two weeks ago. But it edits the Telecom CEO's words for effect:

"(Telecom has) used confusion as its chief marketing tool. And that's fine."

The actual transcript is:

"Think about pricing. What has every telco in the world done in the past? It's used confusion as its chief marketing tool. And that's fine."

So it misses both the "everyone does it" angle and the more debatable "but it's not like that any more" context in which the remarks were made. And I'm not sure about the conclusion either: if your mobile phone is costing you a packet, withdrawing your business from Telecom and giving it to the other half of the duopoly doesn't make a great deal of sense.

But apart from that, I love it. The children in the original Telecom ad play a similar role as animals have traditionally done in Telecom TV advertising: they're cute and amusing and they say things they have no business saying. They're meant to get in under consumers' rational radar by appealing to their emotions.

What better ad, then, from which to commandeer the raw material and turn it back on the advertiser? And this is what, I think, makes it a mash-up rather than a spoof: it's actually founded on material generated by Telecom itself. The work with the voice talent - which is where something like this would usually fall down - is particularly good.

I can understand that the creators might want to remain anonymous, but if someone wanted to get in touch with the backstory to the project, I'd be very interested in hearing it. What I do know is that the site originally hosting the clip got a mini-Slashdotting after it was noted in Computerworld's weekly mail-out on Friday, but the clip was swiftly copied to places where they're used to dealing with big video bandwidth. There are four instances of the clip on YouTube alone, and one with a download option at Google Video.

Telecom doesn't have much choice but to grin and bear this one. In theory, I guess it could contact YouTube with a copyright complaint (YouTube tends to stay the right side of the DMCA and take down clips immediately on complaint) but that wouldn't be too smart: Evil Telecom tries to shut down critics isn't the headline it needs right now.

Now here's one for the record book: the Sir Humphreys crowd musing about joining the Green Party to hold back the red tide after reading this provocative post by Phil Ure about the party's co-leadership election and "the impending leftwing coup within the greens". I confess, I don't know really know what being on the "left" of the Greens really means, but if it means wanting to become the Alliance I don't think that would be terribly productive. Phil knows the party a lot better than I do, but I'd debate that Nandor Tanczos (who Phil is backing) doesn't do the minutiae. One thing about Nandor that has always impressed me is his grasp of detail.

Speaking of things green, could Owen McShane possibly get over himself? He issued this windy press release on behalf of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, which registered the climatescience.org.nz domain name, only to see Greenpeace register climatescience.co.nz and climatescience.net.nz. "Underhanded tactics," by a global "Goliath", McShane thunders. Well (a) it is a prudent and competent element of campaigning to register alternatives to your chosen name, (b) the coalition has a bit of a nerve thinking it owns the "climate science" phrase when it undoubtedly represents a minority opinion in climate science itself, and (c) perhaps Greenpeace got the idea from Exxon Mobil, which snapped up stopesso.de after Greenpeace failed to register under the German country code during its "stopesso.com campaign". And then Exxon went to court to have Greenpeace banned from using the stopesso.fr domain in France (Exxon won, but lost on appeal).

Noelle McCarthy interviewed Dr David Wratt of NIWA in response to her previous week's interview in which McShane complained conspiratorially about the International Panel on Climate Change "monopoly" on climate science (warning: McShane blusters, takes umbrage and basically goes on and on).

No Right Turn busts Rodney Hide, who appears to believe that actually doing his job as a member of Parliament is optional; or at least not as important as participating in a TV game show. With Heather Roy away, Act has consequently failed to vote on at least seven pieces of legislation …

At the risk of encouraging Ian Wishart, he's at it again, telling Juha "we'll see who's laughing as a result of my letter in a week or so."

Anyway, I'm off down to Wellington for Webstock from tomorrow, so I daresay there'll be some geek reporting as the week unfolds.

And, finally, not much scope for major change on the Public Address Virtual Super 14 leader board as the semi-finals were completed, but I did get maximum points …

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Whisky would be better | May 19, 2006 09:06

A little while ago, Samuel Flynn Scott of the Phoenix Foundation got in touch with "an odd request". Loop Recordings had suggested that he get a third party to write a press release to accompany his debut solo album. Would I be interested? They offered money but I said whisky would be better.

What did he want? Something "lateral" apparently. Righto, then. So, with the deadline looming, I wrote the press release below. But before you forge on, be aware of several things:

(a) Big Gay Paul says the new Love Is safe sex campaign is very cool. I agree.

(b) This is the new cryptic viral video element of the Department of Labour's New Zealand Now campaign, targeted at expats in Australia.

(c) The Phoenix Foundation play a fundraiser for their American tour at the King's Arms in Auckland tonight.

(d) Go the 'Canes and the Crusaders.

Righto. Read Keith (he blogs the Budget so I don't have to) and have a good weekend …

----

THE WISTFUL HERO: A STUDY OF MYTHIC ARCHETYPES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO BREAKING UP WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND IN SAMUEL FLYNN SCOTT'S THE HUNT BRINGS US LIFE.

New Zealand's creative archetype is often reckoned to be the "Man Alone" - although as Rex Fairburn, Denis Glover and many others have demonstrated, the reality is more likely to be the Man Alone drinking heroically and having a yarn with his mates.

It is in the latter tradition that we might locate Samuel Flynn Scott, a direct descendant of 19 Listener editors who was swaddled at birth in back issues of Landfall.

"Of course, I'm a little different from those old guys," says Scott, who once kept a journal of his solo traverse, largely on foot, from Newtown to Courtenay Place. "They were always swanning off and leaving the wife to make dripping sandwiches for the kids for a month - or trying to get out of mowing the lawn by being gay. These days, we respect the ladies."

It so happened that in 2004, Scott, who once went to the TAB to put on some bets for Janet Frame, had crafted a handful of songs which did not quite fit the mould of the Phoenix Foundation, the popular Wellington-based rock band and seven-a-side rugby team of which he is a member.

"I was writing a whole lot of material that seemed a bit folky for The Phoenix Foundation," says Scott, a graduate of the seminal creative writing course founded by Wellington loose forward Jerry Collins. "Also, I was listening to a lot of improvised and angular music and somehow wanted to combine those elements into one project - fairly in debt to the Jim O'Rourke-Jeff Tweedy collaboration Loose Fur, which I mention solely because no other bugger will have heard of it."

In order to do justice to this haunting new material, Scott (who was once described as "kinda hot" by a female blogger) formed a new band called Bunnies on Ponies which, out of respect for the material, hardly ever played.

One gig they did play was at The Matterhorn (a famous bar in Wellington that was the location for a string of National Film Unit classics), where they were seen by the young entrepreneur and former MP for Wellington Central, Mikee Tucker, of Loop Recordings, who suggested that Loop finance an album of Scott's solo songs.

"Loop come from a very different musical heritage to myself, so I was sceptical but Mike assured me they would keep their creative distance in the knowledge that my project would be something slightly alien to the label, but nonetheless something they wanted to support. I also thought that being on a dance label might be a good way to meet girls. That 'sensitive' thing we do with the Phoenix Foundation gets old real fast …"

The bold nod to modernity implicit in going with Loop was balanced with an appeal to much older cultural traditions, in the form of an application for funding from Creative New Zealand, which was granted on the casting vote of poet and advertising mogul Graham Brazier.

"That paid for the musicians I wanted to work with, and an engineer," says Scott, a promising middle-distance runner in his youth. "Plus, some beers."

The recording ensemble included Tom Callwood (a double bass player who was integral in the development of the music), engineer Brett Stanton, producer and banjo player David Long and a succession of drummers: Craig Terris (Cassette), Riki Gooch (Trinity Roots) and Mike Fabulous (The Black Seeds, Bunnies On Ponies), who were variously imprisoned for sedition, killed in the war or went mad.

And then, says Scott, summoning the acute sense of drama he first demonstrated in 'Wingnut', his famous song cycle about Stu Wilson, "DISASTER STRUCK!"

The falling-out between King Kong director Peter Jackson and his composer Howard Shore saw the emergency secondment of Long, who correctly reasoned that there would be a hell of a lot more money in a rush job for a major motion picture than some beardy guy's solo album.*

"So a monkey stole my banjo player," Scott observes, wistfully. "I actually tried writing a song about it, but have you tried coming up with a rhyme for 'banjo'?

"It was sad to lose Dave, but he promised to rejoin the project at a later date - and left us his amazing collection of guitars and studio gadgetry as ransom, including his Vox teardrop guitar made famous in many Muttonbirds videos."

Recording proceeded at Phoenix Foundation HQ, the Wellington Car Club - formerly a brothel secretly owned by the New Zealand Labour Party.

With the recording completed in time for Christmas 2005 (allowing Scott to keep his promise to fly out and play a surprise festive gig for New Zealand SAS troops in Afghanistan), the project was put on hold until Scott and Long could re-unite to add finishing touches.

In March, Long (now the sixth-richest man in New Zealand) became available, and he and Scott settled in for "an intensive overdub and mix session" at Long's studio, The Swearing Room. The project was finished and blessed in time for Scott to go back to work on the soundtrack for the forthcoming Taika Waititi film Eagle Versus Shark.**

The result is the Samuel Flynn Scott album The Hunt Brings Us Life, a swirling collection of haunting moods and unusual textures, that ranges from country drinking songs ('Chopped Liver') to geopolitical laments ('War Over Water'), Celtic folk ('Boil My Bones') and stoned guitar songs about people on the television ('God's Legs').***

It exposes a new side of Samuel Flynn Scott, if perhaps one we all knew had been there since his reinvention of the Mackenzie narrative, 'I'd Steal Sheep Too, If I Was Really Hungry'.

And it is an exciting side. I have personally tested this album in several states of consciousness and can confirm that while it did not go at all well with an overdose of party pills, it had a most pleasing effect on all other occasions. By happy coincidence, it also made a perfect match for a new lounge suite my wife and I purchased around the same time.

So it is with the utmost confidence that I commend to you The Hunt Brings Us Life. If he can only get over his problem with compulsive shoplifting, this young man will go a long way.

PROF. RUSSELL BROWN
APRIL 2006

Notes for Editors:

* This part is actually true.
** And this one.
*** This too.

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Doing it for the kids ... | May 18, 2006 09:22

As I exclusively revealed, um, nearly two years ago, Sky has been negotiating with MTV Asia and will be launching "a wholly-owned and operated localised MTV" on August 19. Well, they got there in the end, didn't they?

MTV New Zealand will, according to Sky, "deliver shows that MTV viewers love alongside presenters who can fully engage with the unique and vibrant entertainment scene in New Zealand," and is further promising "unique local productions that focus on New Zealand youth culture and music." There will also, naturally, be local ad sales. No word on what becomes of Juice TV, but it doesn't look promising.

Sky is also promising a revamped and localised Nickelodeon.

Ouch. David Cunliffe's observation that Telecom might have to reduce dividends to fund investment wasn't just a matter of the bleeding obvious, it would have been bleeding obvious pretty much any time in the last 15 years. In public interest terms, we'd be better placed if Telecom had chosen to use some of the money it pumped out to shareholders ($5.5 billion in the 1990s, wasn't it?) for capital investment.

That's an observation I can make without fear of reproach, but not one the minister could make, because he is considered, effectively, an insider. So the Securities Commission is on the case, and it is all very embarrassing.

(Update: I see Cunliffe has clarified his comments and noted that he had had no information on Telecom's future dividend policy when he made the comments. Telecom is saying the same thing. It seems that although Cunliffe was an insider in a general sense, the key will probably be whether he had information on dividend policy in particular.)

Meanwhile, reader Rodney King emailed to say that the cause (although it may not have been the only one) of Xtra's outages this week lay with its DNS servers:

A few people fault-found the problem and manually selected another DNS server from the internet, if they could remember one, and were disappointed to find that even with 99.9% of Xtra users offline it was not particularly faster. Go figure!

That probably won't mean much to most users, for whom DNS servers are automatically configured at login, but Rodney points out that if Xtra had been more forthcoming about the nature of the problem, "more tech-savvy users" would have found another DNS to use and eased the load on Xtra's own helpdesk.

Finally the decision not to refund the lost time, in comparison with Sky in its Satellite TV outrage, grates. Consider that the service was always there (perhaps that's why no discount) but Xtra chose not to let you know how to access it.

The DNS issues may have been a symptom rather than the root of the problems - a media email from Xtra yesterday blamed power supply issues and then a "faulty load-balancer", followed by additional load as customers repeatedly tried to log in. But Rodney's points are well made.

Usually when I point out some mad-headed and obscene comment by a right-wing blogger I am accused of ignoring similar similar sentiments in the liberal blogosphere. But I really can't imagine any lefty-liberal (not even the ones wetting themselves over Hugo Chavez) doing this.

As Iraq becomes not such a good story - not since most schools and universities closed their doors on account of the deteriorating security situation, the anti-gay death squads got going and the Minister of Health ordered that men and women must ride in separate elevators - America's wingers have had to look elsewhere for a home for their anger, and they've chosen illegal immigrants (Mexicans in particular) and their "invasion" of America.

Bush, who seems to be increasingly making things up on the spot, suddenly declared he was sending troops to the Mexican border. But even he felt bound to point out that "massive deportation" of America's 12 million illegals (on whose cheap labour American agriculture depends) was "unrealistic".

This wasn't good enough for Vox Day, a nasty little prick who calls himself a "Christian libertarian" (yup, such creatures exist, and they really seem to be the worst people in the world - adopting the intellectual narcissism of libertarianism without the logic, and the moral imperiousness of Christianity without the love or charity). No, he said this:

[Bush] lied when he said: "Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic – it's just not going to work."

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Yeah, that Hitler guy knew how to get the job done, didn't he? The extraordinary thing is that Day's poisonous commentary appeared on what is supposed to be a fairly mainstream conservative website. The offending words were eventually removed, without acknowledgement or apology, but how on earth could they be posted in the first place?

Day certainly wasn't apologising: on his blog, he declared anyone who was appalled by his logic to be "dumber than one would imagine".

Andrew Sullivan was moved to make him a Malkin Award nominee. Indeed.

Meanwhile, old Indy veteran RobO takes a look at the new Independent Financial Review and likes what he sees. Not a good day for the paper's website to be down, though …

So, yeah, Budget day. I have other commitments tomorrow morning (including preparing for Webstock and teeing up the next Great Blend) so I probably won't have time to write a commentary. But I do have something else, which you may find amusing, to hand …

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It never rains ... | May 16, 2006 10:50

Like Telecom didn't have enough bad news for the moment: Xtra went down for hours last night - which may or may not have been connected with action to remedy an issue reported in a message passed on by a Public Address reader yesterday afternoon:

ALL of XTRA's e-mail servers were BLACKLISTED by international SPAM blockers on Friday last week. Oops! I'm sitting here at my Helpdesk fielding calls re this. Your mail will slowly be delivered, but most will have gone into your JUNK folder in your e-mail.

What we really need to be asking is why Xtra denied it was having problems when most of its customers knew it was. The Herald reported that there was a 'minor' problem from 3.30 to 5.30pm yesterday, yeah right!!! The website help said there where 'no known problems' so we individually thought it was our own computers and settings at fault. Great customer service I don't think.

Our company (HUGE IT) had to call their (XTRA) engineers this am and tell them that XTRA had appeared on our SPAM filters ... oops. XTRA have been scrambling since 11am to fix.

NB: Got this straight now. The above are quotes from two different people on this Trade Me forum.

I have some sympathy here - zealous blacklist operators can do more harm than good. But Xtra's servers were presumably blacklisted because they were found to be running open relays (which can be used by filthy spammers to deliver unsolicited bulk email). How did that happen?

And so the announcements continue to flow as the Telecom ship turns around. Rod Deane's departure was inevitable, given the extent to which he represents the old order. As chief executive of Telecom, Deane did a marvellous job of driving out costs, and shareholders have doubtless been grateful to him. But as chairman he's responsible for strategy: Telecom appears to have had only one of those, and it wasn't the right one. Meanwhile, Juha speculates on when the telecommunications commissioner will say his goodbyes.

There were some forthright responses to Karyn Hay's open letter on the Kiwi FM windfall yesterday. Noelle McCarthy of 95bFM said this:

Just read Karen's comments re Kiwi and I have to say Wallace and I are gobsmacked by the reference to "holier-than-thou" student radio.

We have never, ever tried to hide the fact we sell ads on bFM - if anything we celebrate it to the extent our ads are more popular and more high-profile than some shows. I am so tired of the old bleat that b is somehow hoodwinking people, that behind our student radio, devil- may- care facade is a well oiled commercial machine. This place, while operational, is far from a serious money-spinner, and we've got the pay cheques to prove it.

The simple fact is, we are attempting to survive in the market so we can continue to do what we do best - break new music and develop new talent. In order to do that we have to sell ads. We do that, but we also ensure that wherever possible we develop relationships with the sort of advertisers we dig, and who get us in return. Our ads are witty, funny and always real because we respect our listeners, not because we feel the need to dupe anybody with "very clever spin."

We object to the Kiwi deal, because it runs the risk of ghettoising kiwi music, and also because ( a few honorable exceptions notwithstanding) what [I've] heard of the station in the last year just hasn't been very good.

Jarrod Baker had some more to add:

You've taken issue with one part of Karyn Hay's open letter - but there are other things in there that probably need addressing as well.

Firstly, her claim about Kiwi's audience only stands up to scrutiny if you compare Kiwi's NATIONAL results from the last radio survey with the Auckland-only (because the stations are Auckland-only) results of bFM, George etc.

Not exactly apples with apples - to get a genuine comparison you'd have to match up Kiwi's national audience with that of bFM, Active and RDU combined (which is impossible because the latter two don't participate in survey - but I suspect that this combo would beat Kiwi by a significant margin).

Furthermore, nowhere in Karyn's letter does she address the issue that I think lends greatest credence to the idea that this represents a significant advantage to CanWest - the prospect of ad space on Kiwi being given as a freebie to clients of other CanWest entities.

Covering costs through advertising is one thing - boosting the value of a CanWest multi-buy ad package (at little extra cost to CanWest) is another.

Scott Common noted discussion of the issue on NZ Music.com. There are also a range of comments on The Wireless.

Logan O'Callahan said this:

Why all this yabber about another youth radio station? A fair chunk of commercial radio aims at youth. It's the little fellas (and ladies) that need catering for. Aim a station at the under 10s. That would fill a niche and expand the future radio market.

Of course they'd have to do without the usual ads - magnet therapies, vasectomies and erectile disfunction.

But Karyn had at least one friend in Paula Lambert:

Go Karyn. Make that 43,001 listeners, I loved it from the word go.

I have obtained, by the usual means, a copy of this month's BBC Five documentary, Robbie Williams' Secrets, in which local tattoo artist (and briefly special friend to the star) Otis Frizzell unloads his frustrations about being flown to Britain as Robbie's private on-tour tattooist and then pretty much cast to one side like last week's toy. Otis tells stories of the star's daily shagfests ("feeding time") with local hookers and more, but unfortunately, the producers manage both to incorrectly pronounce his name ("Frizzle") and spell it ("Frissell"). Oh well. Otis looks good anyway.

And, finally, here's this week's Public Address Virtual Super 14 leader board. It's still fairly stable at the top, where a bunch of Hurricanes fans are clamouring behind a Crusaders supporter and a Chiefs fan, but there were some substantial reversals of fortune further down the table.

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