Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Gay, but really not happy | Mar 12, 2007 12:03

One of the things the TVNZ Charter is meant to do is to guarantee the production and screening of programming for and about minority communities. The relevant part is a fairly ugly piece of written English, but it gets the point across. It undertakes that TVNZ will:

Feature programming that serves the varied interests and informational needs and age groups within New Zealand society, including tastes and interests not generally catered for by other national television broadcasters

So why has TVNZ, ever since the Charter arrived in 2003, insisted on turning out charter programming that does not only fail to serve the tastes and needs of one minority group - the gay community - but is actively disliked by nearly three our of four gay people?

The story begins with the canning of the long-running magazine show Queer Nation in 2003, at the behest of Tony Holden. Queer Nation had pretty much run as an independent republic for several years. Sometimes it was very good (when it turned itself over to short documentaries) and at other times not so good. You could certainly have made a case that, with the new broom of the Charter, it was time for a revamp, some new faces and some new ideas.

What actually happened was pretty weird. TVNZ changed its approach to commissioning and decided that it would specify a format and then take proposals on that. There also seems to have been a desire for gay programming that wouldn't alienate straight people.

The result was The Outhouse and then Kiwifruits. The latter programme seems to have been under instruction to, at all times, be as trivial as possible. It was a struggle for some of those involved to get anything sensible to air, even to mark the twentieth anniversary of homosexual law reform, which ought to have been occasion for the telling of stories and the taking of stock.

The Lesbian Puppets - who were scripted by straight people and conducted interviews on the programme - appear to have been a particular bugbear with gay viewers expecting grown-up programming. Can you imagine Maori tolerating a "Maori programme" whose format was ordained by pakeha TV executives, was produced by a pakeha-run company, and was focused (to an extent that's almost grim in itself) on the lighter side of being Maori?

And now, after the NZ On Air survey that indicated these programmes' overwhelming failure to connect with their ostensible audience, TVNZ (in what appears to have been one of Holden's last decisions there) has commissioned another one: a reality show.

Specifically, it's a 10-episode fly-on-the-wall show called Express Yourself, which follows the doubtless wacky working days of the people at the freebie gay newspaper, Express. It will be produced by Glen Sims, who learned his trade with Julie Christie.

[Update: This is a little unfair to Sims, who had a career in "ob-doc" TV in Britain before he came to New Zealand. It's worth noting that the production company, Umbrella Productions, is owned and run by two out gay men, and that Steven Oates, of 95bFM, Queer Nation and Maori TV fame, will be directing.]

At which point we run into some community politics. Express was founded (originally as Man to Man) by Jay Bennie, who sold the paper and went on to found gazynz.com, which has been ground zero for dissatisfaction with TVNZ's gay programming. Jay has posted a carefully-worded editorial on the topic, which is being discussed in much more forthright terms on the site's reader forums. He notes that gaynz.com had agreed to offer "some editorial and technical support" to two competing props, both of them for gay magazine shows.

I've met a couple of the people involved with Express and they're nice enough, but Express isn't the centre of the gay community and it contains nowhere near the strength and breadth of writing you'll find on gaynz.com. It seems, so to speak, a queer use of a limited pool of funding to plough the lot into 10 reality episodes about one gay business in the hope that us straight folks will find it amusing.

I think it's entirely reasonable for the gay community to want a good-quality magazine programme as their lot from the Charter. These programmes, done right, can be mainstream successes in their own right: Channel 4's Out on Tuesday being the classic example.

Oddly enough, Maori TV is doing this, on a fraction of the budget. Takataapui, "the only show for gay, lesbian and transsexual Maori", actually covers real stories - things that actually matter to the community, like the closure of Herne Bay House. There is no shortage of skills or motivation to make a sensible programme for the gay community. But what TVNZ wants seems anything but sensible.

Righto, running a little late, so that'll do for now. Anyone with a view on this is more than welcome to discuss it in our forums.

Two things: We got a new kitten yesterday, and our boy Leo got some video, edited it in iMovie and uploaded the clip to his YouTube account (which we didn't actually know he had). Feel free to have a look and leave him a comment.

And - ta da! - our slightly red-faced developer guys have detected a glitch that was hampering the appearance of Gravatars on Public Address System forums. You too can now have a clever little picture next to you name. Just go and sign up here (and wouldn't you know it, the site is temporarily down …).

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5.30 Follies | Mar 09, 2007 10:24

Tony Holden left the building, and it hasn't taken long for his 5.30 folly to follow. The Point, the $12 million project to give TV One a ratings run-in to its nightly news bulletin, was cancelled yesterday. Frankly, there are better things to do with that much money.

I certainly feel some sympathy for the creative people who were developing the proposed family-friendly soap - it can't be much fun having your project yanked - but this programme just didn't have enough reasons to exist.

So now there's $8.5 million in NZ On Air funding to be reallocated, and the remaining $2.9 million of "direct government funding" looking for a home. With other funding already earmarked to produce content for Freeview (sorry, TVNZ3) , it seems there will be a bit to go around. Get those props in promptly, folks.

Meanwhile, TV3 must surely be quite unable to believe its luck that a cheap, ropey dated Aussie soap called Home and Away pulls a 41.2% share in the half-hour leading up to its news bulletin. And that TVNZ's not unreasonable punt in putting up another cheap, ropey dated Aussie soap called Neighbours against it has been rewarded by an audience share less than half what the channel achieved in the same slot a year ago. Ouch.

TVNZ's problem is that, to preclude any impression of fear or favour, the news operation is not funded by the taxpayer, but from the broadcaster's own commercial activity. This was fine when One News bestrode the ratings like a colossus hewn in the image of Judy Bailey, but it's not so good now.

Meanwhile, has anybody noticed how lame msn.co.nz is? It has a few feeds plonked in, and some commercial search boxes filling up an inordinate amount of space on the right-hand side of every page, but jeez, it looks like the portal that nobody loves.

PA reader Riddley Walker was at the Auckland leg of last night's police protest marches. He reports that it wasn't exactly the way it was portrayed on the late news. Surprise me.

Anyway, I won't go on: there's some great new writing for you to consume on Public Address this morning: the first instalment of our Cricket World Cup blog, Aye Calypso, and another journey into the badlands with Alan Bollard by the ostensibly mild-mannered David Haywood. I assume it's already a cult item in the corridors of power.

While we're on sport, Waj, a member of the private rugby mailing list I'm on, has been providing us with a savvy Super 14 tipsheet every week lately, and Paul Waite has started putting it on Haka, so everyone can read it.

I'll just say a little about the fundraiser for our family. It's quite humbling, and since I fronted on Breakfast on Tuesday to talk about Asperger Syndrome I've been contacted by a steady stream of parents with kids on the autistic spectrum, and come onto contact with a few grown-up aspies too. There's some good stuff in the discussion thread if you'd like to know more.

Now's not the time to go into too much detail about the community side of the project, but I have a provisional name for the support website we'll establish and I'm talking to people about things. Unsolicited donations have caught us a bit unawares, but we'll set up a dedicated account this morning and shift them out of the account we use when we go to the supermarket. I'd also like to express thanks to a number of bloggers with whom relations have often been mutually hostile. I find their support in this instance quite moving and I won't forget it.

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Introducing GodTube | Mar 07, 2007 09:37

PZ Myers spotted a new YouTube knockoff, GodTube, and promptly set about making fun of the loopy creationist stuff you just knew was going to be there.

But I found something a bit more interesting: a set of four parodies of the Mac vs PC ads which - if I'm reading them right - promote a groovier, less uptight brand of liberal Christianity to the extent that its adherents are "Jesus followers", rather than embarrassing, uncool Christians. It's the Mac brand of Christianity, effectively. The parodies are actually quite clever. The first one is here, and you can use the "next" navigation at the top right to step through the other three.

Of course, if you prefer it a little weirder, you may enjoy the slightly scary Christian Clown Training Part 1 and Part 2.

There are also reports on mission work, a regular weekly broadcast on the persecution of Christians around the world and a lot of swivel-eyed Bible Code stuff.

Meanwhile, check out the first comment for this OneGoodMove post about the Scooter Libby verdicts. Cheney's chief of staff was found guilty on four counts of lying to the investigation and obstruction of justice, and not guilty on one. Fox News breaking headline: Scooter Libby found Not Guilty of lying to the FBI. You could not make this shit up.

No Right Turn turns up the outrage-o-meter on National's not-well-thought-through plan to hand carbon credits to foresters for trees planted years before carbon credits even existed.

And Synthetic Thoughts looks at the excellent PBS documentary about spin, scandal and media ethics, Frontline Newswar. He notes that you can watch the whole thing (three parts so far) on the PBS website, but finds it a little annoying, even though the video presented better than it is on most TV websites. Torrent-friendly readers may care to seek it out on the wires - it's worth the trouble.

Also, don't forget to share memories of merriment in our Stories: Best Party Ever feature. You know you want to.

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That's Entertainment | Mar 06, 2007 09:54

In my column in the latest Idealog magazine, I lamented (a) the fact that none of the Flying Nun Record catalogue was available to New Zealanders for digital download, and (b) that F Nun's owner Warner Music was so fixated on DRM that it was ignoring the perfect vehicle for harnessing the sprawling Nun back catalogue: emusic.com.

I'm happy to report progress on both fronts. The Flying Nun box set is now available in its entirety on both the New Zealand iTunes Store and Digirama. Well, almost: one act, NRA, declined to go online, which delayed the release. The box set is due for Australian release next month, at which point it will also be launched on iTunes Australia, with an accompanying feature profile. Charlotte Ryan at Warners is aiming for a digital release in Europe of the year.

More remarkably, the most prominent current Flying Nun act, the Mint Chicks, are about to go pants-down DRM-free on emusic in advance of their US tour. They're also on iTunes US, and will be featured on the weekly radio show of iTunes programming director Alex Luke, and have a MySpace artist profile lined up in the next few days.

Given the trenchant opposition to unencumbered music expressed by Warner chief Edgar Bronfman, the Mint Chicks' debut on emusic - which sells music as high-bitrate MP3s - is quite a striking development. It's also pretty smart. While most of the major download services are necessarily chart-oriented, emusic is a place where music finds music fans.

I hope Warners doesn't stop here. One of the main arguments of my column was that the best way to bring life to the Nun back catalogue was to put a lot of it on non-DRM services like emusic. Most of it isn't going to ever see re-release in physical form, but I can imagine something like the Bird Nest Roys recordings being a cult hit with that kind of audience. It doesn't solve the problem of the unseemly chunk of digital download receipts that the major labels take from artists, but it would still be a good thing.

Staying with entertainment, a Throng reader guessed a URL and got a pre-release look at TVNZ ondemand, which launches later this month. He managed to register and has a very professional report on Throng, with screenshots and all. TVNZ has now password-protected the site, but shouldn't be too unhappy about the sneak peek. Of course, it's possible that they set it up and it's a clever bit of advance marketing. But they couldn't be that hip. Could they?

My Listener column this week looks at the "loudness wars" - the race to compress the buggery out of music CD audio at the mastering stage, making CDs sound louder and more urgent, but taking out the dynamic range. It kind of sucks. There's a useful and informative YouTube clip demonstrating exactly what that means here.

Speaking of the Bird Nest Roys, Jimi Kumara has posted. He took the family for a bit of whakapapa tourism to Taupo, and discovered, among other things, that the victory of the panini is nearly complete.

PS: If anyone feels moved to sign up to emusic, gimme a shout. If I recommend you through the "tell a friend" feature, I get 50 free downloads and you get 25. Everyone's a winner.

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