Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Te Reo and the Resolution | Jul 24, 2008 09:50

The Maori Language Week episode of Media7 is online now. Our panel is Paora Maxwell, the recently-appointed general manager of Maori programming at TVNZ; Maori Television's general manager of sales marketing and communications Sonya Haggie; and former Mai FM programme director Manu Taylor.

Maori broadcast media's role in supporting the language was underlined by a 2006 Te Puni Kokiri survey, in which about half of respondents reported learning te reo via Maori TV and radio -- more than said they learned via formal education or conversation with friends and family.

Maori broadcast media have other roles too, of course: and although I'd take issue with parts of the Treaty Resource Centre's analysis of the reporting of Maori issues in the mainstream and specialist media, I was interested by one finding: on average, "sources" got to speak for one and a half times as long on Maori Television's Te Kaea news programme as on mainstream news, and three times as long on TVNZ's Te Karere. In an age of soundbites, I thought that was quite a significant difference.

I also think the respective channels' current affairs shows, Native Affairs and Marae, are particularly good.

Maori Television itself has become the sixth most-watched TV channel, behind Prime and C4 and ahead of The Box on Sky, with its most popular programme by far being the good-humoured weekly sports show Code.

But what Maori audiences watch most is another matter. The top two programmes watched by all Maori 5+ in the seven-day ratings we obtained for our show were episodes of Shortland Street. Shortie itself got into the spirit of the week with an effective, even moving story which had Scottie -- the uptight, culturally alienated Maori -- surprising everyone with a mihi at his traditional Indian wedding to Shanti. Last night's Shortland Street was subtitled (with open captions) Maori, as will be Saturday's Country Calendar.

Anyway, the programme isn't a confrontational one, and it wasn't intended to be one, but I really enjoyed the discussion. It was also my first experience of reading Maori off an autocue; something I occasionally find challenging in my first language, but that was fun too.

You can see it on TVNZ ondemand, as Windows Media clips, in a podcast and via our YouTube channel.

(A technical problem delayed the uploads this morning, but ondemand is there and the others are coming any moment)

---

I flopped down from a birthday dinner at Rocco last night to watch the Tour de France on the Sky HDi box installed yesterday, and, as expected, the last alpine stage looked breathtaking. I wasn't keeping track of the race so much as gazing slack-jawed at the sweeping aerial shots in HD.

The box itself is similar enough to the MySky that it replaced that it uses the same remote control (the installer even left the old controller), and existing MySky users will have no trouble using the quicker, cleaner-looking interface. It's still a remarkably good consumer device.

The HDi has three tuners, so you can record two programmes while you watch another, and a built-in splitter rather than the clunky external one the MySky uses. It wasn't perfect out of the box -- our one needed an over-the-air software upgrade before it could see both LNBs on our rooftop dish.

And, of course, it receives Sky's four digital channels -- Sports 1 and 2, Sky Movies 1 and Sky Movie Greats -- plus the HD broadcasts from TV3. (The channels cost $10 a month, but they allowed us to cancel the Rugby Channel and Rialto, so it worked out neutral.)

There was the odd glitch there too -- England-SA cricket highlights appeared in 4:3 format without sound for 10 minutes before suddenly appearing in HD widescreen. When they did, the effect was quite striking. Seeing the beads of sweat glistening on Dale Steyn's forehead as he paused at the top of his run-up suggested that sometimes sports in HD is going to mean getting closer than you really want to get. (But am I looking forward to the rugby on Saturday? Oh yes.)

Also, although Sky announced the channels would be broadcast in 1080i format, they're all showing up as 720p on my TV. Resolution nerds can argue about that one. The sound on the HD broadcasts is in 5.1 format, but even through TV speakers it sounded notably better than the standard broadcasts. Which is, in part a commentary on the technical quality of some of Sky standard broadcasts.

Sky's offering is pretty clear: sports and movies, including a good library of older movie titles converted to HD. I haven't had a chance to compare the TV3 pictures between Sky and Freeview, but the colours on one movie last night were nastily over-saturated, suggesting again that Sky's offering still needs a little tweaking.

Now that TV sets with integrated Freeview HD tuners are on the market, I think it will split up fairly tidily. Freeview will be your broadcast TV, and you'll choose whether pay for premium programming on Sky.

This is the last time that a free-to-air broadcaster will own the rights to Olympic coverage -- Sky has rights to the next Winter Olympics and the 2012 summer games in London. A lot of people will be watching to see how well the games drive Freeview uptake. And in 2012, where will non Sky subscribers be able to view the games coverage? It will be on Prime, via Sky. But I would not be at all surprised if it was also carried on TV3, via both Sky and Freeview HD.

PS: TVNZ's Olympics site launched this week (the designers look to have made the very most of the constraints imposed by the ageing site templates) and will stream four channels of video coverage during the games.

(60 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Just Some Things | Jul 23, 2008 11:45

Website of the Week: the site that fugitive war criminal Radovan Karadžić kept for his alter-ego, Dr Dragan David Dabić, highly hirsute specialist in "bioenergy" and sundry other forms of new age claptrap. There's a certain brilliance about this cover, especially the backstory told on the home page.

Dr. Dragan "David" Dabic was born some 60 years ago in a small Serbian village of Kovaci, near Kraljevo. As a young boy he liked to explore nearby forests and mountains, spending a lot of time on Kopaonik mountain where he tended to pick the omnipresent natural and potent medicinal herbs that grew there. As a young man he moved to Belgrade, and then on to Moscow where he graduated with a Psychiatry degree at the Moscow State University (Lomonosov). After Russia, Dr. Dabic travelled around India and Japan, after which he settled in China where he specialized in alternative medicine, with special emphasis on Chinese herbs. In mid 1990s Dr. Dabic returned back to mother Serbia for good.

Ever since, Dr. Dabic emerged as one of the most prominent experts in the field of alternative medicine, bioenergy, and macrobiotic diet in the whole of the Balkans, and is frequent guest on many forums, seminars and symposiums (Belgrade, Novi Sad, Pancevo, Sombor, Smederevo...) dedicated to these topics.

Thus was he able to hide in plain sight for so many years. He even published articles on his new fake practice:

"It was a brilliant camouflage," said Goran Kojic, the editor-in-chief of a health magazine who knew "Dr Dabic" and published several of his articles on Serbian Orthodox meditation. "He left such a calm impression of a cultured man of great spirituality. He was funny, entertaining and eloquent, the sort of person you wanted as a friend."

Yikes.

Meanwhile in Britain, alternative claptrap that won its brain-damaged victim £800,000 in compensation, but should in my opinion have had the "nutritionist" responsible jailed. Fifty two year-old Dawn Page embarked on something called The Amazing Hydration Diet, which involved drinking a lot of water and cutting out dietary salt.

Some readers may recognise this as a drug-free shortcut to the "dry drowning" behind many ecstasy-related deaths. When Page began vomiting uncontrollably, her "nutritionist" told her that was a normal part of the detox process and instructed her to consume more water and less salt. She now suffers grand mal seizures and a range of cognitive problems. Amazingly, there is no sign that her quack (who admits no fault and has "a diploma of natural nutrition gained from the College of National Nutrition in London") is to be prevented from ever practising again. Bah.

Peaches Geldof (19) goes into respiratory arrest and is saved only by CPR administered by a friend. She was alright 20 minutes later. Sounds like GHB to me. Be careful out there, kids.

And, finally, the people of the island of Lesbos have lost their campaign to ban the use of the word "lesbian" in a Sapphic context -- conducted under the banner "If You Are Not From Lesbos, You Are Not A Lesbian". I'm sure there's a joke in there.

And, finally, a study involving Blondie drummer Clem Burke bears out something that has long occurred to me: drummers are really, really fit. Sometimes, like Keith Moon, they have to take loads of drink and drugs just to come down to our puny human level. And surely the greatest rock athlete of all time must be former Motorhead drummer Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor. If you play No Sleep Till Hammersmith really loud (and how else would you play it?), you can hear his kick drums (one for each foot) thundering -- he essentially sprints from beginning to end, while he plays all the other drums too. It's like the cross-trainer at the gym times a million. And sure, there are copious quantities of amphetamines involved, but the guy did it night after night. But there's more: he continued to play drums with a broken hand (he gaffa-taped the drumstick to the hand) and a broken neck Amazingly, Phil Taylor is still alive. In the words of James Brown, give the drummer some.

PS: A man called Michael is coming around in 15 minutes to install a new Sky HD box in our loinge. Report tomorrow -- I'm expecting the Tour de France to look very sexy indeed. Did I mention it's my birthday?

(97 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Something odd and unresolved | Jul 22, 2008 11:30

According to an editorial note, the Herald's avowedly unflinching "unauthorised biography" of John Key was the paper's move to get in "to produce a reliable account before his party might be tempted to rush out a richly sanitised biography or a detractor did a hatchet job."

"Unauthorised" as in "not actually a jack-up on the part of Key's comms staff", sure. "Unauthorised" as in "conducted without the willing participation of the subject, his colleagues, his comms staff, family and friends"? Well, hardly.

The result is certainly not a hatchet job. Indeed, it provides quite a service to Key in providing something for his supporters -- present and potential -- that there has not been before: a narrative by which to picture him.

The effort is, I think, best taken in pieces, rather than as a whole. I don't think anyone should even try and debate the fact that, as DPF points out, Key's mother was a remarkable woman.

I'm also glad for Key that his enduring marital relationship can be taken at face value; it can simply he seen and his wife love each other and have shared much together. Compare with Helen Clark, of whom even "respectable" journalists have felt permitted to repeatedly enquire whether hers is a "real" marriage.

As I have noted before, I went to school with John Key; I was a year behind him but I cannot remember him. As the Herald story notes, this isn't entirely odd given that Burnside High was the largest school in the country, with more than 2000 students. I recall other people mentioned in the story: Mike Jaspers (slim, arty type: got onto punk rock before most people; nice guy) and Paul Commons (high-achiever type, didn't know him) and I did many of the same things as Key did -- played hooker in a Burnside club scrum, debated, spoke at the lecturn -- but I can't recall him. In this, and in the wider story, he emerges as the low-key battler; not flashy, but organised and hard-working; richer than anyone else I went to school with, and poised, somehow, for the highest office.

But quite absent from the spread is any real hint as to why people should have any doubt about Key at all; or to put it another way, anything that might explain why some people do not respond well to seeing and hearing him, and not simply for partisan political reasons.

As one blog commenter pointed out, comparing the Herald feature with the much shorter Sunday Star Times backgrounder on Key:

In the Herald article it has this quote from Gavin Walker: "John was then, and still is, a very likeable character." In the SST article they have: one former trader describes him as "a bit of a clone".

There is quite a contrast in the way the two articles discuss Key laying off hundreds of workers. The Herald shows it like Key was torn up inside. The SST article has:

In the past, Key has appeared proud of his ability to sack without feelings. He told Metro magazine: "They always called me the smiling assassin."

These days he insists these were not cheerful sackings.

As one of the Herald's own editorials pointed out last month, despairing of the National's leader's public performances:

Whatever opinion may be held about Helen Clark's utterances, she seldom leaves the slightest doubt about their meaning. Off the cuff, she is quick, considered and concise. Head to head in the campaign, Mr Key will have to match her. If he has not sought some tuition already, he ought to do so. Verbal precision is not only vital in the job to which he aspires, it is a useful mental discipline too. Loose talk bespeaks muddled thought …

So Mr Key needs to concentrate more. He needs to think in clear, complete and preferably short sentences and know exactly what he will say before he begins. He can take his time. A moment's reflection on a question does Helen Clark no harm on television. The man auditioning for her job has not had half her experience in politics. He needs to get his words under control and his mind up to speed.

And yet the "warts and all" feature has him (outside a forgiveable desire to see the big picture) as focused, quick and decisive. For all its mighty length, there's something odd and unresolved about it as a consequence. We'll see how part two this Saturday ties it up.

---

Further to the poo discussion, a paper delivered this month in Wellington by Massey University's Margie Comrie takes a different approach to the "Helengrad" meme, and suggests that some of the people who perpetuated both that characterisation and a particular sort of sexualisation of Clark's image -- the "dominatrix" -- were other women.

PS: Sorry for the late notice, but the __Media7__ show we're recording this evening is about Maori broadcasting and Maori perspectives in the media -- the panel is Paora Maxwell, the new GM of Maori programming at TVNZ; Sonya Haggie, the marketing and comms manager at Maori Television; and former Mai FM programme director Manu Taylor. If you'd like to come along to the recording at The Classic this evening, hit the reply button and let me now.

(157 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

Misconnection | Jul 21, 2008 09:25

I'd forgotten we didn't have a working landline -- it just seemed pleasantly quiet -- until Saturday afternoon, when my elderly neighbour, George, got himself across the road. He was a bit upset, because his medical alarm relies on the phone system, and he isn't well.

Once I'd worked out the problem, we called the helpline for the alarm service, where the chap advised me to call Telecom to see if we could get my neighbour to the top of the list of the 3000 people in Pt Chevalier who had their voice service cut off by a clumsy contractor on Friday. (Oddly, my DSL was unaffected.)

The 120 number didn't work on my Wired Country phone (we haz redundancy at our house), but I found the appropriate 0800 number, and was explaining the problem to a Telecom operator almost immediately. She checked with their faults team and told me the line had been reconnected. It hadn't.

So I called back, and got George on the "medical escalation queue". The operator asked me if I wanted a redirect for the line, which hadn't occurred to me. I commandeered my son's mobile and had the divert for George's number go to that. I took it over to George, with the news that his regular line might be back by 7pm. It wasn't, and it wasn't until the next day that I realised he didn't actually know how to work the mobile phone. I showed him how to make a call, and we got his friend to call him to test the redirect.

That was the point where it occurred to me that perhaps we should get a diversion for our line. This wasn't so easy. I called Telecom and got through immediately -- only to be gently reminded that Telecom isn't managing my line any more. Cue 40 minutes waiting on the line for someone from Vodafone (during which I tried setting up a redirect and was told it was "pending" even though I'd had no opportunity to end a number to redirect to) to be told that it would be done, er, sometime.

It's a moot point now: the landline just rang, and everyone will be reconnected by tomorrow. I have no idea what has become of the redirect, but it was a reminder that getting shot of Telecom is not an unalloyed blessing: the new, competitive world needs some management yet. Anyway, thanks to the call centre people who helped George: he needed it more than me.

Update: I have email from Voda/Ihug informing me that my immediate redirect is now active and telling me it'll cost me $4. Ironically, it's clearly not working because I'm receiving calls on the landline. Yes, I am confused. Oh, and I'm not paying the redirect fee. People, it's __your__ service that failed ...

---

There is grim comedy to be found everywhere in the Winston Peters donation row. There's Peters himself, of course, gamely insisting he has no case to answer and he knew nothing until Friday night and that it's still the media's fault. There's National, mindful that it might actually need Winston Peters (especially as its huge poll lead starts to shorten up a little) and thus trying to find someone from the Labour Party it can blame. There's Labour, spending the weekend behaving like it's never even heard of this Peters guy. There's Rodney Hide, loving it.

And there are, it must be said, a good many centre-right commentators trilling triumphantly over the way a leaked email has Peters blown up by his own bomb. But, er, shouldn't that be "stolen" email? Just sayin'.

---

Moving on to some quite lovely people: that being everyone involved in Underpants on the Outside, a comics and sci-fi market day at the Grey Lynn Community Centre on Saturday. We went as a family -- our geekiness unites us -- and had a really nice time. The prices were reasonable, there was stuff to see (a vintage radio-controlled K9 from Doctor Who!) and we ran into James Griffen and his family. Leo and I even let one of the stallholders have a play with PhoneSaber on my new iPhone after she'd sold us Godzilla vs Hedorah on DVD (we were won over by the card on the DVD: "Best Godzilla movie EVAR!!"). You can't bond better than that.

(90 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!

This whole, glorious trainwreck | Jul 20, 2008 14:44

You thought nothing could possibly be weirder than an operatic life of denunciation and poo-flinging amongst the objectivist libertarians? You thought wrong. Clearly, you are not apprised of Whaleoil's astonishing foray into the land of the gossip queens.

It goes like this: Cameron 'Whaleoil' Slater, self-regarding attack dog of the wingnutosphere, has become the confidant of Sunday Star Tmes gossip columnist Bridget Saunders; she channels his yawn-inducing tips about political rivals and he plays the unstinting schoolgirl bully to Saunders' grammatically-challenged rival Rachel Glucina, who is referred to by Slater and his chums, including Cathy Odgers, as "the Pork Chop".

Now, Slater is accusing some 23 year-old would-be fashionista socialite written up by Glucina of faking her credentials. If only we could care as much as he does.

But for a flavour of events, let's cross live to Slater, allegedly a grown man:

You know Pearl….if that really is your name it is a big warning flag when info about you suddenly disappears from circulation….like a BIG RED FLAG!!! It screams GOTCHA! Plus unfortunately for you I happen to know how to take a screenshot in case just such and occurrence happens. You aren't playing amateur gossip columnists masquerading as journalists here deary, I'm a blogger and I happen to be good at it.

Pearl will be finding out at about the same time that Pork Chop reads this that her little fan club of Ricardo and Glucina will dump her like a whore with the clap once they realise that they have been had. Their little tittle-tattling around town on your behalf will dry up faster than a keg in Henderson on Saturday night.

Your call on where you want this to go, but I'll give you a hint, it'll all turn out bad for you baby!

The target of this hilarious teenage invective regards Slater's claims about her as defamatory, and has thus hired a lawyer. Who happens to be Steven Price, poor bugger.

Slater, apparently unfamiliar with the idea that lawyers are paid to act under instructions, has railed at Price's "hypocrisy" in drafting a letter to his hosting company (which has resulted in the material being shifted to an offshore website with which Slater rather unconvincingly claims to have no connection) , and complained about being "harassed by a mad cow, her mad father and now by her mad lawyer."

Adding to the general sense of derangement are the comments sections associated with these ravings, where, to take but one example, a poster called 'why this is important' declares " The other reason it is important to show her up for the liar that she is, is because if her lies were accepted as truth by the general public, who's to say she won't start spreading horrible lies about other people and ruining their lives."

Eh? But it gets even better with the arrival of comparably mad participant from the left; a "radical" (and possibly fictional) lesbian called HairyArmPit, who accuses Slater of misogyny (well, duh) and gets this back from the man himself:

Listen here StinkyArmPit since when is it misogynist to call someone for all the bullshit they are trolling all over town.

Your are deluded and clearly lonely.

According to you on your blog you are banned from here, so it is with great mirth that I watch for your every "banned" post.

Sad, lonely, lesso….get a life.

And then Mrs Whaleoil wades in:

I question whether you on the other hand have any standards of decency at all.

You brag about the lesbian orgies you have at your place and in the same breath on your site discuss with another poster how to set CYPS on Whaleoil and I to try to have our children removed from us.

You are fanatically anti pro lifers and have no respect whatsoever for the rights of innocent unborn children yet claim to care about our 'innocent children'

I am sure that you and your friends will make fantastic foster parents for our children.

Your example of angry womanhood and regular casual and multiple partners will be a real eye opener for them and will help make them feel secure in your family unit and loved I am sure.

In surveying this whole, glorious trainwreck I have sought in vain for anyone who brings even a hint of irony to proceedings. It's not there. These people really do take themselves seriously. They're barking. And in seeking a way to characterise this fluttering nonsense, I keep coming back to one phrase. I trust you will take my proper meaning when I say this:

Whaleoil? So. Gay.

PS: No, I haven't linked to all this jolliness I've quoted. Apart from the element of linking to potentially defamatory material, that would be just a bit like getting involved.

---

Am I the only one who, on hearing that the police had arrested an Iraqi man over the Vogel lane apartment stabbings -- but could only identify the sex of one of two corpses -- thought "fuck me, this is a weird spell we're going through"?

(76 responses)
Digg this Scoopit!