Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Don't bother voting | Oct 24, 2008 10:52

Do you think we can get the deposit back on the halls? The Herald's editorial this morning says that failng "some cataclysmic occurrence, an event resounding enough to shatter the current template", the 2008 general election is over and National has won.

This bold assumption relies on an exclusive belief in the Herald's Digipoll poll. On the other hand, the 3 News poll published yesterday prompted a story that led like this:

The latest 3 News political poll shows the Maori Party will choose the next Government, and the Greens enjoying their best result in more than five years.

The poll is not good news for National: it effectively means the National and Labour blocks are neck and neck, despite National being by far the more popular major party.

Moreover, Audrey Young's story in the Herald this morning about the potential for a Parliamentary overhang -- meaning that National could exceed 50% of the vote and still not achieve a majority of seats in he house -- also suggests that the election campaign is more interesting than the editorial writer would have us believe.

Meanwhle, DPF is looking for crumbs from the Electoral Commission's decision that New Zealand First did not break the law with its 2007 donations return. We're down now to the police investigation, which might yet provide some comfort for those who hope that Winston Peters will be found guilty of something more serious than gross hypocrisy (and misleading Parliament), but the way things are going you wouldn't bet on it.

And if Rodney Hide is totally okay with the commission's finding that Act failed to declare $20,000 worth of office space donated to its Parliamentary wing by Bob Jones, why didn't he front up on Morning Report today and say so?

John Ansell has helped DPF's Free Speech Coalition spend the rest of its money with a Ponsonby Road billboard attacking Clark and Peters over donations. Don't fret: they're a registered third party.

PA reader John Kelcher notes a rather lively discussion about morality and money between Ansell and a correspondent called Johnny Penn on Ansell's blog. In the future, everyone will be called "John".

Meanwhile: is Alan Greenspan losing his religion? Marketwatch conjures a Casablanca comparison.

New York magazine heads a story Coming Soon: Stories on How Sarah Palin and John McCain Hate Each Other.

The US election campaign has seen an explosion in traffic for The Huffington Post, whose 4,545,000 unique visitors in September represents more than twice the audience of The Drudge Report. Wow.

WFMU has loads of funny photoshops of that weird McCain debate picture.

"Give Obama the floor" declares Jay-Z in his guest vocal on the latest remix of M.I.A.'s 'Boyz'. He still kinda gets owned by M.I.A. though …

And … the Guardian has a story about Tourism New Zealand's new weapon in the war for the British tourist dollar: Ladyhawke.

PS: Thanks heaps to the 600 or so Public Address readers who clicked through to NZ On Screen on its first day on air. You really got the ball rolling.

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Everybody's vogueing on the media dancefloor | Oct 23, 2008 10:14

This week's Media7 looks at the political marketing now being rolled out as part of the general election campaign. There's a fun Newsmash -- which highlights an amusing message conflict in National's opening address -- and Simon Pound got a great report out of what people do to election hoardings.

The panel is John Ansell, the creator of National 2005 billboard (and the "Taxathon" TVC), former Labour Party president Bob Harvey (who created the campaign that brought Norm Kirk to office in 1972, history fans) and Auckland University political marketing specialist Jennifer Lees-Marshment. We discuss the messaging so far -- up to and including Labour's new "A Tale of Two Johns" attack ad.

By general acclaim, the Greens' campaign is the winner and National's isn't a patch on 2005. Labour's is blunt, Act's is messy and no one can understand United Future.

The ondemand version is here, the Windows media clips are here, the podcast is here -- and it'll be along on YouTube sometime soon.

Meanwhile, I'd best be packing a bag for the NZ On Screen launch in Wellington this afternoon …

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Proud Wednesday | Oct 22, 2008 09:57

A while back hereabouts, there was general acclaim -- not least from the ladies -- for the idea of bringing back Gloss, the 80s TV drama that has lived on in the dreams of New Zealanders these past 18 years. Well, here it is.

Just the first episode, mind. And that took some doing, such is the nature of the rights enshrined in the original actors' contracts for the show. But please, enjoy.

Gloss has been brought you by NZ On Screen, the living archive of New Zealand television and film that I've been on the trust board of for nearly year. It's a non-profit, public good project funded by NZ On Air. It officially launches tomorrow, but the passwords are off this morning, so please, go look.

You might also enjoy:

All of Merata Mita's famous Springbok Tour documentary, Patu.

Three New Zealanders: Janet Frame, a 1975 documentary based on interviews with Janet Frame -- "rare" is too mild a word for this.

Review, Hone Tuwhare, from 1975.

The brave 1972 kitchen-sink drama Gone Up North for a While. Watch out for Paul Holmes as the slick willie.

Architect Athfield, one of a clutch of films directed by Sam Neill for the National Film Unit in the 1970s.

The whole of Velvet Dreams, Sima Urale's award-winning documentary about velvet paintings and the mythical maidens who inhabit them.

The Quiet Earth -- present here, like all the cinematic features, as a trailer only, but still intriguing.

And … oh go and find 'em yourself. The website is excellent -- but building it was really the easy part. Determining and then obtaining rights for screen works has been far the most challenging aspect of this project. Getting the Frame documentary was a matter of talking to her estate, and meeting their needs. And I was actually in the room when word came through that Merata Mita -- tracked down in Hawaii -- had faxed through permission for Patu. That was cool.

There are lots of people to thank here -- not least the independent producers who got what was happening and made their work available. But I think three people deserve particular mention this week. My fellow trustees Roger Horrocks and Rob Scholes made so much happen through their knowledge of the industry and vision for what NZ On Screen should be. And the general manager, Brenda Leeuwenberg, has done an amazing job of bring this complicated project to fruition.

It doesn't stop here, of course. There will be new content added on a weekly basis; both to the archive and to Screentalk, the industry interview section overseen by Clare O'Leary. All Screentalk content -- and all the other content produced by the project -- is published under a New Zealand Creative Commons licence. I'm proud about that too.

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To be honest, when I first saw the Made From New Zealand stunt on Santa Monica beach last year -- the giant silver fern -- I thought it looked like a somewhat empty feel-good gesture. So I was pleased and impressed this week to see there was a plan behind it.

Made From New Zealand is essentially a networking site for New Zealand businesses, large and small. What I like is the very clear value proposition from the get-go: if you sign up and create yourself a profile, you'll take advantage of the search engine optimisation built into the platform. Short version: if you set up a profile on the site, you will do better in Google -- and it's free.

I like the people behind the project, and we're looking at Public Address joining as a network -- so that the businesses run by those of us who post here and you, our readers, can identify with each other. I'm keen for the PA community to manifest on other social platforms (hey, there's a Last.fm group already) and this serves that aim quite well. Stay tuned for that,

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And one last item for Proud Wednesday: David Haywood. His Public Address Books project is a thing of wonder and joy. Get on over to his blog to read about it, and order your copy of his collected posts, My First Stabbing.

PS: Freeview owners have a lot to see on TVNZ 6 and 7 tonight. The new Top Shelf interview-meets-portraiture series, The Sitting<//i> screens at 8.30 tonight on TVNZ 6 with three in a row: Kevin Milne, Sima Urale and Iain Stables. Then at 9.30 on 7, there's one of the better Media7 programmes we've made this year, with John Ansell, Bob Harvey and Jennifer Lees-Marshment. And if you're a real glutton for punishment, you can see Marty Welch interviewing and painting me in another episode of The Sitting at 10.20pm.

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Life Goes On | Oct 20, 2008 11:31

The government hasn't wasted time in seeking to fix the widely identified flaw in its bank deposits scheme -- its lack of coverage for wholesale deposits. Good. As someone who is going to have to borrow money for house extensions sooner or later, I'm somewhat reassured that the bank will actually have money to lend.

Labour's guarantee scheme was excoriated along with National's risky new plan for the Super Fund in a not-online NBR lead story on Friday, under Rob Hosking's byline. Unfortunately, the latter can't be so easily fixed.

The story pointed out that by 2025 the 40% of the fund that National wants to force into local investment will by be $43.6 billion: bigger than the entire market cap of the NZX-50 plus the expected value of Fonterra were it to be floated and quotes a string of specialists pouring scorn on the policy. Ben Thomas thrashes the policy in his column, which concludes with an unnamed economist declaring "this is becoming a scary election."

Ben proposes that Labour should respond by running ads featuring Dancing Cossacks. That would be kind of meta, wouldn't it?

Meanwhile, the Radio New Zealand economics debate yesterday was lively and listenable, and Kim Hill did a good job in charge. My personal takeaways were Michael Cullen's strength in a debate format and Roger Douglas's grounding in a bygone era. It's here, along with the other policy debates.

But Winston Peters stood up Bill Ralston last night on Ralston's Sky News show Campaign 08. How silly. The programme that aired without him -- but with Phil Kitchin, Duncan Garner, Barry Soper and Vernon Small -- is here, along with the previous shows. It's actually a good dissection of Peters' troubles this year. Better, I dare say, than a show on which Peters was actually present.

The Washington Post has video of Colin Powell's Obama endorsement on Meet the Press. Watch it and then, if you're feeling sturdy, scroll down and take in some of the flat-out racism in the comments, most of it accompanied by recitation of the McCain campaign talking points, as applied in the new robocall campaigns. Those fuckers have a lot to answer for.

On a similar theme, Republican congresswoman Michele Bachman pretty much called Obama a terrorist in a frankly incredible TV interview over the weekend.

If you haven't caught up with John Cleese's interview on the US residential campaign, it's really worth your time. There's the short version with the "I thought Michael was the funniest Palin" joke and the longer one.

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We have what should be a cracking Media7 lineup to record tomorrow evening. We're looking at the way the political campaigns are pitching via the media, and our panel is John Ansell (who created National's billboard campaign in 2005), former Labour Party president Bob Harvey and Auckland University political marketing specialist Jennifer Lees-Marshment.

If you'd like to come along, hit "Reply" and let me know (if you want to bring a friend, say so).

PS: Thanks to the organisers of Auckland's Diwali festivities down at the Viaduct over the weekend. We had a nice time there on Sunday, and I pigged out on four different dishes. If I were vegetarian, I'd eat that food all the time ...

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