Public Address - Radiation (Home)

Please, please, please | Sep 17, 2004 11:55

Here at Radiation, we aim to please. We even like to please. We're very pleasing. That's why we're, well, pleased to know that someone in the Sky – offices that is – reads Radiation and then things get done.

Lindsay, who had been having trouble with his decoder switching over to a sort-of Sky spam during the night, sends this update:

It seems that you can count some Sky management among your readership.

Whilst my second complaint direct to Sky was ignored, your publishing of my comments resulted in a Sky executive calling me today to say they had read my comments in your blog, and believe I have a faulty decoder. They are replacing my decoder forthwith.

What can I say? Thank you linesmen, thank you ballboys. We aim to please. But, just a teensy comment: did it really take a blog – albeit a fabulous and insightful one – for something to happen? Ah well, let's not be ungrateful.

Meanwhile, Anthony Timpson writes:

Can someone explain to them [Sky] that DVD recorders are coming down in price and will soon be in thousands of homes, most probably ones that can afford Sky.

Is it too much to ask them to think about a TiVo style service where the hard disk recorders can record multiple sky channels at once? Where the smart recorders can keep track of all the junk we need to keep on file before burning to DVD. ie Insomniac and Travel Sick.

I for one would gladly pay a small fee for a listing/programming service. I mean it's all there waiting for them, they already have the means to do it (listing service, phone line connection etc). Or can you do this already without paying for it?

I called Sky and got the following from someone called a Team Leader who said "no, we will never be doing that".

Um, that must be a first. Sky turning down a way to make more money.

Yes, while the Yanks are happily TiVo-ing Janet Jackson's bazomba for all they're worth, you have to be very geeky to do the TiVo thing in New Zild. Paul Brislen's story points out that Sky doesn't allow TiVo users to download programme info and will not be moving into the PVR market for another 12 months. However, Sky's CEO, John Fellet, talked about options for new decoders in August at a news conference, one of which could be a PVR. Surely they'll be selling recordable hard drive DVDs in supermarkets by then though – it could be too late.

Good news everyone, The Datsuns are going where the D4 have been before and are down to appear on Letterman on September 24 (next Friday). The rest of the list goes:
Sep 17: Jada Pinkett Smith and Jessica Simpson
Monday 20: Tom Cruise, Dax Shephard
Tuesday 21: Bill Clinton, Natalie Merchant
Wednesday 22: Zach Braff, Cary Brothers
Thursday 23: Linda Cardellini, Peter Cinicotti
Friday 24: Sara Rue, Franklin Ajaye and Cambridge's finest, The Datsuns.

Saw a showreel of bro'Town last week, which was funny and cool, I'm looking forward to seeing an entire episode this week. At the launch at the Grey Lynn Bowling Club, I talked with a couple of people from sponsor Master Foods, although don't expect to see "Brought to you by …" on screen – the characters in bro'Town will actually eat certain products, or they'll be in the pantry etc. Possibly not the first time there's been product placement on a local drama/comedy show – Phoenix drinks seem to be quite popular on Shortland Street. Do we care? I don't think so. It costs a lot to make TV drama, and animation is really expensive.

Speaking of which, local drama is really thin on the ground at the moment, although there are things in the works, including a TV3 series. Onfilm reports that NZ On Air is planning to spend $19 million on drama in 2004/05 (yay), but I guess we won't see the results until 2006 (boo). Sigh, gone are the halcyon days when there was Mercy Peak, Street Legal and The Strip across the free-to-airs all in one week.

Onfilm also has interviews with the makers of Colin McCahon: I AM, which screens tomorrow night. It's real good.

In late news, here's tomorrow's list for Hum, that jolly fine little music video show which plays late on Saturday nights:

Badly Drawn Boy "Year of the Rat"
Steve Burns "Mighty Little Man"
Loretta Lynn "Miss Being Mrs"
Steve Earle "Transcendental Blues"
The Bads "Off The Rails" (NZ)
Gasoline Cowboy "I Hear You Call My Name" (NZ)
Pine "See Saw" (NZ)
Strawpeople "No One Like You" (NZ)
Rhian Sheehan "Boundaries" (NZ)
Dresden Dolls "Girl Anachronism"
Patti Smith "People Have The Power"

Digg this Scoopit!

Glassy-eyed as usual | Sep 06, 2004 22:28

A couple of wisdom teeth were forcibly removed from my upper jaw a couple of weeks back, which meant lying glassy-eyed on the couch in a drug-induced haze starring at a flickering screen. Not much different from usual then. If the Nurofen/Panadol combo didn't work, then the Olympics coverage did the trick. Apart from the Kiwis, it got reasonably boring towards the end. You know it's time to go to bed when you're watching the sixth and seventh place games for handball.

But now that normal service has been resumed on the goggle box, it's back to enjoying quality American programming, although it's too early to make a judgment on Six Feet Under. It was certainly a very sombre start, but I must confess to enjoying Las Vegas, which is a perfect Friday night, don't-bother-thinking, we'll-do-the-explaining-for-you kind of show. It's got those whizzy moments a la CSI, and James Caan, despite being shorter than the eye candy lead guy, has presence.

In fact, Las Vegas was named a guilty pleasure in a recent Entertainment Weekly – or, rather, Nikki Cox's boobs were named the guilty pleasure. It's true. Never in history have so many bosoms been on display for the commercial gain of so few. Boob jobs must be practically written into hopeful starlet's contracts these days, although I suppose half the viewing audience isn't complaining. Still, I'd rather have boobs than Bush. No, wait, that didn't come out right.

Interesting little tiff that's been reported about the NZ On Air money that went into NZ Idol. I was under the mistaken impression that NZ On Air had got its money back, simply because NZ Idol was so successful. I mean, if that didn't make money, what does? I do think it was a legitimate programme to fund, though; thousands of people watched it, it's spawned a genuine pop idol of our own with the possibility of going further, and it's given Paul Ellis something to do.

It's also very easy to say with the benefit of hindsight that it shouldn't have been funded; but before it went to air, no-one knew how well it would do. After the True Bliss experience, success wasn't a given, although the New Zealand music industry is a much changed beast since then. Speaking of that, did anyone see Cameron Bennett's story. On. Sunday. About. The. Datsuns? Could he have overemphasised every word more? I think not. Quite rightly, Christian Datsun told him where to go as well when it came to questions about the money and their mums. Fair enough.

The Fall season is nearly upon US screens. Zap2it's TV Gal gives a rundown here.

Marton Csokas and Karl Urban may be doing well in The Bourne Supremacy, but our other big local star, Beautiful Scenery, gets a good review in Without a Paddle, the Seth Green/Burt Reynolds movie that shot here recently (boy they pumped that out quick). Warning: even trailers come with ads nowadays. If you watch the trailer, there's an ad first for Guess Who's Coming to Decorate.

Here's something interesting from Lindsay Vette, who find that when he tried to record overnight on Sky Digital, he got spam:

I found I had for the second time fallen victim to Sky's version of spam when wanting to record cycling. The first time was during the Tour de France. What is with Sky and my cycling?

Sky's spam consists of remotely switching your channel at midnight to the mosaic, with an advertising banner for some new and expensive service in the main window. That was what I recorded three hours of last night.

The first time this happened I complained to Sky only to be told it must have been a power surge that caused my decoder to reset to the mosaic. But no, an experiment shows that the decoder doesn't power back on at all after an outage.

IT'S SPAM!! And I am paying for it. I await their response to my latest complaint.

I didn't know that. I did know that if you mute on Sky Digital and then record something, it gets recorded without sound. Yes. And when that something is Buffy, well. You might be forced to say a rude word.

Digg this Scoopit!