Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Feeling Unserious | Jun 13, 2008 11:03

There were some serious things I could have blogged about this morning, but it didn't happen. I'm just feeling unserious. It's happy time. And nothing made me laugh more this week than the "product reviews" on the John McCain golf store. It took them days to realise what was going on.

I think this one is my favourite:

Reviewer: Kim Jong il from Pyongyang, North Korea
Your balls are tiny compared to my huge North Korean balls ! I have a huge missile. Suck it hard suck it hard you puny Americans. If you don't obey I will tickle you or give you Chinese water torture!

There are more examples and screen grabs here.

Moving along, one of the WFMU bloggers has posted some of his massive collection of arresting images from the culture. It has a kind of mute brilliance that makes me feel very well.

Our older boy inherited an iPod Nano after a family upgrade, and I made him a couple of playlists of Music a Young Man Ought Listen To. And he did. But eventually, he admitted that what he'd really like is this. So I went to the iTunes Store and bought him an entire Breaking Benjamin album for his new iPod. It sounds fucking awful to me.

I'm just going to embed some clips of proper music in the comments for this post now. You may care to join me. Remember, just the URL, no embedding code. And if your YouTube URL doesn't have a "www", you need to add one.

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Better, faster ... prettier | Jun 12, 2008 10:27

Public Address readers are generally understanding about the appearance of advertising on this site. But one thing that bugs me -- and, I suspect, many readers -- is the auxillary ads.

When the fine people at Scoop Media haven't sold a particular space via agencies, the ad-serving system still has to serve something -- and, at the moment, that something is generally cost-per-click advertising, which tends to be ugly and irrelevant, and doesn't actually earn much.

I'd like to try something different. We'll sell banners and skyscrapers directly at a very low CPM (cost per thousand impressions). Essentially, advertisers will buy a week's worth of impressions (we guarantee 60,000 but usually exceed that), with the caveat that those impressions will only be served when there is not a booked ad in that space. So you might get your week's worth over a week, or a month, depending on booked ads and how many others have auxillary ads running with us. No guarantees.

Obviously, it's not the solution if you're promoting a play or a gig or a launch, but it should be a good solution for branding over time. I'm hoping we can attract more ads that look like "us", both in terms of the nature of the business, and the quality of the advertising creative.

As an advertiser, you'd be responsible for providing that creative to the appropriate spec, but I'm happy to hear from third-party designers who can provide attractive, original ad creative at a modest price. (Designers are, naturally, welcome to create ads for their own businesses. That would be cool.)

As I said, the CPM rate is very low at present, which is the logical way to start. If you're interested, hit "Reply" below, and I'll forward your email to Renee, our salesperson. She also handles the small display ads on the site.

And, of course, if you'd like to explore conventional advertising, with its timely appearance guaranteed (banners, skyscrapers and text ads), you should contact Chloe at Scoop Media here.

Meanwhile, the video from this week's Media7 is online. This programme looks at the reporting of health and medicine -- and where the news media get it right, and wrong -- with Rae Lamb, a former Radio New Zealand heath correspondent and now the deputy health and disability commissioner; 3News reporter, and practising doctor, Lillian Ng; and former Auckland District Health Board chair Wayne Brown.

The big ondemand version is here, the Windows media clips of the show are here, the podcast is here and the YouTube channel will be updated any moment now.

3News has a launched a new website, which loads a great deal faster than the old one. The video is now in Flash format, rather than the former, increasingly broken, Windows Media. It's loading okay for me, but others are reporting stalls waiting for the stream to start.

Oh, and I've just resigned my Listener column. A couple more of them will appear, then that will be it. It's a little bit sad -- I've been filing copy under one heading or another for the last 17 years -- but also something of a relief.

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New Sky | Jun 11, 2008 12:17

I'm just back from the Sky HDi launch: Sky HDi being the HD-capable digital video recorder that will enable Sky subscribers to receive the HD broadcasts -- sport, movies and the handful of programmes Sky produces itself -- which will commence next month.

The box itself is identical to the one launched by FoxTel in Australia, with three tuners and an Ethernet port which, according to Sky CEO John Fellet, will become relevant when Sky launches IPTV services in about a year's time.

The HD programming, in 1080i format, will be on Sky Sport 1 and 2, Sky Movies, Sky Movie Greats and, yes TV3. Where possible, sound will be Dolby 5.1, even on the sports broadcasts. Fellet said in his short speech that Sky is "in dialogue with all the other broadcasters" about carrying their services in HD. But more of that later.

Kevin Cameron outlined the sports offerings, which will be the first to aunch. Sky will broadcast 104 sports events in HD this year, including local rugby and NRL matches, the US Open, the US and European gold tours and Premier League football.

He also outlined Sky's plans for the 2010 Winter Olympics and 2012 Olympics in London. They're huge. Sky will have eight dedicated Olympic channels, plus 12 hours a day "free to air" on Prime. There will be online and mobile content too. He quoted a total of 3638 hours coverage of the London games, contrasting that with the 810 hours TVNZ provides from Beijing.

On Site Broadcasting has spent what I assume to be an eye-watering sum on a new HD-enabled OB truck (also present at the launch), with two more of those to be commissioned later.

The movie channels look to have quite a stock of library titles newly rendered into HD, including Blade Runner: The Final Cut and Gladiator. Given the paucity of titles available for Blu-Ray, this is quite a useful offering.

Existing MySky users will pay a $49 swap-out fee. Running the HD box will cost an extra $10 a month, but that fee will be waived for customers to elect to keep their current box as an additional household decoder.

It's a pretty solid offering, and builds on the usability advantage Sky has with MySky.

But back to that "free to air" Olympic coverage on Prime: I asked Fellet what free-to-air HD platform Prime will be on in 2010.

"It will definitely be on Sky," he said.

So Sky is a free-to-air platform?

Well, in the sense that it will be possible to buy from Sky a decoder that receives on the free-to-air channels. About 5000 people have one of those at present, although obviously they're not HD. Frankly, Sky knows that's not truly a free-to-air solution, especially given that most new TV sets sold between now and then will include a built-in Freeview HD tuner.

The reality is that by 2010, Prime will be on Freeview, which is what free-to-air TV will be in the relatively near future. Sky knows it, Freeview knows it and the current free-to-air broadcasters know it. And they will hammer out the details at the same time as Sky renegotiates its carriage of TV One and TV2. It is possible that regulation might be required -- perhaps a "must carry" rule that regulates the price Sky pays for publicly-funded TV -- but hopefully not. Even as both sides shout the odds in public, they will be negotiating on a more measured level in private. For now at least, they should be left to haggle.

PS: Grant McDougall and Kyle Matthews are organising a meet-up for Dunedin Public Address readers. We never got a Great Blend down south and given y schedule this year we're not likely to, so y'all should take this opportunity to get together, at a bar, probably later this month. I'm unlikely to be able to join you, but I'll try and send down some goodies. If you're interested, you can email Grant at krautrockboy@hotmail.com or call him on (03) 477-0837. If you can reach him, Kyle's mobile number is 021-113-0236. Have fun!

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Medical Matters | Jun 10, 2008 09:59

The High Court review of the workings of the Abortion Supervisory Committee has opened a can of worms that caused social convulsion in the 1970s. We knew the process was a fudge, but it has long seemed to be a fudge the majority of the country can live with.

As the Wikipedia article states, "in New Zealand today, abortion is not a major political issue, and since the 1970s most of the abortion-related lobby groups from both sides of the political spectrum have largely demobilized."

Tell that to Right to Life, which sought the review on the grounds that the Abortion Supervisory Committee was not using its full power to scrutinise consultants' decisions. The committee takes the view that it does not have such power; Justice Forrest Miller now says it does. I'm in no position to comment on the legal merit of his judgement, but what happens next going to be interesting.

We have another potentially explosive medical controversy in the news that the FDA now no longer completely vouchsafes the safety of mercury amalgam fllings in all cases.

The Q&A on the FDA website says it doesn't recommend the removal of such fillings, but notes the "precautionary principle" followed in Canada, France and Sweden, and ventures on that basis that "pregnant women and persons who may have a health condition that makes them more sensitive to mercury exposure, including individuals with existing high levels of mercury bioburden, should not avoid seeking dental care, but should discuss options with their health practitioner."

But Kathryn Ryan has just interviewed a lawyer and a lobbyist from the US who explicitly extended the change of view into the claim that mercury causes autism. There just isn't evidence of that, and not for want of anyone looking. The American dental Association has provided some context, but I think there'll be a lot more of this. Personally, I think it's wise to work away from the use of mercury in fillings, as we have in vaccines -- purely as a matter of precaution, rather than because evil doctors are poisoning our children.

As it happens, Media7 this week is all about the reporting of health issues -- from dodgy doctors to miracle cures. Our panel is deputy health and disability commissioner (and former journalist) Rae Lamb, 3 News's Dr Lillian Ng, and Wayne Brown.

If you'd like to come along to the recording at The Classic on Queen Street this evening, hit the reply button below and let me know that you (and a friend) will be joining us. If you can't join us, feel free to chip in your thoughts in the discussion for this post.

On a completely different tip the Apple newswires and blogs are on full rev this morning after the unveiling of the iPhone 3G, which will be launched here along with other participating territories by Vodafone. It's quite a platform. And that's not even mentioning Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the forthcoming release that targets peformance rather than throwing in features (yay!).

With impeccable timing, the excellent Mark Webster has begun writing a new blog, MacPlanet, for the Herald website. He'll be rounding up the iPhone and other WWDC news today.

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