Column Comment
Breaking breakfast news
TV1’s own research shows that on some days, more people watch breakfast news (host: Paul Henry; newsreader: Peter Williams) than the evening news (newsreader: Mother of the NationTM Judy Bailey. For the week September 5-9, comparing 7.00-7.30am with 6.00-6.30pm in the ‘key’ demographic of 25 to 54-year-olds in Auckland, viewer percentages were:
Monday breakfast 5.9, evening 8.8
Tuesday breakfast 5.1, evening 6.7
Wednesday breakfast 6.5 evening 6.9
Thursday breakfast 7.2 evening 3.6
Friday breakfast 7.6 evening 7.5
So breakfast news had more viewers than the evening bulletin on two days out of five, which is telling when you consider the relative resources of the programmes. Think Niger vs California.
One percent in this demographic represents approximately 15,500 people, so breakfast’s win on Thursday represents an extra 55,800 viewers over the evening show. Can someone please explain to Bill Ralston over lunch what this all means?
Brash not Bush shock
According to a Sydney Morning Herald op-ed piece
by Marion Maddox, whom I’d not heard of either, the Nats are in an unholy holy alliance with the lunatic fringe, ie Christians. She writes:
‘In New Zealand, a loose coalition is now pushing New Zealand down a right-wing path, as seen not just by the emergence of the Exclusive Brethren, but by the rise of the pentecostal church-based Destiny Party, the “family”-focused United Future (formed from a 2002 merger of the centrist United party with Future NZ, an explicitly Christian party), the largely evangelical-funded conservative Maxim Institute think-tank, and even a branch of the Christian supremacist Parliamentary Prayer Network. With conservative politicians, business and Christian leaders finding common ground, and heartened by electoral success in the US and elsewhere, no wonder even moderately religious politicians such as Howard and avowed agnostics such as Brash, the New Zealand National Party leader, are hitching their stars to the conservative Christian comet.’
The quotes around ‘family’ are good, aren’t they. But what’s striking is the lack of evidence of a coalition. Yes, Brash talked to the Brethren. That’s his job. He must talk to a lot of loonies, as does Helen Clark. That’s why no sane person wants their jobs. But does the Brethrens’ support mean that Brash agrees with them? Does the Greens’ support mean that Clark believes that grinding up dead possums and spraying them all over your farm will keep the live possums at bay? No and no.
There is no evidence in Maddox’s article – or anywhere – that the National Party is in collusion with these flakes. If you do talk with the ones who decide policy and stuff for the Nats (I do this so you don’t have to), it’s clear that they think the religious right are weird too. The Nats are not, in a word, Republicans.
Marion Maddox is senior lecturer in religious studies at Victoria University. Being an academic means never having to say ‘I have evidence.’ God, that must be great. Mark Williams, a lecturer at Canterbury University, wrote years ago in a book published by Auckland University Press (so you’d think it had some rigour) about Metro’s literary policy. This interested me greatly as I was at the relevant time the person who, in consultation with the editor, Warwick Roger, decided what short stories were published in the magazine. Williams never approached either of us to ascertain what our policy was, or even if we had one. Which we didn’t – we just published stuff we liked. So what he wrote about us was valueless. And wrong.
No journalist would get away with what Williams and Maddox got away with. It’s what old-timers call ‘interviewing your typewriter’. As Roger says in the October North and South apropos of talkback, there’s a discipline in journalism you don’t get elsewhere. Which is the problem with blogs, obviously.
Speaking of Metro
... as so few people do these days, incumbent editor Nicola Legat leaves this week. No sign of a replacement yet, though ACP has been talking to a woman in Sydney who used to work here. Expect an announcement on Friday.
Unintelligent design
The Economist ran a long article on the debate over Intelligent Design, which you’d think only unintelligent people get involved in. But as always with the Economist it was thorough and fair. The best bit, though, was a letter to the editor which gave a long list of unintelligent designs we have to deal with. In a nutshell, two words: birth canal.
And for those who think that US culture is an oxymoron, the Economist points out that ‘Britons buy almost half as many celebrity magazines as Americans do, despite having a population that is only one-fifth the size’. I’ll do the maths so you don’t have to – that means that trash mags sell 2.5 times as much in the UK as they do in the US. And where is the UK equivalent of the Atlantic or New Yorker?
All's Wells that ends Wells
Isn't it good news that, according to the Sunday Star-Times, the new Jeremy Wells programme The Unauthorised History of New Zealand will screen the scene from the 80s one-off drama The Venus Touch featuring Angela D’Audney’s breasts? Better than Angela’s ashes, anyway.
TV1’s own research shows that on some days, more people watch breakfast news (host: Paul Henry; newsreader: Peter Williams) than the evening news (newsreader: Mother of the NationTM Judy Bailey. For the week September 5-9, comparing 7.00-7.30am with 6.00-6.30pm in the ‘key’ demographic of 25 to 54-year-olds in Auckland, viewer percentages were:
Monday breakfast 5.9, evening 8.8
Tuesday breakfast 5.1, evening 6.7
Wednesday breakfast 6.5 evening 6.9
Thursday breakfast 7.2 evening 3.6
Friday breakfast 7.6 evening 7.5
So breakfast news had more viewers than the evening bulletin on two days out of five, which is telling when you consider the relative resources of the programmes. Think Niger vs California.
One percent in this demographic represents approximately 15,500 people, so breakfast’s win on Thursday represents an extra 55,800 viewers over the evening show. Can someone please explain to Bill Ralston over lunch what this all means?
Brash not Bush shock
According to a Sydney Morning Herald op-ed piece
by Marion Maddox, whom I’d not heard of either, the Nats are in an unholy holy alliance with the lunatic fringe, ie Christians. She writes:
‘In New Zealand, a loose coalition is now pushing New Zealand down a right-wing path, as seen not just by the emergence of the Exclusive Brethren, but by the rise of the pentecostal church-based Destiny Party, the “family”-focused United Future (formed from a 2002 merger of the centrist United party with Future NZ, an explicitly Christian party), the largely evangelical-funded conservative Maxim Institute think-tank, and even a branch of the Christian supremacist Parliamentary Prayer Network. With conservative politicians, business and Christian leaders finding common ground, and heartened by electoral success in the US and elsewhere, no wonder even moderately religious politicians such as Howard and avowed agnostics such as Brash, the New Zealand National Party leader, are hitching their stars to the conservative Christian comet.’
The quotes around ‘family’ are good, aren’t they. But what’s striking is the lack of evidence of a coalition. Yes, Brash talked to the Brethren. That’s his job. He must talk to a lot of loonies, as does Helen Clark. That’s why no sane person wants their jobs. But does the Brethrens’ support mean that Brash agrees with them? Does the Greens’ support mean that Clark believes that grinding up dead possums and spraying them all over your farm will keep the live possums at bay? No and no.
There is no evidence in Maddox’s article – or anywhere – that the National Party is in collusion with these flakes. If you do talk with the ones who decide policy and stuff for the Nats (I do this so you don’t have to), it’s clear that they think the religious right are weird too. The Nats are not, in a word, Republicans.
Marion Maddox is senior lecturer in religious studies at Victoria University. Being an academic means never having to say ‘I have evidence.’ God, that must be great. Mark Williams, a lecturer at Canterbury University, wrote years ago in a book published by Auckland University Press (so you’d think it had some rigour) about Metro’s literary policy. This interested me greatly as I was at the relevant time the person who, in consultation with the editor, Warwick Roger, decided what short stories were published in the magazine. Williams never approached either of us to ascertain what our policy was, or even if we had one. Which we didn’t – we just published stuff we liked. So what he wrote about us was valueless. And wrong.
No journalist would get away with what Williams and Maddox got away with. It’s what old-timers call ‘interviewing your typewriter’. As Roger says in the October North and South apropos of talkback, there’s a discipline in journalism you don’t get elsewhere. Which is the problem with blogs, obviously.
Speaking of Metro
... as so few people do these days, incumbent editor Nicola Legat leaves this week. No sign of a replacement yet, though ACP has been talking to a woman in Sydney who used to work here. Expect an announcement on Friday.
Unintelligent design
The Economist ran a long article on the debate over Intelligent Design, which you’d think only unintelligent people get involved in. But as always with the Economist it was thorough and fair. The best bit, though, was a letter to the editor which gave a long list of unintelligent designs we have to deal with. In a nutshell, two words: birth canal.
And for those who think that US culture is an oxymoron, the Economist points out that ‘Britons buy almost half as many celebrity magazines as Americans do, despite having a population that is only one-fifth the size’. I’ll do the maths so you don’t have to – that means that trash mags sell 2.5 times as much in the UK as they do in the US. And where is the UK equivalent of the Atlantic or New Yorker?
All's Wells that ends Wells
Isn't it good news that, according to the Sunday Star-Times, the new Jeremy Wells programme The Unauthorised History of New Zealand will screen the scene from the 80s one-off drama The Venus Touch featuring Angela D’Audney’s breasts? Better than Angela’s ashes, anyway.
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