Over Easter, I was staying somewhere so remote that there was neither radio nor cellphone reception, though TV One and TV 2 were piped through Sky into the accommodation. By Saturday night I was starved of news more than I had been in years, so in desperation I turned on One News for the first time in seven months. It was still awful.
The first five minutes consisted of some idiot prancing like the weather man all over the screen while holding some honey. He prattled on, almost incoherently, in some kind of slang. I don’t know what else featured after this rubbish because, close to enraged, I turned it off.
I gave up watching New Zealand television news last August, while away in Rarotonga, because it had become vaccuous crap. I am talking about One News and TV3 here. Both networks were serving up bulletins so shallow that I found myself predicting by 5pm what they would show at six, the order it would be in, who would be interviewed, even what the Joke Item at the end would be about. The whole bulletin was a joke, a formulaic bore. Most of it was crime, celebrities and self-promotional plugs for the network. The “coochi-coo news,” Brian Edwards called it years ago, when it was nowhere near as bad. When One News led one night with a train — a single train — being delayed on Auckland’s western line, complete with Live Cross to John Stewart at Newmarket station to report it was moving again, I nearly threw a brick through the screen. Enough was enough.
Since August, I have watched the BBC news on Sky, and enjoyed it. It is not stuffy, but nor is it stunt-ridden like New Zealand television news is. It runs for 30 minutes, every hour, which means I can watch it when it suits me. It gives a comprehensive update of events around the world. It is far from my only news source, as each day I listen to Morning Report, Checkpoint, read the paper editions of the DomPost and Herald, and keep abreast of numerous news websites, wires, blogs and other outlets during the day for my job. I like to keep myself informed, not enraged, and the BBC news is relaxing as well as informative.
Having seen five terrible minutes of One News on Saturday and reinforcing why I stopped watching, I decided to watch a full bulletin on One and TV3 on different days this week to see if Saturday was an aberration. Last night I watched One News.
The first point of difference from the pre-August bulletin I grew to hate was it began with the weather man prancing about immediately before the news actually began, and he turned up again at 6.25pm with an update, as well as returning at 6.55. The point of the weather three times eludes me. The second point of difference was a new set, but Ken and Barbie were still sitting at it reading from the autocue, frowning, smiling, looking serious, empathising and making constant Live Crosses to reporters. I’m not sure if they were the same Ken and Barbie from my last encounter. They all look the same on One News
The first segment went for 15 minutes and contained seven items. They were mostly what I would call news, though whether some were the most important news of the day I would question. The lead item was “breaking news” that Greenpeace was protesting at a coal ship at the port of Lyttelton. Next up was Lorelei Mason in an interminable Live Cross from the front of Parliament, telling us that a doctors’ strike was off and David Cunliffe had fixed it. There were various shots of Cunliffe and doctors in between Ken and Barbie interviewing Lorelei. Yes, it was a worthy news item rather than a stunt, done in a workwomanlike way.
Other items in the first segment included the poisonous honey scare, heaven save us, though not painted quite the new SARS the slanging Saturday prancer had prattled it. There was a Live Cross to Fran Mould at a Winston Peters press conference, then Melissa Stokes repeating the stale news about Tibet protests at the lighting of the torch at Olympia. I don’t think Melissa was actually there, but she voiced it as though she was, a TV One and TV3 habit I find annoying. The Happy Item that finished the segment was about some hike in Southland in memory of Sir Ed.
The 6.15pm ad break went for a full five minutes, and when the bulletin resumed at 6.20, it was for just six minutes, beginning with a Live Cross to Arrun Soma on a hill way above the wharf at Lyttelton as the police moved in on Greenpeace, followed by the only international item other than the Tibet protest, a report that Polaroid was no longer making instant film, news so old it had whiskers. That was followed by the weather man again, then five more minutes of ads, before we got two reasonably serious news items, one from Owen Poland about resource consent hearings for the proposed upgrading of Transpower’s lines, the other saying half a million of us have signed up for Kiwisaver, which was also hardly new. A lengthy piece of froth about the Bluff paua house being recreated in Christchurch led into a sport preview and then five more minutes of ads until 6.40pm, when the main sports segment aired. It filled 11 minutes, after which came five more minutes of ads, then the weather man was back again.
The point I am making here is that there was not very much news in the hour of One News. Between the ads, sport and the weather man, there were only 13 items that could in any way be called “news,” occupying just 24 minutes of the 60. There wasn’t even the brief roundup of the share prices and currency markets that I recall was often the most informative moment of the entire bulletin last time I was watching.
By way of contrast, the 30-minute BBC news I watched immediately after, at 7pm, had 12 news items plus sport and world weather, all the items international (none was even about Britain). The lead item was the crushing of a rebellion in the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean, followed by heavy fighting in Basra, Oxfam saying pledged aid was not getting through to Afghanistan, and oil and gold prices falling. Yes, the Beeb does Live Crosses, but to experienced, knowledgeable reporters, not bimbos, in real places like Belgrade, Tokyo and Kabul, not a distant hill above Lyttelton. The only mention of New Zealand was in the sport – the cricket in Napier was the main item there. It wasn’t a big night for news either on One or the BBC, but the BBC delivered a much more satisfying bulletin in half the airtime.
My verdict of One News is that it tried to serve hard news last night amid the fluff and staged Live Crosses, but its paucity of international news and complete absence of any business news made the bulletin insipid and devoid of any substance. Don’t even remind me of the weather man’s three outings.
I will watch the TV3 news one day soon and see if it has improved since August.
20 Comments
March 26, 2008 at 7:34 am
Well-said, Poneke!
I had 6 months free of NZ television news in 2001 when in the UK, and having lost the habit, never watched again except by accident since. Our broadcast news shows are not a source of information, neither are they entertaining if you don’t like being patronised or hectored.
Perhaps these are the death throes before something completely different replaces broadcast news altogether.
Don’t forget the local stories from American TV news that have no relevance to us, but that have striking footage.
March 26, 2008 at 7:57 am
Have you noticed that on TVNZ, road crashes, funerals and promos take precedence over major international items often. Sport is always more important than politics.
March 26, 2008 at 9:00 am
I assume the weather is put in as a hook, I usually tune in around 6.55pm if I am home to see what the weather is going to do tomorrow. I kept gamely watching the news on one because I desperately wanted to believe that as a nation we could still a point of common experience, a news hour that of gravitas that addressed the nation’s issues and showed due responsibility to go with its power to mould opinion. Instead, we’ve got New Idea or Woman’s Day at 6pm.
So I, too, have stopped watching either news bulletin nowadays. The response of the “experts” who do news programming to the dropping viewing numbers appears to be a relentless drive to find an ever lower common denominator as they fight for a bigger share of a shrinking pie. Quite why the futility of this approach hasn’t occurred to the programming experts is beyond me. It’s bizarre, because watching the 6.30pm news bulletin when I was a child was de rigueur and breaking that habit has been the equivalent of giving up smoking. But now, I just can’t be bothered indulging in the nightly ritual of having my intelligence insulted. Well done to TVNZ and TV3, you’ve broken a lifetime habit. The contempt your programmers have for the intelligence of your viewers drips from every story, and more and more of us are returning the favour by not watching now.
March 26, 2008 at 9:12 am
I emphatically agree with this latest comment Poneke. Apart from a year without TV in 1999 I have gone between TV One and TV 3 news bulletins and have over the years become more and more frustrated with the lack of content. It has become worse than a joke. And the high number of pointless live crosses to something I would never regard as news in the first place boggles the mind.
However, what really upsets me is the direction the TV news media is going – yet again – in politics. Another clear case of the tail wagging the dog. It makes me sick how the opinion of some schmuck who is supposed to be reporting on the goings-on in the government ends up being the story itself. If I have to hear one more insipid thing from Duncan Garner I’m going to be sick. And the way that personal politics overshadows the actual work that politicians put in really annoys me too…
March 26, 2008 at 10:34 am
I stopped watching TV news regularly when TVNZ moved it from 06:30pm to 6:00pm in the mid-80’s. TV3 was never a starter as it was on at the same time when they got underway. I rarely got home from work in time to watch it. At first, I was grumpy. But as time went on I realised just how much TIME the move had saved me. Later, when I was able to watch it, I was struck by the same things you mention: News that’s too little and too ‘lite’. The information conveyed in the time consumed is far too little to justify the time required to consume it.
Not sure you’re being fair referring to the Kiwi females on the hills as “bimbos”. They may be young, pretty and relatively poorly informed, but they aren’t in every case unintelligent as well.
Everyone has to start somewhere. The best of them may become experienced journalists….working for the BBC.
March 26, 2008 at 11:32 am
“Everyone has to start somewhere. The best of them may become experienced journalists….working for the BBC.”
Indeed. I am glad Anita McNaught managed to escape TVNZ – from an interview I heard, she appears to have found work far more compatible with her undoubted intelligence at the Beeb. But the present crop of bimbettes…
March 26, 2008 at 1:48 pm
We have become more like the America in regards to the amount of news that only involves us. What about the outside world?
Agreed Poneke – BBC 24 is where it is at. Concise, informative, relevant.
March 26, 2008 at 1:56 pm
We have become more like the America in regards to the amount of news that only involves us. What about the outside world?
America does have plenty of myopic media, but it also enjoys some of the world’s best journalism, broadcasting and print, which carries international news of quality and quantity for those who want that.
Television New Zealand by contrast models its news on a formula found in US mid-west local channels, with the two emoting anchors, the prancing weather man, the Cute Item, the Joke Item and all the rest of the godforsaken formula. It does for US mid-west audiences who can also get scores of other channels, but it does not do for our main news broadcaster.
TV3 news was based on the same model when I last saw it in August. I shall watch it again tonight or tomorrow to see if it’s changed.
March 26, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Spot on Poneke. I could not agree with you more.
If there is a case for a state television network, it is in providing ‘quality’ programme.
That means a meaty news programme with politics and business.
Leave the tabloid trash to TV3.
When i was in the UK over Christmas, I noticed on the BBC 1 news at 6pm and 10pm was a little downmarket than it was but much of the quality was still there.
And on the freeview channels, Sky, to my surprise, was often superior to BBC News 24 , even if it usually had far fewer resources.
I would love to see TVNZ have a meaty late news programme in the style of BBC2’s Newsnight. I wonder who would be its jeremy paxman.
March 26, 2008 at 2:18 pm
News is cheap to produce and how many of us check if the weather report yesterday was correct? Meantime,
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/25/heat-maps-of-the-wor.html#comments
March 26, 2008 at 3:21 pm
What’s wrong with finding out what’s happening in New Zealand every evening? Stones will still be thrown in Gaza whether TVNZ runs the latest piece from the BBC or not. I watch One News recorded on my hard drive every night after tea. I hammer the fast forward when it gets annoying and blaze through the whole thing in 20 minutes. You want to see a good bulletin, forget about the Beeb and check out the ABC Nightly News on Sky, Charles Gibson could teach every reader in the world a thing or two and the content is all class and no puff.
March 26, 2008 at 3:33 pm
TV3 is worse – Britney Spears being third headline story plus Live cross to the US worse. Last night was an odd one as usually they do have the sharemarkets in the third segment, but didn’t.
I agree with what you say partially, except you are comparing a local news network focusing on local news stories with an international news network focusing on international news stories. BBC World is the international version of BBC News 24, which is why there aren’t that many stories from Britain. That said, One News usually only gives 30 seconds on major news stories, bar the US Presidential Elections and Olympic controversies, and too much coverage on local issues (sometimes I think they try and see how many reporters they can cross live to for one story, I think the current record is four).
March 26, 2008 at 4:09 pm
The curse of the small marketplace.
Although TV2 is meant to be the “entertainment” channel and TV1 the news/drama (or as TVNZ likes to say, programming aimed at the more “mature audience”) they are both ad revenue driven. Unfortunately there is not enough potential viewers to run a thoughtful/informative news program. TVNZ has to capture as broad a segment of the viewing pulbic as possible. And so it and TV3 (and to a certain extent Prime/Sky) have engaged in the race to the bottom – broadening “appeal”.
I have been tied up with work so that I have stopped watching the mid-evening news for some months. And like you, I can’t say I miss it at all. Most news is on the web anyway and it can be mixed in with entertaining blogs.
March 26, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Thank you for this post. At last I realise it’s not just me
And as an ex-Pom it’s hard to be super critical of local systems but the news is just dire.
Mind you it’s a simple choice. It’s all online way in advance of the 6pm bulletin. Even the sport.
Today my son got home from school at about 4.30pm and a little later I told him about the cricket and that we should watch the news to catch all the action.
He said he’d already seen it on YouTube.
Go figure!
March 26, 2008 at 8:27 pm
We record the news. We used to watch three all the time, but Duncan Garner became unbearable a few months back, so we started watching one and three on alternate days to try and figure out which was the least annoying. Outcome? We caught an episode of prime one day, and have started watching that instead. Half an hour is long enough, it turns out.
March 27, 2008 at 8:42 am
Being a recent import into NZ from South Africa, what is deemed to be news here really isn’t. No international news. Why is the current day’s weather even discussed at the end of the day?
March 27, 2008 at 8:45 am
Well said Poneke.
I haven’t ‘watched’ any New Zealand TV news for about 10 years because of the flippant rubbish that they try to pass off on their viewers. I quite often see glimpses of their ‘news updates’, though, in between programmes that I have recorded before I hit the FF button and it seems to me that nothing is there, nobody is home. I get my information from the net and have done for some years.
Now I am pretty much an Arabophobe and I have a high degree of Muslim-intolerance – bigot might be too strong a word; I certainly wouldn’t like to comment
– but I have been watching Al Jazeera News Hour on Triangle TV lately and, honestly, I find it great. Whenever I see it, I am drawn in by the range and depth of their coverage and I keep asking myself “.. but aren’t these people meant to be mad prophet-loving anti-western terrorist mouthpieces?”. I am confused. BBC seems to be all spinning logos and twiddly-duh music, whereas Al Jazeera has information and well rounded commentary with depth, and not at all the propaganda instrument which I would have expected.
March 27, 2008 at 10:25 am
I do not watch NZ TV news any more. Have not done so for a year. No need to really. It’s just so low standard. NZ needs a better culture than the parocial envy laden muck that predominates. Then, perhaps, the TV might improve. In the end, it’s ugly people with ugly minds that run the show. Best to ignore the lot of them.
March 27, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Poneke – while expressing understandable disenchantment with the output of NZ TV news for it’s less than satisfactory professional coverage and explanation of world wide news events, you have on the other hand concurrently voiced a sense of satisfying relief and adulation for the BBC’s comprehensive coverage of news events around the globe.
While the BBC produces many excellent programs when it comes to drama, comedy, sport and science, its worth while bearing in mind that it’s enormous news division, which enjoys exceptional global influence, is another story all together. Being the world’s biggest news network using lavish public funding (courtesy of the British taxpayer) and an unprecedented worldwide news reach -its radio service alone, broadcasting in at least 43 languages, attracts over 150 million listeners daily- the historically earned aura and reputation of integrity that had surrounded the BBC of the past is now open to question.
The BBC’s Charter and the BBC Producers Guidelines state that the BBC shall…
• “…contain comprehensive, authoritative and impartial coverage of news and current affairs in the United Kingdom and throughout the world…”
• “…treat controversial subjects with due accuracy and impartiality… and…not contain any material expressing the opinion of the corporation…”
• “…Due impartiality lies at the heart of the BBC. All programs and services should be open minded, fair and show a respect for truth…The BBC applies due impartiality to all its broadcasting and services, both to domestic and international audiences…”
The BBC has now a history of consist failure to adhere to its legal obligations of producing impartial and accurate reporting with an institutional and visceral hostility towards America and Israel (refer to the comprehensively compiled reports by London lawyer Trevor Asserson at http://www.bbcwatch.com ) while at the same time the BBC is supporting European federalism at the expense of nationhood and vigorously still propagating unbalanced opinion of Anthropogenic Global Warming environmentalism.
In another embarrassing and dishonest, manipulation within the BBC bringing that organization’s reputation for integrity into question was in May 2003 when BBC correspondent Andrew Gilligan, a reporter noted for his aggressive anti-war slant, accused the Blair administration of “sexing up” intelligence reports with claims that the government knew to be false in order to justify attacking Iraq. The government denied the accusations resulting in an independent inquiry being launched by retired British Supreme Court judge Lord Brian Hutton. The resulting bombshell was that the BBC, not the government, distorted the facts. Moreover, the BBC’s reporter, Gilligan, improperly passed off his own beliefs as those of an anonymous source with Gilligan ultimately confessing. Lord Hutton’s report criticized BBC’s Gilligan for broadcasting “very grave,” “unfounded” charges and falsely alleging the government “probably knew” its claim was false that Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) were deployable in 45 minutes. The Hutton findings prompted BBC chairman Gavyn Davies and director general Greg Dyke to resign, followed by Gilligan’s resignation.
Again, another notable manipulation known as ‘Crowngate’, a documentary about the Queen, had the BBC falsifying the sequence of events and broadcasting faked footage in the video trailer it made available to the press— to make a better story – purporting to show the Queen in a rare public display of displeasure by storming out of a photo-shoot when in fact she was arriving at it and expressing a mild disagreement with the photographer over a question of her formal dress, thus portraying the Royal in a compromisingly bad light. If this was not enough, the BBC’s reputation for integrity was further hit by a slew of revelations of fakery and frauds that it perpetrated upon the public by phone-in scams with such iconic popular shows as Blue Peter, Children In Need and Comic Relief.
So in summary, taking the BBC’s reporting at face value without further consideration of alternative view points would be to accept, at times, a false sense of reality.
And to Leopold – as I understand it Anita McNaught does not work for the BBC but now works for Fox News.
September 24, 2008 at 10:39 pm
TVNZ & TV3 both promote charlatans & psychics as real stars by giving them air time.
Ken Ring just recently appeared on TV1 to talk about the weather. Psychic , Sue Nicolson has also being interviewed on TV1 morning show recently, where she gave advise to one caller, about her guardian angels. Deb Webber has also appeared on the Breakfast show and Paul Henry was at awe with Deb’s psychic (guessing) ability, when he interviewed her.
There have never been any attempt at all by both TVNZ & TV3 to investigate those charlatans, ie, by interviewing scientists/experts/skeptics to expose them (charlatans). But no, TV producers and show hosts, treat the charlatans as celebrities, not for achieving anything in life by charlatans, but simply for the reason that there are stupid people & suckers everywhere who have helped to elevate the status of the charlatans to be in par with real successful/celebrity such as business/sports people , etc , and this is sad for TV journalism, IMO.