2011 New Season Line Up

Couple of weeks ago was the Mediaworks' new season launch which saw the network unabashedly declare that they were going to take on TVNZ with all they have. Good on them too. Mediaworks has always kinda been the poor cousin (they didn't have a rich father/mother bank rolling them) but with Jason Paris taking the lead, and Linda stepping up, the network really does look like it is going full steam in the right direction.

With the announcement that they are changing their channel target audience to AP25-54 for TV3 and turning C4 into FOUR (a more entertainment focused channel) with an AP18-39 audience, they are directly competing with TVNZ's channels. And they weren't apologising for the direct nature of their announcement. They meant business. Anyone who was following my tweets that particular morning know how incredibly impressed by this presentation I was. It is the first time (I think I have been going to new season launches for about 4 years - so still a youngin) I have walked away from a new season launch from either network so excited about what they were doing. Not only the enthusiasm of the presenters, the network direction, but also the programming that they are pulling in.

My highlights for Mediaworks next year include:

Community - I can't say enough good things about this show, and the fact they have picked it up just shows how onto it the programmers are. This is brilliance:

Outsourced - This is kinda my pick of the new season from the US. Love it. Smart humour:

Other shows to keep an eye out for:

Terriers

Almighty Johnsons (click here for a peak)

Bigger Better Faster Stronger (whoever had the idea to put Greg Page in FRONT of the camera is a genius)

Graham Norton Show

Gruen Transfer

Supercity

Plus all the usuals - Californication, the CSI/NCIS', The Good Wife, Glee, Top Model etc.

Then, today we had the TVNZ launch.

Now, I'm the first to put my hand up and say I am not TVNZ's biggest fan at present. They cause the the most headaches in my day to day working life and when you couple that with the arrogance of the 10% commission bullshit, well, they doesn't help them climb any higher in my opinion, that's for sure.

So, first things first. The kapa haka group who performed were awesome. Very very talented. The fact that they performed Te Rauparaha's haka, well, the irony wasn't lost on me, let's just put it that way.

TVNZ did what TVNZ does. They put on a show. Paul Maher made reference to revenue being up and how tight avails are in Oct/Nov. but "we still want your money, we'll find a way to spend it". I think he needs to talk to the people on the ground, as I have found it very hard to spend money on TVNZ in the last couple of months. The fact that they have shite programming in Q4 is kinda besides the point, there was just nothing there, and apparently I'm not allowed to build a national spot with regional spots anymore. Since when?

Onto the programming, gotta say it, not that impressed. First up on the One list was North - the follow up to Marcus Lush's South. Now, that was actually in the schedule to run this October, but got pulled. Hopefully we actually get it next year and it's not the flagship for 2012. There are a couple which look good including Enlightened and Body of Work, but they were the only 2 that did anything for me in the new line up. Trying to push Shit My Dad Says when it's already bombing pretty hard in the US potentially isn't the best idea and raving about securing one of the potentially most hideous concepts for a TV show I've ever seen, The Walking Dead. Ah, not for me:

But, TVNZ will have all the returning big names to TV2 - Greys, Desperate, Brothers & Sisters. The bankable big hitters which the general public love, gets them the ratings and therefore the $.

So, that is a very quick rundown. I think what Mediaworks are doing is ballsy and awesome, but they have a huge job ahead of them to rebuild C4 into the mainstream commercial channel that they want FOUR to be.

One thing I hope both Mediaworks and TVNZ do better next year, is give their new shows a chance and let the audience actually know that they are on. A number of shows which I really do think could have been freaking amazing raters this year, were just not promo-ed enough. Very lightly promo-ed on air and practically nothing off television. Human Target, Hawthorn, Sons of Anarchy, Castle - all have the potential to be great shows, I just don't think the audience know/knew they exist, so haven't found them. Anarchy isn't doing too badly, but I think this is by default as there simply isn't anything else on, on a Wednesday night.

Right - that's it from me. Any comments anyone? Did I get anything seriously wrong? Do you need to me to explain why I think performing that particular haka was ironic?

TVCs for pondering

So Bruce asked me about my thoughts on a couple of ads - so I shall share these thoughts with everyone. How lucky.

This is for 10:10 global trying to encourage people to cut their carbon emissions.

I personally think this is horrendous. It's not clever, or funny or endears me to the cause in any way shape or form. It actually makes me a little mad. Negative consequences, more to the point negative consequences which are fictitious don't work for me. Yuck. I would change the channel to specifically get away from this ad.

Next ad is for the Windows Phone:

This I quite like until the last the last 10 seconds when the commercial makes NO sense at all.

The first 50 seconds are so so true and funny and clever and I can see myself and MANY people I know it a number of those situations. The issue, is that I don't believe that a phone which is capable of more would ever fix the behaviour which is shown. No way, no how. I became like some of the people represented in this commercial once I got my android. More access to more information, all the time = non-stop phone fiend.

On a related note, this is a nice commercial touching on some similar themes:

Hat tip to @Designpimp for the video above.

That's all I have to say. Anyone else got any thoughts??

Bad Request

Invalid verb.

I wonder what the verb was?

Human bus panels

What the?

I am intrigued and in love all at the same time. Who came up with this idea? BRILLIANCE.

Hat tip to David Farrier for the link.

Petrol advertising online...

I find it quite interesting that a petrol station is advertising online. Petrol is such a grudge purchase - if you have a car, you need petrol. To be honest, most people I know decide on their petrol station dependent on discount vouchers or loyalty programmes, but that might just be the people that I know.

At any rate, Shell have some blah blah blah fishing something promo on at the moment so this morning (and yesterday morning also) there was a charming expandable on Stuff homepage:

What you can't really see is that the page is moving like water is ontop of if all wave-like. Nice touch. However, my issue with it, is why are they using a really OLD screen shot of the Stuff homepage? I'm sure that I have seen people build expandables which use the current homepage as the basis before they break it. Instead, the expandable disappears and you're left with a different homepage and different lead stories:
Hate to point this out to whomever built this, but you forget that the bulk of NZers are not 100% switched on. If you need proof of this, just look at the audience numbers for Police 10-7, Road Cops or shit that hit the fan with Paul Henry (I am a Paul Henry supporter, and I will no longer watch Breakfast as he is not on it). What was my point? Oh, right - this sort of thing - the double homepage, will confuse people. I hope Stuff haven't had too many complaints on this one.

What if, for a change, we cared about something

I have been a little quiet on the blog for a while as nothing has really grabbed my attention or elicited enough excitement for me to care.

Things change though and it is not necessarily that I care about something this time, it is an admiration for people who care enough about something to do something about it.

What on earth am I talking about?

A friend of mine, Adrian and his friend Mat are taking on the CureKids $10 challenge. It’s a pretty epic challenge, requiring the team to raise $7,125 before the event even begins and then they have to make it from Queenstown to Auckland on $10 THIS WEEKEND.

Now, I am all for helping out a worthy cause and getting my hands dirty every once in a while, but this is quite above and beyond the call of duty if you ask me and I am well impressed with everyone taking part in this event.

Why is this relevant? Well, being a developer and into the whole Twitter thing, Adrian has built a site which allows us all to track their progress and I have no doubt that there will be many a Twitter update over the weekend from @AdrianwithaW. It's always nice to see Twitter used in a good way - to communicate the good things that happen in this world rather than using it to bitch about things i.e. Paul Henry.

So other than going to some of their fundraising nights, this is how I am hoping to help – to spread the word a little more, congratulate the guys and encourage you lovely people out there in the interwebs to donate, because if you think about it, that’s the easy part – these guys are doing the hard yards.

How many expandable banners do we need?

Seriously? How many.

Story today on Stuff:

Not only do we have this charming expandable for Vodafone:
But the freaking Vaio ad explodes over the entire screen as well, covering the top of the Voda ad.
2 expandables, one covering another. I would not be a happy camper if either of these were my clients. Personally.

Expandable banners annoy people at the best of times - two on one story? That's just overboard.

I knew there was a reason I RSS everything and don't bother going to the actual sites anymore.