TVNZ has pulled a story about Kmart from its site after The Spinoff obtained emails showing two online ‘influencers’ received undisclosed payments to appear. The revelations raise fresh questions about the murky and unregulated world of the influencer economy. Alex Casey investigates. Two prominent online “influencers” appeared in a 1News story about Kmart without having … Read more
Where Three have cornered the Friday night comedy lineup, Calum Henderson finds that TVNZ2 is running with a very different, stripped-back viewing experience. It starts with a series of blind dates and ends with a line-up of six dangling, disembodied penises. ‘Love Fridays’, TVNZ 2’s belated ‘romance’-themed answer to Three’s successful Friday night comedy line-ups, … Read more
After five years in which our local TV successes went largely uncelebrated, New Zealand once again has a national television awards. The full list of nominees has just been announced, along with the winners of the technical craft awards which are doled out early. Duncan Greive analyses the list and picks some winners. Incredibly strange … Read more
It’s out of the instant restaurant frying pan and into the sudden death cook-off fire – and half the Shortland Street cast has come for tea. “You’ll need to get over being starstruck very quickly,” celebrity chef judge Pete Evans warns the two pairs of chefs before they disappear into the kitchen to cook for … Read more
Will Jacinda Ardern and her new cabinet mess with our beloved remote? Duncan Greive inspects the broadcasting policies of Labour, NZ First and the Greens to find out. The elevation of Jacinda Ardern to prime minister has led to torrents of words being typed – about her youth, her gender, her impact on national sporting … Read more
Eager to outrun the tide of media irrelevance creeping at its doorstep, TVNZ has finally come round to the new world order by going ‘big on local, big on audiences, and bigger OnDemand’. Jihee Junn sits down with some of the company’s biggest execs to hear about their plan for the future. Ever the quick-witted … Read more
Fascinated by the surprising and often inspired music curation on TVNZ 1’s evening news bulletin, Calum Henderson goes in search of the person responsible. It is one of the great pleasures – only sometimes guilty – of modern TV viewing: being able to identify any piece of music on any show simply by holding your phone in … Read more
A lazy knockoff or a legal maelstrom in waiting? Jihee Junn delves into the details of Love Island vs. Heartbreak Island. Amy Winehouse once crooned that love was just a losing game. But for reality TV producers all around the world, love – in its broadest sense – has been a winning one. Over the past year, … Read more
What’s in a name? Only everything, writes Miriama Kamo. I didn’t always love my name. When I was in primary I used to wish I was called Lisa or Michelle, something easy that didn’t raise eyebrows. As I recall this, another memory comes to mind. I remember plucking a flower from a tree on the … Read more
Tara Ward gazes back through time to remember TV One’s campaign dog Toby, the goodest boy to ever grace the small screen. Nothing says “watch this channel” more than a directionally-challenged dog trapped in a labyrinth of notable TV personalities. So it makes perfect sense that when 1991 TV One launched a promo campaign featuring … Read more
Labour’s non-commercial RNZ+ multi-media network is a brilliant idea – but it makes no sense to keep it and retain public ownership of TVNZ, argues Duncan Greive. Labour: [We will] develop a new public digital media service… [including] a free-to-air noncommercial television service. The working title is ‘RNZ+’ Also Labour: TVNZ will remain in public … Read more
The sight of a small party going to the courts to seek a place on a television debate has become a regular sight in our election campaigns. Andrew Geddis walks us through the debate about the debates. No Gareth, you shall not go to the debate tonight In what is becoming a somewhat predictable election … Read more
TVNZ’s New Blood competition crowned its winner last month and awarded one team $100,000 to make a web series. Emma Clark talks to Isla Macleod, one half of the winning pair behind Oddly Even, about producing quality content on a non existent budget. TVNZ web series competition New Blood has lived up to its namesake … Read more
A TVNZ exec made headlines last week for calling Netflix a fad. But after another big budget failure, Duncan Greive asks if it’s time the state broadcaster tried to learn from the streaming giant, rather than embarrassing itself by dismissing it. Last week Andrew Shaw, TVNZ’s veteran deputy director of content, made headlines for describing … Read more
Duncan Greive and Toby Manhire rate the current crop of political shows on New Zealand television right now. Most New Zealanders, as John Key was fond of calling them, would very likely be shocked and appalled to discover that our politics shows run just about all year, every year. Irrespective of the election cycle, or … Read more
Superfan Joseph Harper tackles the seventh week of Survivor NZ, including Nate’s totally normal axe collection and Barb’s scampi feast. Click here for last week. After the fireworks/glimmer of hope last week offered, this week took a step back into ‘New Zealand yeah alright no worries’ mode. We said goodbye to the universal people’s champ and … Read more
John Campbell makes his TVNZ debut and a strong case for a regular return to mainstream TV in What Next, TVNZ’s most public-spirited show since the charter was scrapped. Duncan Greive reviews the ambitious week-long TV event. What Next, currently two fifths of its way through its run on TVNZ 1, is something of a … Read more
Nigel Latta and John Campbell are going to lead New Zealand into a brave new future in TVNZ’s multi-night extravaganza What Next? Tara Ward does the questionnaire that will decide our fate. If you like to spend your evenings staring into the abyss and worrying about what the future holds, then TVNZ 1’s new show … Read more
With voting for TVNZ’s New Blood webseries competition underway, panelist Alex Casey rounds up the top 10 finalists. You know how fancy overseas countries have a pilot season, where all the exciting brand new shows battle it out to get picked up by networks? New Zealand has finally put on its grown-up pants with TVNZ’s … Read more
Jack Tame reflects on his reaction to a very stupid email on Breakfast – which has now had over one million views on Facebook – and explains why we still need our bubbles burst. I think it’s time to lay off Janice. She cannot have expected this response: Multiple Janice-from-Friends memes, ‘Living Next Door to Alice’ … Read more
Aaron Yap binges local series This Is Not My Life, a sci-fi mystery that could sit comfortably alongside Black Mirror and Orphan Black, and asks why New Zealand has stopped making genre TV. In this recent Spinoff piece, I wrote about my experience, or more so lack of, with New Zealand television. I pondered … Read more
Head of news concedes ‘regrettable error’ over TV and online stories on what appears to be a phantom Hamilton police survey. Broadcast and text stories relating to a purported police survey about beggars on Hamilton streets have been removed by TVNZ following a Spinoff report published this week. “We didn’t verify there was a survey … Read more
Everything Tara Ward knows, she has learned from Shane Cortese and the Nothing Trivial gang. Here she outlines the 10 stages of pub quiz grief. Watching three seasons of Nothing Trivial broadened my general knowledge more than the time I fell into a Buzzfeed Quiz vortex of time and space and spent seven hours discovering … Read more
Calum Henderson watches TVNZ’s Darryl: An Outward Bound Story, a warm Kiwi comedy about how one moustachioed man goes bush to find himself. Few New Zealanders who watched it unfold on television will ever forget the men’s 50km walk at the 1998 Commonwealth Games. Overcome by heat exhaustion, race leader Craig Barrett’s legs turned to … Read more
Myles Thomas of the Coalition for Better Broadcasting explains why they teamed up with Action Station to launch the People’s Commission on Public Broadcasting and Media, which has a workshop in Auckland on Sunday March 26. Godwin’s law is a pretty well-known internet meme which states “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of … Read more
The planned restructure at the public owned TV network is the wrong path. Paul Brislen issues a plea: turn back before it’s too late. I’m writing this instead of watching television. I’ve just installed Amazon Prime TV so I can catch up with American Gods when it airs. It’s free for the first wee while … Read more
Alex Casey talks to Maha Albadrawi and Lucy Zee about bringing New Zealand women’s stories to life in So This Happened. Every woman has at least one of those stories. Like gremlins, they often creep out at night in small circles over wine and cheese, more rarely over hushed coffees by daylight. Sometimes they are … Read more
Murder Week continues: Alex Casey spends an evening with Sensing Murder’s Sue Nicholson during her Answers From the Other Side tour, and doesn’t get a lot of answers. Look, I’m not strictly saying I believe in ghosts. All I’m saying is, when I was 14 I’m pretty sure I talked to David Lange through a … Read more
News that the Ministry of Justice spent $23,000 on five internal videos, including one featuring staff lip-synching to a Justin Timberlake hit, has caused the usual sputtering about wasteful government spending. Kathryn van Beek can’t stop the feeling that Timbergate isn’t actually a story. When you’re organising an employee engagement activity for public servants, the … Read more