OK, I’m one of a number of people advising Phil Goff and you’re entitled to think I’m incapable of being objective. So I’ll stick to the demonstrable facts.

I was worried about ‘the worm’. TV3 had made the indefensible decision to allow viewers at home who could afford a particular type of phone to vote on who was winning at any particular time in the debate. ‘Indefensible’ because the owners of those phones would come from a social group much more likely to support National than Labour. They then decided to combine the indefensible with the defensible – an audience of 65 uncommitted voters who would be given meters to record their preference for what each leader was saying during the debate.

Here’s the outcome: for three quarters of the debate, Phil Goff registered approval and John Key disapproval. For one part of the debate, where Goff spoke of the possibility of an arrangement with Peters, the worm favoured Key.

More significantly, the economically-biased ‘rich folks’ worm produced virtually the same result.

Those are the facts.   Read the rest of this entry »

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m the supermarket shopper in our family. It struck me as a rather nice example of serendipity, when Judy and I got together some 29 years ago, that she hated supermarket shopping and I loved it. It’s always been my view, you see, that women don’t understand the purpose of going to the supermarket, which is not to buy one of each item you need, but to stock up in anticipation of your future needs. What is the earthly point of buying one small can of baked beans when, within a month or less, you will certainly need another can, or quite possibly two? I rest my case.

Anyway, the regularity of my visits to the local supermarket have produced the result that I am reasonably well known there and, I think I can say without  exaggeration,  know and like several of the staff who know and (seem to) like me.

This accounts for an experience I had about half an hour ago in the aforementioned supermarket. I was approached by a member of the staff who was quite clearly in high dudgeon. This is how the conversation went:  Read the rest of this entry »

Herald on Sunday

Many years ago Ian Fraser and I had a conversation about the qualities needed to be a successful television interviewer. Of course you needed to be reasonably intelligent, reasonably well informed, reasonably articulate, have a reasonably pleasant voice, be reasonably OK to look at and an extremely good listener.

And then Ian added one further talent: ‘To succeed on television you have  to be able to act yourself.’

The concept is also relevant to people being interviewed on television and we sometimes pass on Ian’s theory to our clients. The problem is partly that the nerves which affect most people, including the professionals, when appearing on television before an unseen audience of possibly hundreds of thousands of people, can strip you of many of the qualities you normally have in everyday life – confidence, fluency, animation, the ability to think on your feet, express yourself clearly, even, in extremis, to express yourself at all.

The successful television performer recognises this problem and makes a conscious and concentrated effort to restore those everyday qualities. To achieve this, he  becomes an observer of the ‘actor’ playing himself, simultaneously monitoring and fine-tuning his performance on a second by second basis. There is an almost schizophrenic quality to the host/interviewer’s job in which one person – the actor – is totally engaged with his guest or audience while the other is ‘reading’ the guest’s response, thinking about the direction of the next question, calculating how much time he has left, preparing to  introduce the next item and a host of other details that are essential to a successful performance.

So I agree with Ian that, in order to succeed on television, you have to be able to ‘act yourself’, that every appearance is ‘a performance’.  ‘Being’, as distinct from ‘acting’ oneself on television, is extremely difficult.    Read the rest of this entry »

“Is [Anand Satyanand] even a New Zealander? Are you going to choose a New Zealander who looks and sounds like a New Zealander this time? Are we going to go for someone who is more like a New Zealander this time?”

And to add insult to injury:

“The audience tell us over and over again that one of the things they love about Paul Henry is that he’s prepared to say the things we quietly think but are scared to say out loud.”

 - TVNZ  spokeswoman Andi Brotherston

And if you thought it impossible to make things worse by offering an apology, check out this quite extraordinary performance by Henry on this morning’s Breakfast.

Update: TVNZ has suspended Paul Henry from Breakfast for two weeks without pay. He may also be replaced as frontman for This Is Your Life.

Herald/Simon Baker

A bouquet to the New Zealand Media – television, radio, the press – who have done such a superb job in bringing us coverage of the Canterbury earthquake and its aftermath. Informative, responsible, humane and never sensationalised.

And a brickbat – well, you might have guessed it – to Paul Henry.  Judy and I are speaking at a conference in Queenstown. We rarely watch breakfast television on any channel, but today we caught Paul Henry talking to Christchurch mayor Bob Parker. This, it turned out, was a case of the gracious meeting the crass. 

Parker’s concern is the human plight of the people he represents. Henry wants to know what will happen to those people who have not been ‘responsible’ enough to have insured their properties. The tone of the question quite clearly suggests that such people are undeserving of support. Parker replies to the effect that this is a community which will help everyone who has suffered. It’s not a matter of money.

Henry than wants to know whether Parker has been doing ‘a Rudy Giuliani’, whether he thinks this will improve his chances of retaining the mayoraly against Jim Anderton. Parker quite proplerly dismisses the question as inappropriate. But Henry can’t leave it alone. He tells Parker that he’s sounding like Giuliani [after the bombing of the World Trade Centre].

It’s hard to find anything strong enough to say about the crassness of wanting to talk about whether uninsured people deserve to be helped or a public figure’s chances of re-election have been improved two days after an earthquake when you’re standing in the middle of a devastated city.

My god, Paul, what else have you got in your compendium of horrors?

Herald On Sunday

I am reluctant to return to the topic of Paul Henry. In talking about him at all one pays him a degree of attention which he almost certainly does not deserve. But he is employed by the state broadcaster as an entertainer and is well rewarded for his efforts. And it is this aspect of the debate that I wish to address.

The central question concerning Henry, it seems to me, ought to be: Does Television New Zealand accept responsibility for Henry’s regular abuses of his privileged position as a broadcaster on national television? Or does it take the view that his ratings – and potential ratings if he is given his own prime-time show – more than compensate for the insult that he so cheerfully pays to so many groups and so many viewers? And is the censure of the generally weak-kneed Broadcasting Standards Authority, with its totally inadequate penalties, actually a convenient way for TVNZ to absolve itself of responsibility for Henry’s uncivilised opinions?

It might be thought that none of this matters since Henry is the co-host of a breakfast show which, by definition, has a very small audience. But common sense dictates that the only reason for TVNZ to put up with the regular fallout from their host’s disagreeable utterances is the substantial future revenue which it might expect to generate from the high viewing figures which any show designed to offend public sentiment will be guaranteed to attract. For the simple fact of the matter is that if the mooted prime-time Henry programme proves to be inoffensive, it will disappoint and fail.   Read the rest of this entry »

TVNZ

Someone recently accused me of being judgmental and cruel in comments I had made about some of the leading lights in the recent ‘march for democracy’. I took the criticism  to heart. I abhor cruelty to anyone or anything. If I make an exception it is to be strident in my criticism of those whom I see as advocating or practising cruelty themselves. I can appreciate that there’s a contradiction in that, but I’ve not yet reached that Christian or Buddhist state of consciousness where I can readily  extend compassion to those lacking in compassion.

I’m about to criticise Paul Henry whom I defended in the very first blog which I published on this site. My thesis was that, despite his occasional gratuitous, offensive and personally hurtful comments about other people, his exceptional talents as a broadcaster justified his continued employment by Television New Zealand. That is no longer my view. Henry is a bully who is abusing his position as a public broadcaster. He should be sacked. Read the rest of this entry »

Is Paul Henry really an obnoxious prat or is this just an act to keep him in the papers? If it’s the latter, then he’s succeeding admirably.  There is no better way to raise your profile than to polarise your audience. In general, the most successful broadcasters – Judy Bailey being the glorious exception – have been simultaneously loved and loathed.

It’s the same for newspaper columnists. People with considered views, who can see both sides of an issue, need not apply. A columnist’s success is judged by the number of irate letters his or her editor receives. Essential characteristics -  one-eyed, dogmatic, over-the-top, contemptuous of other views. Best current New Zealand examples – Michael Laws and Garth George. Read the rest of this entry »