The Evolving Newsroom

I've forgotten more TV shows and movies than I remember, which is what makes the new website NZ On Screen so good.

In the past 20 minutes I've stumbled across McPhail and Gadsby, the first episode of Spot On and It's In The Bag, none of which I'd thought about in years. Lots of years. (My, Selwyn Toogood had lovely enunciation.)

This is my first look around since the site launched late last week, and I'm sure I'll be back. Funded by NZ on Air, NZ On Screen serves as a repository for all manner of New Zealand movies, TV shows and short films over the years.

Or, in some cases, a repository of parts of NZ movies, TV shows and short films.

Often you can't see the whole movie, rather the movie trailer; and with TV programmes you get parts of episodes rather than shows in their entirety. Others, however, are there in full, and there are links to parent websites which hold more information on the content in question or offer it for sale.

The site strikes me more as a first port of call than a final destination for movie and TV buffs, but a useful one nonetheless.

I can easily imagine NZ On Screen becoming the first place I look for vintage TV footage, say, to use in a lecture or blog post. Especially since it's nicely laid out and commendably usable. Hats off to the creators.

It hurts that you can't embed any of the clips, a la YouTube, which is generally my first instinct whenever I come across something I want to share. (At least, I couldn't see a way to embed.)

But it's a fine start and with luck we'll see ever more content added and more of it available for embedding before long. My thanks to all concerned.

Country Calendar must be one of the few New Zealand media institutions that truly count as 'iconic'. The weekly programme, which casts light on NZ farming, hasn't looked back since its launch in 1966 and the current theme tune must be one of the most readily identifiable sounds for any Kiwi.

This clip gives a glimpse of what the programme used to look, and sound, like.



It's gone on to become one of the longest-running TV programmes anywhere in the world and still ranks in the top 10 for viewing figures each week, according to the TVNZ website, with those viewers being both urban and rural and numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

That's no mean feat. Someone somewhere must be doing something right.

So I'm looking forward to meeting Frank Torley, the show's executive producer. He's been involved with Country Calendar in one way or another almost since the beginning and he's our guest speaker at Wintec's Media Bites lunch in Hamilton next week.

Media Bites is a series of lunch/lectures hosted by the Editor in Residence (that's me) with the idea of bringing together journalism students with tutors, journalists working in the Waikato and people in business with an interest in the media.

Past speakers have included Dominion Post editor Tim Pankhurst, TV3 news chief Mark Jennings, John Campbell, former Al-Jazeera bureau chief Trish Carter and Morning Report's Sean Plunket. Earlier this year we heard from Sam Farrow.

I'm hoping to bail Frank up and ask him for a few top tips on storytelling and staying on top. What would you ask Frank if you had the chance?

Every now and then I get an urge to create a Facebook group or something to campaign to bring back Dougal Stevenson. He was a TV newsreader in my youth, one of several with similar qualities.

Dougal Stevenson didn't smile and joke with an attractive sidekick to let me know when the story was light, or grimace to let me know the story was serious, or banter with a cheeky weather presenter or get matey with the sports guy (and pretend to know about sport).

He just read the news, dispassionately, from a piece of paper while two or three images were displayed behind him. More please.

Here he is:



Thanks to CedricRusty for bringing Dougal Stevenson to YouTube.

If you haven't caught up with the appointment of former Observer editor Roger Alton as editor of the UK's Independent, here's a nice piece from the Guardian's Peter Wilby.

And then comes this blog post from Richard Addis with a few suggestions for Alton as to what he might do with the Indy once he gets his shoes under the desk:

Launch a daily magazine instead... The paper is already half magazine. The famous ‘viewspaper’ covers are straight from the magazine world. The consumery parts (50 best etc) and the promotions (mini-books) would sit comfortably in many a magazine package.Drop the idea of covering news at all, at least in the conventional way.

Instead you could transfer 85% of the staff to features duties and retain 15% to provide an excellent and intelligent news aggregation service that would be printed, say, in a single column on page one.

As for the website, apart from becoming the central exchange for directing readers to news sources, make it a TV station. All those new feature writers, not to mention educated readers, will have so much to say, so many background stories to tell and will so quickly learn to take a camera with them everywhere that you can see the Indy becoming a upmarket mini-You Tube in just a couple of years.

There are a few nice notes in this post about online video strategies from Liz Foreman, a former TV manager who jumped to a Gannett newspaper site, WCPO.com in Cincinnati.

For a start, Liz sees newspapers as being more serious about online than TV:

"My boss’ mantra: ‘Write for online, update for print’ permeates the newspaper newsroom but the online thinking also extends into other departments for a very good reason - online is a serious money-making component of the business. Although many TV stations are getting more excited about the web, their websites just aren’t bringing in the bucks like newspaper sites are (I know, there are exceptions,) and consequently they just aren’t as serious about it."

She notes that while video is gaining popularity with online news sites few have a coherent strategy for it:

"As a result, newspapers need folks not only to shoot and edit video but also to help the staff understand what types of video will work online and how to monetize their video efforts."

She summarises her job as being an ambassador for video:

"Reminding staff that we 'do' video, suggesting video ideas during the story planning process and politely saying certain ideas won’t make good videos, motivating newsroom staffers to shoot video and disseminating video statistics so that people can observe traffic growth.

"Based on my experience, the job is akin to my early days of running a TV news website - you must be a good salesperson, good at collaborating with other departments and religious about communicating what works and doesn’t work."

She offers some good pointers for anyone moving into a video management job, and let's hope a few such jobs will be created in New Zealand soon.

The Telegraph is adding seven TV programmes to its existing multimedia offerings.

Digital editor Ed Roussel told the Guardian the investment was part of the group's digital strategy. "The future of news on the web is in the combination of text, video and user-generated content. This development is a major step in that direction."

Telegraph.co.uk's new offerings will include weekly programmes The Gadget Inspectors, Your Money, Their Hands, The Wheel Deal and Real Trips. It already has a daily news roundup - Telegraph TV Now - daily business show and a fashion programme.

As part of a resource reallocation, Telegraph.co.uk stopped its daily news podcast and its Telegraph PM pdf download at the end of the last year, the Guardian said.

Glad to see the pdf gone. It chewed up a heck of a lot of resources for negligible gain.

Analysts are forecasting online ad spend will surpass TV ad spend in the UK by 2009. The study, by Group M, the media planning and buying agency owned by advertising heavyweight WPP Group, projects a 31% increase in online spend this year versus a 1% rise in TV ad spend.

Emarketer notes that the UK media picture is unusual: "For one thing, the print sector remains pretty healthy. Also, the phenomenal rise of the internet has encouraged significant spending on the Web by UK advertisers, and hard evidence of online successes breeds further investment.

"Moreover, the dominance of television as an advertising vehicle is less pronounced in the UK, because TV programming is not funded by advertising to the same extent that it is in the US and elsewhere."

But it's still a sea change and although Emarketer's projections are slightly different, it agrees that online spending will overtake TV within two years.

Emarketer reports that six out of 10 broadband users watch video online at least once a week. The good news for broadcasters is that "70% of internet users surveyed who watched television online did so because they had missed the programme when it was on TV. Nearly one in five said they watched TV online to watch programmes again, after having seen them first on a television set."

The report is based on research by US company Horowitz Associates, who noted: "The data suggest that broadband video is not cannibalistic to linear video, but rather an enhancement to consumers' traditional TV experience."