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notices and features - Date published:
1:03 pm, June 26th, 2012 - 5 comments
Categories: democratic participation, tv -
Tags: public service television, tvnz7
After a large number of meetings* around the country in the lead up to the turn off of TVNZ7 at the end of this month, we finally get to the rallies:
Wellington 28th June – 12 noon from Civic Sq to Parliament
Auckland 30th June – 4.30pm from QEII Sq (bottom of Queen St) to St Matthew-in-the-City
Go along and show your support. National is cutting services everywhere, and public service television is vitally important to an informed and healthy democracy.
*last meeting is tonight, Oratia Settlers Hall, 569 West Coast Road, Oratia, 7-9pm.
Quote from Wiki, say no more:
The Wasteland Speech was a speech given by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Newton N. Minow to the convention of the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961. The speech was Minow’s first major speech after he was appointed chairman of the FCC by President John F Kennedy. In the speech, Minow referred to American commercial television programming as a “vast wasteland” and advocated for programming in the public interest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_Speech
“When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.
But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.
You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you’ll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.”[1]
TVNZ7 is full of educational content, this is at odds with Nationals desire to dumb down the population. If this channel was run by Whanganui Collegiate, Mediaworks or some water-hungry farmers a blank cheque would be forthcoming.
National have shown they have nothing but contempt for teachers of any kind.
TVNZ 7 and its older forgotten sibling, TVNZ 6, were beacons of shining light in a TV wasteland.
I think it all comes down the fact that National would rather have “The Chawners” on our TV screens than, say, “Ken Burns Civil War”.
where pathetic pete and the hairpiece when you need them.
Was this the funeral he was going to.
This is a real shame, there should be a lot more fuss over it in the media too. TVNZ 7 is by far the best TV channel particularly if you only have free tv and there is virtually no other source for documentaries.
It does seem like a ridiculous ideologically driven shutdown, shouldn’t the whole point of state run tv be that it isn’t for profit? I hope that at the very least TV1 picks up some of the shows from TVNZ 7 but somehow i think they’d rather show that fat british family.