Kiwiblog

The Herald reports:

Pay television giant Sky is planning to hit the pause button on its Sky Online site, saying the service does not make sense in the current New Zealand broadband market.

Fellet said: “We did this to make subscribers feel better about our service but it has not been a great viewer experience.”

Viewers were using up their broadband capacity and then becoming unhappy with Sky when they passed data limits and their internet service provider (ISP) dropped them back to dial-up speeds.

I agree such a service will be greatly limited by data caps. But assuming Sky hosts its content locally, and hosts it in a site that peers with the major ISPs, I would have hoped that such local traffic could be excluded from data caps. It is the international bandwidth that is the big problem.

TVNZ was the first broadcaster in Australasia to launch a full online catch-up service and nearly all of of its prime-time shows are available through this service. Each week nearly 250,000 New Zealanders stream 1.5 million shows to their homes, Paris says.

Some TVNZ traffic has been through a relationship with the state-owned ISP Orcon, which has allowed its subscribers to access the TVNZ ondemand website without affecting data caps.

Orcon executive Scott Bartlett said data caps remained an impediment partly because there was only one “pipeline” from New Zealand allowing internet traffic from the United States – the source of a lot of internet traffic.

He said there were also issues over Telecom charges for data transfers.

This is why peering locally is so important. People should be able to download locally without it affecting their data cap.

Tags: peering, Sky TV

I am loving having Comedy Central now available on Sky. Colbert Report, Southpark etc etc.

Best of all it is part of the overall Sky package so no extra charge.

Now all Sky has to do is get the SciFi Channel here. Heaps of people would pay for it.

Tags: Sky TV

Yay yay yay. I have heard a reliable rumour that later today it will be announced that TVNZ6 and 7 will be made available on Sky.

This is excellent news as it means Sky users (especially those who use My Sky) can get all NZ free to air channels through the one device.

The taxpayer directly funds TVNZ around $80 million for these channels. I objected to having to buy a second decoder to get them, when I already had aperfectly good digital decoder. But it wasn’t so much the cost – it is about being user friendly.

Users wants all their free to air channels (and any others they pay for) on the one device. I want to see all programmes on at say 7 pm on the one listing.

Not sure if any money has changed hands to facilitate this. Hopefully Sky is also making Prime available on Freeview as quid pro quo.

I have never watched an episode of Media 7 because it is not on Sky, and I really want to. Likewise never watched Backbenches except if there in person. This deal should see viewership increase significantly for both prigrammes.

Tags: Sky TV, TVNZ

Very pleased to see:

Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman would like to see the Freeview channels TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7 broadcast on Sky Television in the next couple of years.

Same. I am helping pay $78 million to TVNZ for those channels, and I ant to be able to watch them on my My Sky box. I do not want to have to buy a Freeview box also. It’s party a point of principle over the cost, but more a matter of convenience – I want one box which records the programmes I want.  When looking at what is on in an evening, you don’t want to have to check two seperate sets of listings.

Tags: Jonathan Coleman, Sky TV, TVNZ

Mediawatch on Sunday did a spell talking about blogs and included a chat with me, and an extract from the Two Helens ad Whale Oil and I did.

Last week I did an extended interview for around 10 minutes with Eric Young on Sky News. Was lots of fun. The dog toys even made an appearance. Also I discovered that Eric wears jeans with his suit and hides it from the camera

And Ali Ikram had some fun on Sunrise last week with our the two Helens ad.

I’m also on One’s Breakfast around 8.20 tomorrow discussing the campaign and the election.

Tags: Ali Ikram, DPF, Eric Young, Media Watch, Sky TV, TV3, Whale Oil

To go along with the new hi def 42″ flat screen, I figured I should invest in upgrading the My Sky box to My Sky HDi. It was a good investment, as Pat Pilcher states in the Herald.

New features include:

• Movies, Sports and TV3 in high def
• Dolby Digital Audio
• HD doubled to 320 GB
• Four tuners, allowing three to be used for recording and viewing, and the fourth for the programme guide
• An Ethernet port, allowing downloading from the Internet at some future stage
• A USB port, which may allow you to add on additional storage one day

Pilcher’s recommendation:

MySKy HDi is more of an evolutionary improvement than just an upgrade to its non-HDMI sibling. HD video, proper surround audio and what appears to be some serious future-proofing makes buying MySky HDi a definite no-brainer.

I agree.

Tags: Fun Things, Pat Pilcher, Reviews, Sky TV

Last week I set up an online survey for MPs, asking them to rate various media organisations and senior gallery journalists on a scale of 0 to 10. Just under one quarter of MPs responded, and the results are shown below.

As the media often rate how well MPs are doing, I thought it appropriate to reverse this and ask the questions in reverse. The media are a hugely powerful filter, and it is appropriate (in my opinion) to have some focus on how well they are perceived to be performing.

The questions were:

1. For each media organisation please give them a rating from 0 to 10 for how well you think they do in their parliamentary reporting. This should take account of all relevant factors – accuracy, fairness, thoroughness, relevance, substance etc.
2. Now for some individual senior members of the press gallery, please rate from 0 to 10 how well you think they perform at proving fair, accurate, unbiased and informative reporting on Parliament. You can skip any that you do not feel able to rate.
3. Finally can you indicate your party grouping as National, Labour or Other. Your individual identity is not sought by us, and we have no way or interest in identifying individual respondents. However we would like to summarise results for all MPs and by the three groupings to see if they vary by party grouping.

It is important that these be read in context, so make the following points:

1. This is the opinion of MPs only. It does not set out to be an objective rating, and should not be seen as such.
2. MPs get reported on by the gallery. While this makes them the group of NZers potentially best able to have an informed opinion on the media (which is why I surveyed them), it also gives them a conflict of interest. MPs may score journalists lowly due to personal run ins with them, or the fact they are too good at their job! This should be borne in mind.
3. I only e-mailed the survey to the 121 MPs, but it is possible that one or more responses was filled in by a staff member who has access to the MPs mailbox. I think this is unlikely, as most staff are very professional. However MPs were not required to prove their identity to vote, as confidentiality of individual responses was important. You need to know the Survey URL to be able to vote.
4. National MPs made up 43% of responses, slightly above their numbers in Parliament. Minor Party MPs were also slightly over-represented, Labour MPs under-represented and some MPs did not give a party identification.

Media	Mean	Median	Mode	Minimum	Maximum	Range
NZ Press Assn	6.1	6	6	4	9	5
Newsroom	5.8	6	5	1	10	9
Trans-Tasman	5.5	6	6	0	8	8
NZ Herald	5.3	6	6	0	8	8
Scoop	5.2	5	5	0	10	10
Newstalk ZB	5.1	6	7	1	8	7
Listener	5.0	5	3	1	8	7
NBR	4.9	4	4	1	8	7
Radio NZ	4.8	6	3	1	9	8
Radio Live	4.4	5	1	1	8	7
Sky/Prime News	4.3	5	5	0	7	7
The Press	4.2	5	1	1	7	6
TV Three	4.1	5	6	0	8	8
Dominion Post	4.1	4.5	1	1	7	6
TV One	3.9	5	5	0	6	6
Maori TV	3.7	4	5	0	6	6
Herald on Sunday	3.5	3.5	7	0	7	7
Sunday Star-Times	2.7	3	3	0	5	5

NZ Press Association tops the rankings with a mean or average 6.1 rating – and received no very low ratings from anyone. The two Internet agencies were in the top five, indicating MPs like the fact their releases are carried in full. Trans-Tasman also does well.

Television generally gets ranked lowly with all four stations in the bottom half. Sky News actually ranks highest.

Radio is middle of the field with NewstalkZB being the highest ranked radio broadcaster.

The newspapers range the spectrum. The NZ Herald is up at 5.3, Press at 4.2 and Dom Post at 4.1. I would have them all higher, but this is a survey of MPs, not of my views.

Now the sample sizes are of course very small (but of a limited population) but let us look at how National MPs ranked media compared to all the other MPs:

Media	All Mean	Nats Mean	Others Mean	Difference
TV One	3.9	6.3	2.2	4.2
TV Three	4.1	6.2	2.6	3.6
Maori TV	3.7	5.2	2.5	2.7
Sky/Prime News	4.3	5.5	3.3	2.2
Sunday Star-Times	2.7	3.5	2.1	1.4
Radio Live	4.4	4.8	4.2	0.6
Radio NZ	4.8	5.0	4.6	0.4
Dominion Post	4.1	4.2	4.0	0.2
Herald on Sunday	3.5	3.5	3.5	0.0
Newstalk ZB	5.1	4.8	5.4	-0.6
The Press	4.2	3.8	4.6	-0.8
NZ Herald	5.3	4.2	6.1	-1.9
NBR	4.9	3.3	6.1	-2.8
Listener	5.0	3.3	6.3	-3.0
NZ Press Assn	6.1	4.3	7.4	-3.1
Trans-Tasman	5.5	3.3	7.1	-3.8
Scoop	5.2	2.8	7.0	-4.2
Newsroom	5.8	3.0	8.0	-5.0

National MPs ranked the four TV channels much higher than other MPs did. Maybe this is minor parties upset that they do not get on TV much?

Despite the generally accepted lean to the left of Radio NZ, National MPs ranked Radio NZ higher than other MPs did. And while some on the left attack the NZ Herald at favouring National, National MPs actually ranked them lower than other MPs did. The Listener and NBR also get accused of leaning right, but again get ranked lower by National MPs.

The Nat MPs also rated the online media very lowly.

Now the journalists. I decided not to list all members of the press gallery, but only those who are relatively senior, and are more likely to have a reasonable number of MPs have formed opinions about them. Looking back I could have included more.

If any journalist is unhappy about being missed out, happy to include you next year. Now again it is worth remembering these are only the opinions of those MPs who responded to my survey – it is not an objective rating.

Journalist	Mean	Median	Mode	Minimum	Maximum	Range
John Armstrong (NZH)	6.4	7	2	2	10	8
Peter Wilson (NZPA)	5.8	5	5	3	8	5
Audrey Young (NZH)	5.7	6.5	7	0	10	10
Ian Templeton (TT)	5.6	7	7	0	9	9
Jane Clifton (Listener)	5.6	6	6	2	9	7
Barry Soper (Sky & ZB)	4.9	5.5	7	1	9	8
Ian Llewellyn (NZPA)	4.9	5	5	1	8	7
Vernon Small (DP)	4.6	5	6	1	8	7
Colin Espiner (Press)	4.5	5	6	0	8	8
Guyon Espiner (TV1)	4.4	5.5	7	0	7	7
Tim Donoghue (DP)	4.1	4.5	2	1	9	8
Brent Edwards (RNZ)	4.1	4	4	0	7	7
Tracy Watkins (DP)	3.8	4.5	6	0	7	7
Duncan Garner (TV3)	3.7	3.5	3	0	8	8
Gordon Campbell (Scoop)	3.6	5	5	0	7	7
Ruth Laugeson (SST)	2.7	2.5	2	0	6	6

John Armstrong tops the ratings, followed by the NZPA Political Editor Peter Wilson. Generally MPs ranked journalists slightly higher than media organisations. As can be seen by the minimum ratings showing, some MPs were very harsh handing out zeroes. Did WInston multiple vote? (Note I have no idea if Winston did vote)

And once again we compare responses between National MPs and other MPs.

Journalist	All Mean	Nats Mean	Others Mean	Difference
Laugeson	2.7	4.2	1.6	2.6
Clifton	5.6	7.0	4.5	2.5
Soper	4.9	6.2	4.0	2.2
Campbell	3.6	4.8	2.8	2.0
Edwards	4.1	4.8	3.5	1.3
Llewellyn	4.9	5.2	4.7	0.5
Young	5.7	6.0	5.5	0.5
Garner	3.7	3.5	3.9	-0.4
Espiner G	4.4	4.2	4.6	-0.4
Wilson	5.8	5.5	6.0	-0.5
Armstrong	6.4	6.0	6.8	-0.8
Watkins	3.8	3.0	4.4	-1.4
Donoghue	4.1	3.2	4.9	-1.7
Small	4.6	3.2	5.6	-2.4
Espiner C	4.5	2.8	5.8	-3.0
Templeton	5.6	1.8	8.5	-6.7

Again very interesting. The SST is generally seen as hostile to National, but Ruth Laugeson is ranked much higher by National MPs, than by other MPs. Likewise the Gordon Campbell and Brent Edwards (both left leaning) are ranked higher by National MPs than other MPs.

Also for some reasons National MPs ranked Ian Templeton very lowly. Maybe they don’t like his weekly chats with Clark and Key, ignoring the lesser MPs?

Tags: Audrey Young, Barry Soper, Brent Edwards, Colin Espiner, Duncan Garner, Gordon Campbell, Guyon Espiner, Herald on Sunday, Ian Llewellyn, Ian Templeton, Jane Clifton, John Armstrong, Maori TV, Media, NBR, Newsroom, NewstalkZB, NZ Herald, NZPA, Parliament, Peter Wilson, Prime TV, Radio Live, Radio NZ, Ruth Laugeson, Scoop, Sky TV, SST, The Listener, The Press, Tim Donoghue, Tracy Watkins, trans-Tasman, TV3, Vernon Small

Yay Canwest is negotiating to have high definition TV3 available on Sky.

The Government and TVNZ is trying to force everyone to have two set boxes – MySky and Freeview. The problem is they have an inferior product in Freeview.

It is not just about the cost, even though it rankles I am paying through my taxes for two TVNZ channels that the Government refuses to allow me to access without an unnecessary purchase.

But the big issue if convenience. I don’t want to have to flip between two boxes to see what is on TV. I don’t want some shows recorded on one box, and some on another. I want to be able to, in fact, just get one listing of upcoming shows and decide which ones to record.

Tags: Canwest, Freeview, Sky TV, TV3

Sky TV is launching a service next month to allow people to download movies showing on Sky, off the Internet. It will only cost $5 a month. Sounds useful to me, even though at this stage will not include the very latest movies.

Tags: Sky TV

Mauricio Freitas blogged yesterday that there is an online petition asking Sky (or TVNZ or TV3) to bring in the Sci-Fi channel.

I am signature No 541.

Tags: petition, Sci-Fi Channel, Sky TV, TV3, TVNZ