There have been instances of "fake" news where I am, e.g. an article during the 6pm News about a new cheesy marmite. "fake" news, because it's really an infomercial disguised as current affairs.
I miss some of the news alot now, means I miss the weather but I can catch up on reruns of King of the Hill and Family Guy. The interesting stuff is on the Current Affairs programmes (e.g. 60 minutes) or on late night news programmes like Nightline.
Also the TV programmers here screw up occasionally. TV shows near the end suddenly cutting to commercials and then a new show starts so you lose the ending of what you were watching. The same commercial twice in a row. Forgetting to schedule a return to programmed shows after a run of ads or failing to schedule something properly. Once a couple of years ago, during a run of adverts on TV3, it suddenly cut to black screen and stayed that way for nearly an hour. No apology or explanation.
I think the networks use cheap labour for station programming and schedules. I mean, they use people who are inexperienced and don't or won't retain experienced or professional programmers. Probably it saves costs. And I've heard the rating system relies on less than one one-hundredth of the population, maybe less than one one-thousandth. So I am skeptical of the accuracy of TV ratings in my country.
And I hate interruptions caused by lightning strikes on the transmitters. Only a problem with TV3 and C4 though, not TVNZ (channels 1 and 2).
18 Nov 2009, 9:15 pm
