Sunday, 9 May 2010

From behind the door: The interminable art of trying




Well the morning started off abysmally - late as usual with nary a cup of coffee in sight, and blood on Wall Street slicing the prospects of a straightforward dollar story thrown out the window as the third-quarter earnings of New Zealand's biggest phone company loomed large over me and the boss wasn't in yet and the other boss was in but not making coffee and once Telecom posted its result there wasn't time for me to pick it up because we hadn't had the conversation and it should've been a bit more organised, but that's the life of being behind the door in an office of three, soon to be four, maybe even more, but that's just mere speculation.

So I got through the usual malarkey of getting my soundbite from Mike, he's a good bloke, and my friend says he's very pleasant on the eye and she knows these things so I'll probably tell her to come along next time me and Mike meet up for a beer, though that's likely to be a long way off with the budget looming and other things on the go that I don't even know about yet, and now I'm way off topic so I should get back to finishing off my currency story 'cos it's already 9am and we're trying to get it out earlier and earlier and earlier and Jonathan's got the Telecom result and he's going to do a cheap and nasty version and later on in the day he says we should've sat down and discussed this and made sure that I'd picked it up 'cos I'd done a preview the afternoon before and Telecom's - and the wider telco sphere in general (though I can't call it the telco sphere 'cos Jon hates the word telco and he's the boss after all) - my baby and even though it was challenging at first, I do quite like writing about phone companies and broadband and mobile phones and all the stuff that seems to come in the telecommunications sector.

So I'd managed to encapsulate the cliff that Wall Street dived off after some guy's finger got a little itchy, then I read through Jon's write-through on Telecom and prepared to dial in for the conference - 40 minutes of which was the usual PR flackery that goes on and on and on and turns into a war of attrition until people can actually get an opportunity to ask these masters of the universe questions about the state of their business and what it actually means, and that if the level of disclosure across all the divisions of their company is so great why don't they answer questions when asked, rather than just fob it off as commercially sensitive information, and you know that while you might get something, someone else will use it, which is sometimes a blessing in disguise, 'cos sometimes after an hour and a quarter of listening to people more intelligent and knowledgeable than you, you really don't want to ask your questions because they've been answered in roundabout ways and they aren't really that interesting anyway and you've just taken up 2 minutes that someone else could've used, but instead you gave a nice soundbite to another guy but that's alright because you know that you secretly use their work to give yourself a decent background on the issue, and then you get off the conference and you realise that you don't really have a story, because the numbers were pretty bland, even if they did beat Guy's forecast slightly, and the XT report was pretty lame, even if it did call management immature, which the boss wanted in the write-through, so I had to go for a wander with the boss and try and get my head around what I was going to write about, then I talked to Alan, 'cos he's absolutely lovely and always gives you a good quote and tries to give you something even when there's nothing there, and so I came up with something, and eventually got the write-through, and then the stock price fell to a new low, and I'd already written the story, so I threw that at the top, and lo and behold, it made it to the usual suspects, and everything was alright, but two days on, I'm no wiser about what happened, and if anything, perhaps a little more confused - so until the next thing comes out, it's all business as usual.

And that's life from behind the door.

PB.

Of course that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

For some reason I was rather excited about the prospect of an hour-long special commemorating the glory days of Nightline - 20 years was a decent whack, and much of that was through my formative teenage years (though it had to contend with the delightful Newsnight on TV2 which was tops in my book).

After watching that self-indulgent twaddle on Friday, I felt the need to have my own little whine (cue the old blog routine....).

I like 90s nostalgia. I guess that's the rub of it when you're around my age and everything seemed so much better when it was wrapped in nihilistic, self-effacing apathy. Man, Gen X was coooooool.

Anyway, back to my grizzle - TV3 had a wealth of footage to screen. They had 60 minutes (minus advertising to do it). And what did we get (barring the tributes to Ralston and Dylan Taite)?

Talking heads and voiceovers over montages that didn't mean a hell of a lot. Oh, and people saying it was so great then because we could do whatever we wanted 'cos we were a fledgling network with nothing to lose.

Sad, sad, sad, sad.

Don't mean to be a bit of a nonce, but I woulda liked to see the old Belinda/Joanne duo bounce off each other for five minutes, but I guess that was too much to ask. Allusions through interviews about your own programme are a bit, well, lame.

And there was so much to choose from. Crikey.

I guess everyone was just too hyped up to get a free night on the company card than go through the archives and tee-up some awesome stuff.....

Ah well. Venting over. Sorry about that. We shall resume normal service soon.....

PB.

(Oh, and this vapid piece of crap parading as news could have at least tried to find the top five most outrageous things Belinda Todd did when she was on Nightline rather than just pilfer five grabs from the show....... Jeeeeeeez)

Here's a 1991 Nightline mash-up for y'all who wanted to see some of the good stuff....