Friday 6 July 2007

You won't see nothing like the Mighty Quinn

Resisting Nanny's self-satirising opposition to satire goes on the positive side of TVNZ's ledger. Going against is the news that, as Lindsay Perigo puts it, "some halfwit gum-chewer about to decide Keith Quinn's fate didn't even know who he was." As you'd expect, Perigo goes further, launching into the whole "braindead" broadcasting culture.

It was with incredulity that I read (Keith Quinn? Who are you?—DomPost, Wednesday July 4) of a TVNZ employee who may be about to axe Keith Quinn’s job ... not knowing who Keith Quinn was! Then I reminded myself that this is, after all, the Age of the Airhead, and TVNZ was long ago pronounced “braindead” by some wise person whose identity eludes me. The bimbo in question works for, or rather occupies space in, the company’s Human Resources department. Such departments are another bane of our time, issuing forth great torrents of MBA-speak as empty as it is pretentious.

TVNZ attributed the airhead’s ignorance to a “generation gap.” It’s not a generation gap—it’s an intelligence, standards and knowledge gap. State television has faithfully mirrored state education in dumbing itself down, and must now cater to and employ the latter’s imbecilic progeny. To a generation that has no clue what an apostrophe is for it serves up newsreaders who emulate flight attendants, emphasising prepositions and conjunctions and throwing away nouns, in a complete travesty of how news should be read. It serves up interviewers with the fashionable Attention Deficit Disorder who cannot even listen, let alone sustain a linear train of thought. It promotes children’s hosts whose vocabulary barely extends beyond “cool” and “awesome” and whose speech is all nose and no brain, under the guise of encouraging our “national identity” (shudder). It drowns the text of its programme trailers in a cacophony of headbanging caterwauling (to which it also repairs at other times on the slightest pretext) thereby rendering the content of its own promos inaudible.

TVNZ is a morass of moronry. It should be privatised forthwith.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

A F****N men! Well said!

Anonymous said...

Oh that's brilliant! Priceless! A beautiful piece of writing.

I honestly feel sorry for those (younger) people whose labourised devitalised and marginalised education denies them the opportunity to appreciate Linz's wit for the genius it is.

I have hardly read a better piece than this on TVNZ.

Anonymous said...

Well said!

List TVNZ on trademe with no reserve.

Anonymous said...

Your letter to the Dom Post is brilliant. No surprise that they wont publish it though.

Heard you on Radio Pacific when you "filled in" for John Banks. Most enjoyable, and wonderful to listen to you and hear the language spoken so well - something that does not often occur in NZ.

Greg said...

Accurate!

Greg said...

1. Who was Jason Gunn three years ago??
2. Is there anything more inane than that Rich List show? Game of two halves?
3. Why do I want to see a close up of a crying teenager after the Taranki tornadoes?

4. If you get all your news from TVNZ then is it any wonder we top the life satisfaction survey, as would appalachian yokels.

Anonymous said...

Greg

Thar' be nothin wrong witd Apalachian yokels. OK. Summ of them got much more going on than NZ knitwits what watch the rubbush on yer own NZ TV.

Course they be happi. they not neeed to watch NZ TV. No monkey man after news. No hairy whisker baldy thing neither. THey be singing and having real family time togerther.

So there!

Cleetus

Anonymous said...

I dunno, I've got to say that maybe the lass is the smart one. Is Keith Quinn really that memorable or worth remembering?