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Pop CultureNovember 18, 2016

New Zealand Music Awards: Winners, bragging and mea culpas

Guest writer
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Yesterday, Henry Oliver embarrassed his future-self with predictions for last night’s New Zealand Music Awards. Today he updates that post with the actual results and the requisite quippy commentary.

Yesterday: The biggest night of the musical year – the New Zealand Music Awards, brought to you by some communications services company – is tonight! was last night! And just in case there’s still a market for predictive data-driven (okay, not really) journalism after a year-and-a-half of presidential elections, I thought I’d put my hard-earned reputation as the Nate Silver of New Zealand Music on the line with a bold prediction for every category (except the quantitative ones which you can just google for yourself). How could this possibly go wrong?

Update: Okay, it kinda did go wrong. Or, at least, some of it went wrong, about half of it, which means that half of it also went right. Very right. So whether  you think I did well or poorly is just a reflection of your entire worldview. So, it’s on you now, not me.

All results are below. Winners are in bold. Where my prediction was correct, I’ve given myself a little tick ✔️. Where my prediction was wrong, I’ve struck it out and given myself a little cross✖️. Cool? Cool.

Yesterday’s explanations remain in non-italics, updates are in italics. Got it? Got it.

Album of the Year

Aaradhna – Brown Girl ✖️
Broods – Conscious
Fat Freddy’s Drop – BAYS
Hollie Smith – Water Or Gold
Tami Neilson – Don’t Be Afraid
The Phoenix Foundation – Give Up Your Dreams

Aaradhna. Brown Girl is an excellent, super-relevant album in content with multiple musical sweet spots. Plus, it’s perfect time to reward an artist with a decade of excellent releases. Even though she won big three years ago and those big nights rarely strike twice, I see a big night for Aaradhna in my crystal ball.

Update: Broods won. The album’s okay, I guess. Not as good as the first one though.

Single of the Year

Aaradhna – ‘Brown Girl’ ✖️
Broods – ‘Free’
KINGS – ‘Don’t Worry Bout’ It’
MAALA – ‘Kind of Love’
The Naked and Famous – ‘Higher’
Shapeshifter – ‘Stars’

‘Brown Girl’. Sorry for the obvious – it’s just a fucking great song of politics and pathos. Check out our interview with Aaradhna where she talks through the songs and all the issues surrounding it here.

Update: Broods won. This song’s okay, I guess. No better than okay though.

Best Group

Broods – Conscious ✔️
Fat Freddy’s Drop – BAYS 
The Phoenix Foundation – Give Up Your Dreams
Sol3Mio – On Another Note

My head says Broods – because they’re super successful and most strongly represent the hopes and dreams of the New Zealand post-Lorde slip-stream – or Fat Freddy’s Drop – because they’re Fat Freddy’s Drop and New Zealand loves Fat Freddy’s Drop – but my heart says The Phoenix Foundation, particularly off the strength of the album’s title-track, which perfectly sums up, in a way I hadn’t heard before on a rock album, that moment you realise life’s not going to be everything you thought it might. As someone who’s given up on many dreams, it struck a chord. But, still, the judges probably don’t care about the striking of my chords, so … Broods.

Update: Told you so.

Best Male Solo Artist

Avalanche City – We Are For The Wild Places
Dave Dobbyn – Harmony House
Lawrence Arabia – Absolute Truth ✖️
MAALA – Composure

Lawrence Arabia – he doesn’t seem to love awards, but awards judges love him. And so do I.

Update: Turns out they love him as an alt, but slightly less so as a solo male. Or at least not as good of a solo male as MAALA.

Best Female Solo Artist

Aaradhna – Brown Girl ✔️
Hollie Smith – Water Or Gold
Ladyhawke – Wild Things
Tami Neilson – Don’t Be Afraid

Aaradhna. As above. Every year, one act wins an armful of awards. I’m putting my money on this being Aaradhna’s year. If Broods and Tami Neilson (another judge’s fave) win all the categories, I’ll have to crowdfund the settlement of my gambling debt.

Update: Told you so.

Breakthrough Artist of the Year

KINGS – ‘Don’t Worry Bout’ It’
Leisure – ‘All Over You’ ✖️
nomad – ‘Oh My My’
SACHI – ‘Lunch with Bianca’

Um… Leisure? Everyone seems to like them way more than I do but, hey, you can’t argue that they haven’t had a ‘breakthrough’ kind of a year. Their singles have been blogged about endlessly by bloggers on their blogs and their deluxe LP has been available for purchase at (at least one of) Auckland’s coolest cafes. Maybe it’s not them, it’s me.

Update: I’m down with this. Great song, and a cool solo dad, apparently.

Best Rock Album

Beastwars – The Death Of All Things ✖️
Jordan Luck Band – Not Only… But Also
Villainy – Dead Sight

Beastwars. The opening riff of ‘Call the Mountains’ should win this award on its own.

Update: Don’t know what to say about this one. I stand by that riff and won’t hear any different.

Best Pop Album

Avalanche City – We Are For The Wild Places
Broods – Conscious ✔️
MAALA – Composure

Honestly, I’m not sure. These are all capable, skillfully made albums, none of which lit a fire anywhere near my ass. Let’s just call it for … Broods. People still love Broods, right?

Update: Yes, people still love Broods.

Best Alternative Album

Lawrence Arabia – Absolute Truth
The Phoenix Foundation – Give Up Your Dreams
Silicon – Personal Computer ✖️

I know … I awarded predictive awards to the other two finalists in this category, but if I’m going with the album I’ve just flat out wanted to press play on the most, it’s Silicon’s Personal Computer. I even wrote a profile of Kody Nielson (plug!) while listening to a lo-fi advance stream on this album on repeat for hours and never got tired of it. I’m even listening to it now and it still sounds great – shiny, intense and plain weird.

Update: Great album. No complaints (other than the screwing up of my prediction).

Best Urban/Hip Hop Album

Aaradhna – Brown Girl ✔️ (kinda)
PNC – The Luke Vailima EP
SWIDT – SmokeyGotBeatz Presents SWIDT vs EVERYBODY

Just gonna add to Aaradhna’s armful here, but, even though they’re probably going to lose, you should definitely check out these other two. Local rap music doesn’t get the attention it once did, but these should’ve been more central on people’s radar – PNC the veteran, SWIDT (‘See What I Did There’) the rookies.

Update: Stop reading this and read this, then this, then this. You understand now, right?

Best Roots Album

Fat Freddy’s Drop – BAYS ✖️
Rob Ruha – Pūmau
Unity Pacific – Blackbirder Dread

Fat Freddy’s. Fun fact: The Drop hold the best press events in the game – oysters, paua wontons, fried chicken, all made by the band. It’s legit.

Update: I’m cool with this.

Best Electronic Album

Electric Wire Hustle – Aeons
Opiuo – Omniversal
Pacific Heights – The Stillness ✔️

Pacific Heights – the solo project of former-Shapeshifter Devin Abrams – gets just far enough away from being ‘New Zealand’s James Blake’ to be a winner.

Update: Told you so.

Te Māngai Pāho Best Māori Album

Dennis Marsh – Maori Songbook 2 ✖️
Kirsten Te Rito – Āiotanga
Rob Ruha – Pūmau

Dennis Marsh. I need to know more about the connection between Māori music and country music. Shit, did I just pitch myself in public? Maybe. If you’ve got an in on this, pitch me. I’m also obsessed with people who achieve big things at an, um, advanced age and since Marsh released his first album well into his 30s, he’s made like 25 of them and Maori Songbook (the first one, not this one) became his first No. 1 on the New Zealand Album Chart when he was 60. Amazing!

Update: Still into that story if you are…

Best Worship Album

Edge Kingsland – Edge Vol. 3: The Common Good ✔️
Grace Vineyard Music – Seek You
LIFE Worship – By My Spirit

I’m gonna level with you – I haven’t listened to any of these albums, so let’s take a stab in the dark and say … Edge Kingsland. Why? I like the name Edge Kingsland and ‘The Common Good’ is vaguely admirable.

Update: Told you so.

Best Classical Album

Anthony Ritchie and Ross Harris – Fjarran ✔️
Kenneth Young – Shadows and Light
Zephyr – Zephyr

Again, I’ll admit – I’m not familiar with any of these. Let’s go with Anthony and Ross. I like to think of them as best buds who just love making classical music together. (Please tell me I’m right.)

Update: Told you so.

People’s Choice Award

Broods ✔️ (kinda)
Fat Freddy’s Drop
KINGS
MAALA
Sol3Mio

This award will depend entirely on turnout. Who will go to the polls? Who’s got the most effective ground game? Who’s got the best social media strategy? Who’s micro-targetting the likely voters? If the turnout skews young, Broods have the advantage in a tight race taking the plurality of votes but not the majority. If it leans older, Sol3Mio have 76.8% chance of a majority. If it’s somewhere in between, Fat Freddy’s with a 64.1% chance of taking 43.8% of the vote – short of a mandate, but enough to take the trophy. But, if there’s some unforeseen forces in the electorate, who knows what that could mean for all-caps new-comers MAALA and KINGS.

Update: Okay, so I hedged the fuck out of this one, but I’m taking it and because I, and not you, am writing this, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Legacy Award

I reckon it’s going to be … Dave Dobbyn! Nah, just jokes. SPOILER ALERT: It’s Bic Runga. ✔️

Update: I can take this one too, right? (Also, FYI, Bic’s album is out today and it’s great so you should listen to it.)

Highest Selling Single

You could probably look this up somewhere, but that would spoil the fun, so I’m not going to do that for you.

Update: Six60 – ‘White Lines’

Highest Selling Album

As above.

Update: Sol3Mio – On Another Note

Radio Airplay Record of the Year

Same. (Though maybe you can’t look that up. I’m not sure. But I almost never listen to terrestrial radio, so your guess is as good as mine.)

Update: Six60 – ‘White Lines’

International Achievement

Broods? Broods. ✖️

Update: Fat Freddy’s Drop

Official telly

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Tune in tonight (8:30pm on TV3) (or come back here tomorrow) to find out how wrong I was.

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In the sea. Photo: Getty
In the sea. Photo: Getty

Pop CultureNovember 18, 2016

Ratings show people under 50 are abandoning television. So what are NZ on Air going to do about it?

In the sea. Photo: Getty
In the sea. Photo: Getty

A call for submissions on a new NZ on Air television funding strategy closes today. Duncan Greive looks at the familiar biases hidden in the new strategy – most notably a continuing bias towards television, a medium which ratings numbers sourced by The Spinoff show is plummeting in popularity for younger audiences.

A few months ago NZ on Air published some research which showed how radically media consumption has evolved among younger generations in this country. Specifically, it showed that the younger half of the country was more likely to watch video online on a daily basis than linear television. I read it, thought it fascinating, and published an analysis of it under the intentionally provocative headline ‘Good news: TV is dead’. 

It was not well received by much of the television industry, or by NZ on Air, whose CEO Jane Wrightson and head of digital Brenda Leeuwenberg criticised the piece in online comments. Wrightson said “it overlooks that all ‘TV’ content is available online” – a truism which ignores the fact that online audiences consume different content in different ways. Just putting it there doesn’t mean people will watch it, or that it is now magically digital spend.

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FILTHY RICH

I understand the desire to protect television. It has been a wonderful medium, and for many, many years represented a place we all came together at a particular time of day and looked at more or less the same thing. The unifying effect of that did great things for our society – we had this one common experience we could talk about that wasn’t the weather.

But time marches on. And neither the medium, those who make it, nor those who work in it get to continue to do so forever as a right. Simply put, it can only justify the enormous investment which has been devoted to it – around $800m over the past decade – if it continues to maintain the same peerless grip on our attention.

The research showed that grip was slipping, with more 18-39 year olds consuming online video daily than consuming linear television daily. But the way it was presented actually failed to really display how fast that was happening. The pretty infographic it came with made few comparisons to an equivalent piece of 2014 research, and NZ on Air told me they were unable to provide me with the raw data so that I might be able to draw further conclusions, saying “We only have the final report (which is all we asked them to deliver.) We don’t employ an analyst so would have no use for the full data set.” This unfortunately meant the rest of us were unable to examine the data in more detail either.

dailyreach

So I asked a friend who works at a media agency to provide me with some television ratings data. I was curious about whether the media consumption behaviour of myself and my peer group – which has massively swung away from linear television consumption in recent years – was borne out in ratings.

What I found astounded me.

The above data is taken from the top 20 – IE the most popular programmes – ratings for 18-49 year olds during the last week of September between 2006 and 2016. For much of that period the ratings are broadly stable, though that is helped somewhat by the introduction in 2012 of consolidated ratings, which included time-shifted viewing rather than simply overnight ratings.

Then they fall off a cliff. Between 2012 and 2016 they decline by double-digit percentages year-on-year. The total decline is 41% – in just four years. Even though this is a narrow sample, it matches what I’ve noted in the small amounts of data which are released publicly. It appears telling that ratings have gone from proudly trumpeted to closely guarded secrets lately.

41% is a staggering drop, one which shows no sign of slowing or levelling off. It suggests that linear television is now essentially the domain of those over 50. The numbers now watching even the most popular shows really struggle to justify the vast investment made into drama in particular.

The implications for NZ on Air are stark. They simply cannot keep funding programming if the audience is no longer watching it. Which makes the organisation’s new draft strategy’s implementation all the more vital. Submissions to it close today, and on the face of it the document looks like it will evolve our content funding into an exciting new era. It simplifies a very complicated number of funding tranches into essentially two: scripted and unscripted. And, more vitally, it pretends to platform agnosticism – long a kind of holy grail for those who see NZ on Air’s unquestioning fealty to television as a distribution medium as a form of Stockholm Syndrome, trapping it to the increasingly weird and dated whims of a tiny number of commissioners at the major broadcast networks.

And yet I and others who’ve contacted The Spinoff in recent weeks are deeply concerned that the good in the draft conceals a continuing attachment to linear television. The reality is that to get over $500,000 you essentially must have a broadcast partner. This means that for any project of scale the same tired old voices will be gatekeeping.

It also contains a bizarre confluence of demands. “A greater expectation of co-investment” and an emphasis on “creative risk versus business risk”. These seem to be in direct and aggressive contradiction to one another. Because co-investment is hard enough in television, let alone the microscopic advertising markets found online. And yet they ask that in this brave new world distributing media companies invest more than television companies did in the past. Then that they take more creative risks – which necessarily are a harder sell commercially. Often the best stories – that confront uncomfortable truths, take on difficult topics or tell truly diverse stories – are near impossible to sell into marketing departments.

On closer inspection it looks more and more like it risks being a fresh coat of paint over the same old broken machine. Like a way to look like the future while continuing to create the $3m Sunday Theatre-style productions and $7m dramas which we supposedly desperately need to recognise our nationhood.

dirtyl

Only, it seems we no longer want them. In fact, the last episode of Dirty Laundry – TVNZ1’s flagship drama, produced at a cost of over $500,000 per episode – attracted an audience in its channel’s target 25-54 demographic of just over 25,000. A minuscule number, by any standards – particularly given that we are repeatedly told that television remains the place mass audiences live, and thus justifies its exorbitant share of the funding budgets. 25,000 people in a target demographic watching a $500,000+ episode of television represents around $20 per viewer. Which seems a lot.

It’s a shocking indictment on the current system, and the extent to which this much touted and incredibly costly show has singularly failed to connect with an audience.

The most infuriating part is that the audience was entirely predictable, given its timeslot. It started after 10pm and ended after 11pm on a Wednesday night – far removed from the 8.30pm slot at which it debuted in September. TVNZ has callously dumped a show which had such an extraordinary level of public investment. The episodes played back-to-back with another – the channel is essentially racing to get the show off its schedules so it can get something higher rating in its place.

Really.

This is a repeat of what MediaWorks did with 3D Investigates, another supposed flagship show which got shifted around the schedules until it finally succumbed after 10pm on a Monday night.

It shows the utter contempt with which the major broadcasters treat publicly funded content when it doesn’t quickly find an audience. And that by the time it actually airs, the audience which watches it is actually far smaller than the supposedly fragmented audience found online.

It’s an outrage and a long-running scandal and should be completely intolerable to those of us who fund this content. Unfortunately, while it makes the right noises about a voyage into the future, NZ on Air’s new strategy looks like it’s still somehow wedded to the very organisations and distribution strategies which have got us into this mess.

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