Tag Archives: afl

Ep 316: Paul Verhoeven, Kids’ Gameshows

The very excited Paul Verhoeven has just spent a month hosting a children’s TV game show that he happily tells us all about. It’s fascinating. Really.

Brett has an I Don’t Buy It that brings to light many economic decisions.

Also there are jokes.

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Ep 303: Unsupervised, Optus, The Voice

Remember that whole Optus vs Telstra, AFL and NFL case that was either going to mean the end of sport forever or the death of the internet? Well, Optus lost last week and we speak to to Lucy Battersby from The Age to find out what the judgement means.

Glenn Peters has been watching The Voice and he tells us why he loves it so much.

Unsupervised is an animated show from FX in the US. Is it good or bad? Will you like it? Who knows? We try to help you make a choice by discussing it at length.

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Ep 301: House of Lies, Yodelling

House of Lies airs on Showtime in the US and stars Don Cheadle, Kristen Bell and Dave Lawson’s brother, Josh. We review and try to work out why some people might not like it.

There’s an ad that involves some kind of yodelling. Brett takes a look at that in I Don’t Buy It and then there’s also a Crap TV.

That should be enough for you.

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Awaiting Judgement on Platform-Shifting

Lucy Battersby, writing for the Age, continues her coverage of the most important TV news story of the moment.

If you’ll remember back to last year, Optus’s TV Now product reopened the whole time-shifting/personal recording debate with the notion of “platform/location-shifting”.

Justice Rares of the Federal Court understands the implications for future commercial and technological advances and is taking a number of days to put them on the scales:

“All of this [technology], nobody really contemplated it, but the idea is to ensure that there is the balance made between the act and the reality of what people do [in their lives].”

We wait for his judgement and the inevitable High Court appeal.

Read more in the Age.

Lucy Battersby discussed the most recent AFL TV rights agreement on episode 264.

Ep 280: The Bazura Project

You’ve heard us talk about the Bazura Project. Maybe you saw their show on Channel 31. Maybe you remember when we last had Lee Zachariah and Shannon Marinko on the show back in 2009. Well, now you get to hear all about how they got to do their own show on ABC2 and maybe finally be in contention for a Logie.

In further investigation of How We Watch, John went into a cinema to watch some Doctor Who.

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AFL & NRL Threaten TV’s Future

For a group of people who don’t really follow sport all that much, we really do talk about its coverage a lot on Boxcutters. One of the reasons we do this is because sport, traditionally, leads the way in terms of pushing the technology of television.

Optus has a service called “TV Now” that works as a kind of mobile phone PVR for its customers. At the end of last month, the AFL and NRL started questioning the copyright issues related to the service.

Of course, what the two football codes were always worried about was how Optus’s service would affect its deal with Telstra.

Now that question will be for the Federal Court to decide, as Boxcutters friend and Age journo, Lucy Battersby reports:

The Federal Court will tomorrow hold a hearing on a request by Optus to restrain the AFL and NRL from suing it for breach of copyright for its TV Now service, which was launched on July 19. The service allows Optus phone and internet customers to watch AFL games on an effective delay of as little as two minutes.
It could prove to be an important test case for content rights in the era of internet television and multimedia devices.

This is a tough one for TV fans. The Telstra deal was vital for the promotion of portable TV viewing. That is, it was vital until TV Now came out.

The concept of TV Now is nothing short of brilliant and hindsight tells us it was bound to happen. Telstra may have used bad judgement but, more realistically, may have just been unlucky: Bad judgement because it did not do due diligence in researching technologies that would undermine its deal and unlucky because Optus chose this moment to remember that telecommunications is a competitive industry.

What is most confusing here is that the AFL and NRL are defending Telstra in a copyright claim rather than supporting the idea that their games will become available to an even wider audience.

If TV Now is stopped in its tracks, it will not be because Telstra made a bad deal and failed to remember caveat emptor. It will be because AFL and NRL are monsters of greed that don’t care about their fans or the games they represent. As such, it will be a loss to sport and television.

(Yes, we are aware that the title of this post might be a little too dramatic. -Ed.)

Ep 262: Survivor with Nelly Thomas

It's Probst!

Due to popular demand and direct from her tour of North East Melbourne, Nelly Thomas is back to tell us all about the latest season of Survivor and why it’s still one of the best shows on television.

We talk about some of the new technology involved in broadcasting the Royal Wedding and discuss the changes to AFL broadcast rights.

There are some letters to Boxcutters as well as If You Watch One Thing and Trotters with Toby Halligan

Should we mention Osama bin Laden’s death or Karl’s Gold Logie win just to try to get more hits on Google? What about Cialis, Viagra or girls in *insert your suburb* who want to talk to you now?

Ep 244: US Fall Season 2010, Pre-production

Brett has some Crap TVs that he needs to offload on us all. The fact that one of them may have been a misnamed Raywatch will go without saying because it doesn’t change the episode really. And who actually understands the definitions of these segment titles anyway? We may as well call the whole show Bucket of TV and be done with it.

Also, reaching into the bucket, I pull out some very brief descriptions of new shows with bad titles from the US Fall Season including Blue Bloods, Raising Hope and The Whole Truth.

John Richards arrives right near the end of the show (retrospective spoiler alert) and tells us what it means to have a show in “pre-production”.

Then Brett spends some time trying to cut 10 minutes out of the show because we can see no reason for anyone to listen to us reach into the Bucket of TV for almost an hour and a half. You won’t hear that bit in the show because we cut it out.  One thing Brett can tell you is that no one is going to hear about Grand Final after parties nor the suggestion that the L in AFL stands for Libel.

Enjoy the fruits of our waffle.:

And then, please, let us know what you think and should we change the title?

Ep 243: Grand Final, Strictly Speaking

Is 3D ruining our sports coverage? We take a look at Channel 7’s coverage of the AFL Grand Final and wonder what has changed.

Toby gives us a rundown on what Strictly Speaking is all about.

There’s also some Letters to Boxcutters and an I Don’t Buy It to sink your teeth into (or sync your teeth with if you have those new “smart teeth” that also work as a personal organiser and can download apps etc).

Listen to it here:

And then, please, let us know what you think.

thepacific.jpgDave Lawson tells us all about the goal of combining football and family entertainment on the Bounce.

Drew Rhodes was the location manager for The Pacific. We find out all about recreating 1940s Melbourne in 2009 and just what the hell a location manager does anyway?

Oh, and also we review the Pacific, just in case there’s not enough content in there for you.

There’ll be some news coming your way shortly.