Eric Richards

Free to air television was great in New Zealand before pay TV showed it's face on the NZ market now Free to air TV is mostly endless crap. One person I meat from the UK a couple of years ago
thought UK TV was rubbish until he saw NZ TV, now he thinks UK TV is very good. Now days anything worth watching on free to air TV gets taken off and put on pay TV, is this a Government fiddle or what? State owned TV "TVNZ" has been put together or should I say their debt been wiped off be NZ tax payer a few times in the past, now it has it's finger or two in pay TV.

BBC world news:
This program is put on TV1 after midnight and runs until 6am, a lot of TV guides don't publish what goes on during the hours of BBC news is screened on TV1, I don't know why it is the second best crap on TV. Honestly TV2 should be closed down and have BBC news running 24 hours a day then at least there might be something worth seeing on free to air TV. But we can dream all we want, it will never happen, Pay TV has this as one of their stations.

C4:
C4 took over were TV4 left off, I am sure C4 is short for "Crap fore" it is just like listening to some "glue sniffing music" radio station with visual distractions, you would think that when TV4 closed down and went to Crap fore that they would put the best of TV3, TV4 on TV3 and have a station worth watching, no such luck, forget it.

Fair Go:
The only program worth watching on the entire free to air network is Fair Go, the people presenting the show seem to be a great group people that shows as if the program is put together with great team effort, team effort every company should have, with great humor, this program is real quality entertainment now that free to air TV in NZ has gone to the dogs, it's a pity some people get ripped off by businesses around NZ and sometimes left out of pocket by thousands of dollars. Then some other people have neighbors with a serious bad attitude you would find hard to believe if you did not watch this program Fair go.

News:
What funny people there are running the station programing, the 6pm news is too early if you are a hard worker working hard at work after 6pm, no wonder it takes a month of Sundays to get nothing done in NZ, then the late news is on too late when all good workers should be fast asleep in bed getting their mind and body ready for another hard days work.

Now they have given poor old Judy the boot from TV1 news like they have with lots of other TV1 news people, TV3 news is getting so much better to watch as each day goes by, I'm still not sure if Judy priced herself off the market or whether it was just a long drawn out clever plot by TVNZ axe man to get rid of her.

I must say I do like the TV1 weather slightly better than TV3 weather effort, even after TV1 added the graphical twist to the five biggest city's in NZ weather forecast, why I don't know, it has me beat, when they stopped the static display and add a twist in there, they said it was to include a bigger area of that region, really? What 5% more? This must have been the biggest bit of comedy on free to air TV since pay TV came to NZ.

Newspapers:
But the real joke is, the newspapers pay out big money to print what crap the television stations boardcast, each day, what a joke that is, Lets just get this right the newspapers pay their customer for their advertisement, I bet they don't pay the picture theaters what movies they have running at the moment or I bet they don't pay the movie shops to print what the number one hot movie is going at the moment,

I used to buy the newspaper so I could get their weekly guide to see what great programs were on TV other times used to get the TV guide, but it is such crap now I have been saving my money and using that to get those great ex-TV-programs on DVD.

Prime:
Prime was great a couple of years ago I was getting around to putting up a UHF aerial now it just screens pathetic shows like "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" think we are going to feel rich watching this crap on TV, forget it, forget the station.

Peoplemeters:
Now these are for viewers that are so thick they can not pick out a hobby, they have their TV wired to a recorder so someone can work out what the nation watches on free-to-air TV, the top twenty programs used to be published in the weekly TV guide, but it got so bad the TV guide don't even waste there time publishing it any longer. I don't think I have meet anyone that likes most of the programs on that list and I have never meet anyone that has told me they have a peoplemeter wired to their TV (I wonder why). I don't mean to be so horrible the people who have peoplemeters wired to their TV could be for all I know very nice people it's just what they watch we get more of, they set the standards, and what a mess they have made it.

Sky:
Sky TV thats the pay TV station in New Zealand. Their customers are classic boneheads, when they have trouble with reception and find that "Sky" is going to bill them for fixing their reception, they call on their local TV & VCR repair shop thinking they can do it for nothing. Because they spent good part of their monthly budget on entertainment they think they should get a extra bargain from their local service department, Man I don't how many times I have heard "Is it alright if I only pay you $80 for that $100 TV repair" I wish I could of got a free lotto ticket each time I time I heard that line, who knows fixing TV might have been worth it. I bet they don't go to their local supermarket and say is it OK if I only pay you $80 for that $100 worth of groceries� at least their local supermarket could afford it better than most TV & VCR repair shops around today.

Sport:
I get amazed by my customers who tell me "I don't watch TV what a load of rubbish, but if it is sport I will sit and watch every minute of it". Give us a break !!! it's just a different flavour of entertainment, next they will try and tell us eat lots of strawberry ice cream it's non fattening.

TV3:
Ladies and Gentlemen, you have to go to their latest CRAPY web site.
http://www.tv3.co.nz/ this is the pits, Black background with tiny gray font. Not everyone has the latest greatest biggest monitor This is one station that can not get it's crap together, and there crappy program line up "The Simpsons" "Survivor" "Snatch Our Booty" just to name a few. Please Dr. Death is coming from Australia to Auckland I wonder if TV3 will do free advertisements for him. Once there weather forecast had the land content of New Zealand as colored red, it looked terrible, almost as if the whole of NZ was on fire.

DVD
Oh thank the Lord he still loves us, I got 'Allo 'Allo out from the UK and what real entertainment just like NZ free to air TV was like before pay TV came along, series 1 & 2 gives you 7 hours and 29 minutes of laughs and series 3 & 4 will give you 6 hours 59 minutes of good UK humor, it seems that there was 9 series to 'Allo 'Allo, and TVNZ only showed series 6 to 9.