Why the Spinoff was a turnoff
Socially engaged young people don’t watch TV any more, even if the programme is aimed at them, argues Kate Robertson.
Young people don’t watch linear TV. It’s a narrative we’ve heard rolled out time and again, but one that rings no truer than now, when it was announced The Spinoff TV, a show we held up as a saviour of youthful social commentary, would be pushed back a full hour from its 9.45pm timeslot.
I was working for a news show at MediaWorks when the proposal was announced in late 2017. A vague press release arrived one afternoon saying NZ On Air had granted funding for a mysterious collaboration between Three and The Spinoff website.
The office immediately went into a geeky news frenzy as we speculated, gossiped and felt hope for a future of TV that existed beyond the neverending Jono & Ben/7 Days/ *insert hit reality TV show here* cycle.
‘‘The Spinoff meets TV on TV – what could go wrong?’’ Newshub head of news Hal Crawford said. Ratings, apparently.
What we’re now learning, after just four halfhour episodes, is that not only are we failing to tune in, but even if we did, it still wouldn’t be enough to justify the show being a part of Three’s much-coveted Friday night comedy lineup.
In retrospect, it seems naive to have thought we could do it in the first place.
To seriously think that the same people who religiously watch 7 Days would stick around to watch a show many of them might describe as ‘‘PC gone mad’’.
How ridiculous is that!?
Team 7 Days will be heading for TVNZ 2’s Naked Attraction with more pace than a Nissan Skyline chasing green lights the second they realise there’s not a Jeremy Corbett-esque star in sight.
When The Spinoff TV launched on June 22, Leftwing media Twitter blew up. Everyone who’s anyone had nothing but warm words of congratulations for the team and its hosts.
Out in the real world, it was tumbleweeds. No-one I went to school with in suburban North Canterbury had said boo, my tradie brother had spent the night drinking Speight’s and watching a bogan 4WD show, and a close friend who lives in an East Auckland bubble couldn’t understand what I was rabbiting on about.
These people might pass by The Spinoff website from time to time, but they aren’t the kind of readers to follow them to the telly.
The media folk, the students and the culturally minded were never going to be there with the regularity of a middle-aged, middle New Zealand viewer. The ones they needed were always going to be out socialising, working odd hours or bingewatching Gilmore Girls for the 15th time in as many years, simply because they can.
For those struggling to imagine a world where viewing habits aren’t built around free-to-air television, and where young people aren’t tuning into their favourite show come Friday night, here’s how it works:
I didn’t live in a flat with a communal TV until I was 21. When someone did get a hand-me-down from their weird uncle in Island Bay, we didn’t bother connecting it to Freeview because we didn’t know how, nor did we care.
If the HDMI cable fits, what more could six 20-somethings need?
Sure, you can stream live telly from your computer, but why would you watch live TV with ads when you could watch literally anything else via TVNZ On Demand, Three Now, YouTube, or on a subscription streaming site? The Handmaid’s Tale, Love Island UK, Love Island Australia, Carpool Karaoke, Stranger
Things, Game of Thrones, The Office, and so on and so forth.
News? We get that from the internet during the day, probably while we’re at work, and probably from The Spinoff’s website.
The Spinoff TV? We’ll get that during the week too, when it’s uploaded to its Facebook page, and probably still while we’re parked up at work or killing time in the uni library.
MediaWorks and The Spinoff were clear from the outset that the show was designed to be consumed online and on linear television.
NZ On Air described it as ‘‘a fusion of digital content and television, in which a group of podcasters, YouTubers, stand-up comics, and online reporters process New Zealand media and public life, both online and in a weekly package for Three.’’
With last week’s half-hour episode proving that subscription supplements are a joke, flawlessly roasting The Block NZ, educating on the history of the ‘‘n word’’, detailing the Auckland Blues’ fall from grace, and bagging us all for buying kombucha, The Spinoff has well and truly held up on its end of the deal. I don’t know a young person who wouldn’t want to watch that.
MediaWorks just lacked faith. If it truly wanted the masses to watch, it would have taken a real risk. Frame it as The Project but for young people! Run it midweek! Hell, push just one episode of The
Block back by half an hour if you’re feeling really wild!
I can hear you laughing at such a proposition, and I agree that on no planet would it ever happen.
I didn’t live in a flat with a communal TV until I was 21. When someone did get a handme-down, we didn’t bother connecting it to Freeview because we didn’t know how, nor did we care.
It just seems that the only way the show could have been given any real shot at thriving in a market where its target demographic is largely absent.
But then again, who am I kidding? I’m 23. I’m never going to watch proper TV, and neither will my peers.
I’ll see you all in the Facebook comments next week, when I finally join the conversation, four days late, killing time at my desk on a Tuesday.