Browsing: entertainment

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From TV dinners to content jostling, suicide pacts and toilet watchers: Kym Niblock on Lightbox’s first year
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Just over a year ago, various journalists across the industry had a TV dinner delivered to to their homes. In addition to providing a night off cooking for many, this unusual delivery served to announce the launch of Spark’s subscription video on-demand streaming service Lightbox. Since then, TV dinners have been removed from the menu, and Kiwi viewers have instead been feasting on the content offered by service, clocking in 12 million hours of streaming time via the service. The company’s chief executive Kym Niblock talks about the journey thus far.

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Our First Home kicks off with strong ratings—UPDATED
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TVNZ’s new reality DIY show Our First Home is showing early signs that it might have what it takes to dispossess The Block NZ (screened by MediaWorks) of its throne as the nation’s most-watched reno-reality show. According to data from Nielsen, the show had a viewer rating of 456,000 for its first episode—and TVNZ’s commissioner of factual entertainment Tony Manson believes that the show has enough substance to keep Kiwis entertained throughout the season. Update: ratings in the 25-44 demographic.

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Bhuja boys Leigh Hart and Jason Hoyte given daily slot on Hauraki
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The Alternative Commentary Collective (ACC) has since its inception in 2012 become a standard part of the Kiwi cricket experience for many fans, who tune in to enjoy a comedic twist on the usual ball-by-ball rundown of the games. Following on from the success of the iHeartRadio-hosted show, frequent contributors Leigh Hart and Jason Hoyte in March 2014 launched Sports Bhuja, a sports-related chat, comedy and music show, which initially aired on radio Hauraki on Saturday mornings—and the segment has proven so popular, that the pair have now been given a slot on Radio Hauraki’s drive time show.

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Attracting a digital audience: New Zealand’s top ten YouTube channels
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Collectively, the top 10 Kiwi-based YouTube channels have over four million subscribers and, although that obviously also includes an international audience, this number is impressive given that New Zealand, as starting base, only has a population of around 4.5 million people. Here’s a rundown of the ten YouTube channels with the highest number of subscribers.

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Block-a-holics come to new house party
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MediaWorks’ 2012 ratings star The Block has returned with strong first up audience numbers. Now screening three nights a week instead of two, the first three hour-long episodes drew an average five-years-plus audience of 411,800, a ten percent increase on the average audience of the first three episodes of the 2012 series.

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From ads to entertainment: inside the new Oktobor
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Behind Nickelodeon cartoons such as The Penguins of Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda: Legend of Awesomeness is a team of animators who just happen to be based out of New Zealand. We look inside Oktobor Animation (formerly Omnilab-owned visual effects house Oktobor) and talk to head of production Rob DiFiglia and managing director Bruce Everett about New Zealand’s blossoming digital creative scene.

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Hi ho silver at One Show Entertainment awards for Special Group’s Smirnoff Night Project
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Most of the One Show Awards were handed out last month, with Colenso BBDO taking a gold and Publicis Mojo taking a silver. And the winners of the One Show Entertainment Awards, which honour the world’s best entertainment concepts, television ideas, branding and mobile or online content, were announced yesterday in Los Angeles, with Special Group’s Smirnoff Night Project taking a silver pencil in the television/reality/unscripted category.

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Events boost Ak economy by $479m
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A unique evaluation of the economic contribution of events to the Auckland region has shown that they contributed at least $479 million of consumption to the Auckland economy in 2008.

This equates to at least a $440 million contribution to Auckland’s GDP in 2008 and 7,227 full-time equivalent …

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Competition fierce for event producers
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New Zealand sporting venues are struggling to fill stadiums in a fiercely competitive ticketing market, says a new Nielsen/BrandAdvantage study of the New Zealand events and ticketing market.

In the last five years, increased rugby fixtures and netball competitions, coupled with new facilities such as Vector Arena and a …