Matisyahu's Blog

One show I’ve really gotten into is Severance – I love a show that is a slow burn, gradually revealing what is happening rather than there being a rush to some sort of conclusion. There are a few new seasons coming this year so hopefully with the pandemic out of the way that we’ll see more original series being invested in. As much as it is trendy to hate on some of the big names such as Amazon, Netflix and Apple, I doubt we would get interesting new shows without someone from outside the entertainment industry coming in and funding original series. The media landscape in the US changing rapidly particularly when you look at the legacy players getting very little or no viewership from younger demographics under 45 – you can see it in the sort of ads that are played on Fox News or MSNBC. When it comes to MSNBC it has been spun off into its own division and I’ve noticed that some of the key personalities are trying to adopt a more casual style – recording shorts from home, more ‘off the cuff’ opinions, it’ll be interesting to see how well it works out but I’d say there are so good talent at MSNBC hat if they were given the room then they would flourish rather than having to tow the corporate line.

New Zealand is now going through it’s own FAFO moment – New Zealanders collectively deciding to vote for centre right parties off the myth that they’re ‘good economic managers’ (even though all evidence points to the opposite) are now finding the hard way as the economic climate goes from bad to worse as factories close. When you vote based on vibes rather than actual policy then it shouldn’t be surprising that the consequences in many cases are negative. The current government stumble from one crisis to the next, incompetent ministers particularly the minister of finance who has no idea regarding procurement and long term planning when it comes to infrastructure as demonstrated by the complete debacle around the IREX ferry by misrepresenting what the actual costing breakdown was. Unfortunately I think things will have to get worse before they get better – is the centre left perfect? far from it but at least they have some sort of coherent vision and plan vs the centre right who seem to be hell bent on resurrecting the 1980s with all the mistakes of the past.