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At Pacific Television Studios on 31st and Lexington Ave, in midtown New York, they watch a lot of telly. In particular, Nick Castenada, the supremo of that doughty operation, watches a buttload of telly.
Nick is the poor wretch dragged from his bed to help set up my satellite live crosses. He also films my pieces to camera outside, say what used to be AIG, or in the back of a hybrid cab, or outside Rachel Uchitel's (you may know her better as Mistress #1 to Tiger Woods) apartment in the meat packing district.
Nick thinks about news all day. He knows news. He is convinced, in that competitive New Yorker and American way, that there is no news in New Zealand.
It's a means for his country to seem more important than mine.
Stuff happens here.
Nick's conviction was formed by a report on a stabbing that he
heard while the link was open to Auckland one night. I did my bit,
then Nick came into the studio.
"Stabbing?" he chortled. "A stabbing makes the 6 o'clock news? I stabbed three people myself to get here this morning!"
Spice was added to his prejudice with the much-covered and repeated reports from the middle of last year that detailed the efforts of Kiwi Logan Campbell to support his Olympic bid by opening a brothel.
New Zealand duly became the place of no news, except for weird news. Sort of like how Iceland used to be, before the country went broke.
All news is local, and timely, which is why Nick is wrong. A stabbing may not resonate in New York, but it does in Auckland, particularly if it happens close to the bulletin's deadline.
This is also why I largely didn't touch on Barack Obama's attempts to reform the American healthcare system, which was the big political struggle of 2009 in the US.
New Zealanders have their own health system; it has its own troubles; these are likely to be of some importance if they break a leg. They are unlikely to break a leg in, say, Roanoke, Virginia.
But I was thinking of Nick driving up to my sister's place in the Kawhatau Valley the other day. The radio was playing. The two hosts were trying to scare up phone calls on the vexed issue of the ASB Open, Shahar Peer, John Minto, Israel, and Palestine.
At the top of the hour, the news came on. Protesters outside the tennis; then a soundbite about Barack Obama being cross with his intelligence services after the failed terror plot at Christmas. Further down in the bulletin a report about how NIWA had confirmed December was hotter than usual. Below that a warning to those people driving out to Auckland Airport. Work was being done on the roads that travellers customarily use, and they could expect delays.
Delays on the trip to the airport? I remind you, this was a national bulletin.
Outside the car, the sun was shining. The wind was ruffling the wheat in the fields. Things weren't perfect, but they were tolerable. America was under threat. New Zealand was dozing and smiling.
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