But that was about to be dialed up to 11 on live TV.

Joe Irvine, who was this gentle soul who was on the show, lovely voice, came out wearing a suit.

And, you know, it was as if no one had ever worn a suit before Willie Moon, whose shtick was that he wore a suit.

Natalia Kills very memorably said...

A decade before Love Island hit our screens and normalized night vision footage of, at the very least, heavy petting the player showed more than a few women, in generally non-identifying detail, having a wild night in the apartment.

You know, as someone who doesn't find trash culture unappealing, I was just amazed that this was on TV.

This hot, lurid mess of a show being put out by a major corporation, it blew me away.

That's certainly what Duncan Grieve thinks.

I mean, Popstars, I think, had so many of the elements that would become ubiquitous in future reality shows.

It was so important in terms of the development of the Idol, X Factor, Voice genre, which profoundly influenced television and reality television, but also just the whole music industry.

The likes of One Direction and Harry Styles as, as artists to come out of it.

So we should be prouder of that, [laughs] I think, as a nation.

It sometimes paints a bit of a bleak picture.

To see how these people are suddenly thrust into the public eye, you know, whether they do something bad or they, you know, the, the storyline requires that they, you know, s- something makes them kind of hated by the nation.

I mean, and, and fame's been doing that forever, right? Like, it's not peculiar to reality TV, but there's something about how quickly it happens that you go from being just a, an ordinary citizen of Dannevirke or something, and then you're suddenly, like, would have the name recognition of a 50-test All Black.

And it's just, I feel like that person who's been there from the beginning should really be first in line to get tickets for this artist when they blow up.

It's such a great point, and not actually one that I'd considered until now.

But what an artist can do to kind of pay back that gesture of support that is making that early purchase of a loom, it's just such a different behavioral trait.

Like, I will stream your music versus I will purchase your loom.

group, even if it's only like a dozen people or 100 people to begin with, depending on the scale of the artist, if you can really look after them, make them feel special and kind of almost listen to them in terms of feeling what motivates that group.

and try and transfer people from you know being a streaming audience to being a loom audience because it's thousands of times more powerful financially but also they're self-selecting as um having a level of like a profundity of engagement with your work that is kind of night and day from other people who might be big fans, but won't make that leap.

So, yeah, I think that that kind of what develops out of that relationship is something that we're really excited about.

As somebody who's been in the music industry and the music business and music journalists for a long time, What are your thoughts on that? How do we escape that? How do we stop that?

Mm.

It was a lot of, uh, a lot of services businesses that are directly impacted by the, you know, by the tourist economy, um, which is, you know, obviously what, uh, the city is famous for.

But, you know, you have to remember that this was a city that, you know, had its whole big famous tourist strip, Fenton Street, that was effectively taken over from emergency housing, w- had a terrifically difficult time processing that.

That obviously impacts tourism, impacts your local economy.

So if there were any city in New Zealand, I think it's fair to say, that had the right to say, "What, what are you, what, what, what are you doing [laughs] for us?"

He is in response mode, and he's quite often making it worse.

I think that's the point, like, you, you know, you think back to his sort of mentor and the person to which he'd like to be compared, John Key, who was, who was, had supreme command of narrative, who would take any kind of issue, you know, whether you liked him or not, that I'm relaxed thing, and the way that he would frame it up seemed to instinctively land correctly for the people he need, needed it to.

Whereas Luxon, he's reacting to a prevailing narrative, and s- more of, um, well, I don't know whether it's more often than not, but certainly far too often than you'd like, seems to create fresh problems that require fresh corrections and just serve to kind of, you know, as is persistently made, that comparison between him and the person to whom he, he wants to be compared and makes frequent reference to, the gulf is just so vast.

Now, Duncan, a lot of things get launched, and they don't necessarily work, but you guys have got confidence about this, eh?

Yeah, we do.

We do.

I mean, like, on some level it might not work.

We're, we're fully prepared to put this in front of our audience, our beautiful baby, and, uh, and if they don't like it, well, you know, we'll live with that.

But I'm a music person, right? I've been buying records since I was a teenager, and the relationship with the album and the sense that by buying it I was on some, on some level transmitting something to the artist is very foundational, and it doesn't exist in the same way with streaming.

And I know there are a lot of mes out there who, who feel that sense of loss of the album from the central point.

And, and, and I think you're onto something here, but isn't part of it the actual ability to hold that album in your hand and take the sleeve out and look at it? But this is still electronic, right? You own it, but you don't hold it.

Is this going to cut the lunch of Sky TV and TVNZ?

Well, it's not helpful, is it? I think it's a premium sports product, which is Sky's case, and sometimes TVNZs, they run the same sporting contests, and now there's just another way for advertisers to...

to kind of reach that audience.

And in Sky's case, not only is it impacting the advertising, but they've launched the ad-supported tier at $9.99, according to a Business Desk report.

So it's quite a lot below the entry-level Sky Sports packages as well.

problem that our traditional sports like cricket and netball and rugby have is they're being crowded out by these American sports that are becoming more popular?

I think it's probably their biggest issue.

I think they were effectively almost not quite monopolies, but near-monopoly incumbents that had a whole...

How much of what Neon puts out comes from HBO or comes from Warner Brothers?

I think it's, I'm not sure about the precise percentage, but certainly when you think about how Neon markets itself, for example, it tends to build its campaigns around a few tentpole shows, the likes of The White Lotus or The Last of Us, and both of those are HBO shows, and typically its biggest marketing pushes, you know, about... really high quality shows that show up on a weekly basis, keep you hooked on Neon, are from HBO.

And the richest, most kind of beloved parts of its library are also from HBO.

So the idea of the value proposition of Neon as a consumer product being retained without HBO is pretty sketchy to me.

100 with cinema will you know does everything just then go to net if the deal goes through does everything then just go to netflix and forget about the movies

I mean, historically, Netflix has been pretty, at best, tepid, probably more accurately hostile towards movie theaters.

It's not a business that they're in.

They very occasionally will release something for a very limited couple of weeks run, basically to make it eligible for the Oscars.

Do you think?

I think that's exactly what it is, and I think that's why it's the correct decision, because there aren't that many other new viewers to be fought for.

If you look at the ratings for three news, it's pretty...

There's not a lot there.

They've gone down a bit, but it almost feels more like attrition from 6pm than it does transfer to TVNZ.

So, you know, the...

The 6 p.m. news for TVNZ is how the night starts.

That would have been the baller move, wouldn't it?