Comments on: The Gruen Transfer and comprehensive market research

By: tigtog

tigtog — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:19:51 +0000

There’s profiles of all the regular panellists on the ABC website for the show. They’re all very successful in the industry.

Every time I start thinking I like the one on the right, he starts apologising for the industry again.

Yup. Very irritating.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 10:47:02 +0000

I’ve been enjoying the show (and not yet using it to educate the kiddies). I agree with you that the scruffy pundit on the left is by far the best part of the show (he must be already pretty successful to make the honest comments he makes, I suspect). Every time I start thinking I like the one on the right, he starts apologising for the industry again.

I agree with you that the “third party insurance” ad was rubbish – usually the two of them are better than that, even when there is a clearish winner.

By: Harvey

Harvey — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:26:16 +0000

For anyone who is interested, the Greens ‘3rd Party Insurance’ ad from August last year can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9EM8pcDs6w

By: Rebekka

Rebekka — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:07:40 +0000

“given how close the Coalition and Labor are on petrol”

To that I give a great big “Huh?”

Did I miss something? Has Brendan Nelson not vowed to cut petrol excise so that people can use more of it? I don’t recall Kevin Rudd doing the same thing.

By: nicki

nicki — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:29:26 +0000

I voted Green however I don’t remember the “Third Party Insurance” line. I liked it when I heard it last night, but given how close the Coalition and Labor are on petrol, etc, maybe the Greens need to rethink their positioning next time round. Unfortunately they are not the ‘third party’, in fact they are the only real alternative to the Labor/Coalition machine. A machine that is unable or unwilling to understand that we are in desperate times and that the old politics, of which they are so fond, of is one of the reasons we are facing the real prospect of climate catastrophe.

By: Klaus K

Klaus K — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:21:43 +0000

Oh noes, it seems like my old commenting identity has been revealed by moving to the laptop. Obviously Adam = Klaus K.

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:17:22 +0000

Yes, I was thinking he might be a good way of honing kids skills at responding critically to those trying to shut-down discussion. He’s good at wheeling out a lot of the usual rhetorical devices.

Feminism IS still scary, thankfully.

By: tigtog

tigtog — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:09:33 +0000

I assume that the Jane Caro who appears on the show regularly is the same Jane Caro who is about to launch her new book (with Catherine Fox) ‘The F-Word: How we learned to swear by feminism’?

Yes it appears so. It was launched on Tuesday night. How weird that they don’t mention a book launch on a show with a panel full of pundits. Does Auntie think that feminism’s too scary here?

By: tigtog

tigtog — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:58:25 +0000

I actually like the stooge/apologist guy, because he’s a healthy reminder of the sorts of tautological reasoning that will always be trotted out to justify the status quo.

A uesful idiot? That’s a good point to mention to the kids, definitely.

By: Klaus K

Klaus K — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:34:35 +0000

I think those two panelists are on there every week, and that it has been a conscious choice at some level to weight it that way (though it may not have been apparent just how obvious this would become when they were chosen). I actually like the stooge/apologist guy, because he’s a healthy reminder of the sorts of tautological reasoning that will always be trotted out to justify the status quo. I get the sense (and not just from the show) that the land of advertising is full of over-inflated egos knocking up against each other. Altogether these things give the show a certain amount of productive tension, though I’m not sure if it’s harnessed successfully.

I assume that the Jane Caro who appears on the show regularly is the same Jane Caro who is about to launch her new book (with Catherine Fox) ‘The F-Word: How we learned to swear by feminism’?