Hardcore punters may not be into Twitter or Facebook, but the under-tapped market for casual punters could be drawn to the glamour of racing.
Which raises the question of whether the cost of improving racing's media profile will pay off with more revenue. Norenbergs said it definitely would, but acknowledged the payoff from expanded broadcasting would be hard to quantify.
All media are changing content as the audience fragments.
Print media and free-to-air TV are fighting to retain their share of revenue, as advertisers flock to digital.
New video-on-demand services such as Spark's Lightbox are trying to take subscription revenue from pay TV.
Trackside's commercial raison d'etre is to get more people betting. Like other broadcasters, the TAB is looking further down the track at developing apps and expanding from betting via mobile devices, through to using internet-linked smart TVs.
Norenbergs stepped down in August as head of sport at the ABC, where he is said to have tackled a rapidly changing sports environment and managed a lot of new activity around digital, radio, online and mobile.
According to the Australian newspaper, he was involved in contentious broadcast negotiations with Cricket Australia and the investigation, and subsequent retirement, of rugby league broadcaster Warren Ryan after his racist on-air remarks.
Once were westerns
Fundraising is nearly complete for The Patriarch - the film version of Witi Ihimaera's novel Bulibasha - with a week and $110,000 required to reach the $500,000 target being sought through the Snowball Effect crowd-funding platform.
The movie, which was written as a western and will be shot that way, is to be directed by Lee Tamahori. It is budgeted at $9.4 million and will be filmed around Auckland early next year.
Producer Robin Scholes also produced Tamahori's last New Zealand film, the acclaimed 1994 hit Once Were Warriors, and has high expectations for what Tamahori will deliver this time.
The project has come together at a promising time for the New Zealand film industry. At the recent Toronto Film Festival markets, New Zealand enjoyed success with three features - The Dead Lands, The Dark Horse and What We Do in the Shadows - and some believe the industry may be in a new golden era.
Scholes, whose last project was Mr Pip, directed by Andrew Adamson, was optimistic that the film had a sustainable funding structure that would encourage private investment beyond the crowd-funding.
Most of the funding for the film is coming from the Government, with the Film Commission pitching in $2 million and New Zealand On Air contributing $400,000, for local television rights.
The film has also secured a $3.52 million government rebate from the Screen Production Incentive, to be paid once it is finished. Scholes said there was about $1 million of private New Zealand investment. Transtasman distributor Hopscotch and international distributor Wild Bunch have put forward $537,000.
Commercial prospects for films are hard to predict. But veteran filmmaker John Barnett (Whale Rider, Sione's Wedding) is optimistic it will make money. Barnett confided he had made a small investment himself.
Thunderbirds are go!
New Zealand production company Pukeko Pictures is hoping its new series Thunderbirds Are Go will propel it into the stratosphere of global children's television.
Pukeko chief executive Andrew Smith was in London yesterday preparing for the MipCom markets, where the show's owner ITV will launch the new series.
Pukeko - which has common ownership with Sir Richard Taylor and Sir Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop - has been in the children's TV business for 10 years and won praise for successful series such as Jane and the Dragon.
But Smith said the Thunderbirds Are Go launch was big for the company.
Certainly, the 1960s show has a big brand, which has been maintained over the years through reruns and franchising rights to toys. Revival of the show has been a labour of love for several years for Taylor.
Photo / Supplied
He has said watching Thunderbirds as a kid led him into his life in film and ventures such as Weta.
Smith said Pukeko had been lobbying for years for ITV to update the show. The idea had developed through changes in the associated company that owned intellectual property relating to Thunderbirds. Originally it was owned by British company Carlton, then Granada, then went to ITV.
David Graham - the original voice of Hiram K. Hackenbacker, better known as Brains - is still alive and will return for the new show.
The new series, set to launch in Britain next year, will be produced using a unique mix of CGI animation and live-action model sets. Thunderbirds Are Go has been welcomed by British media, though the Daily Mail newspaper lamented that Pukeko's updated animation would not have the endearingly clunky puppet characters - such a feature of the "Supermarionation" technique developed by the show's founders, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.
But as Smith says, it's a show for a new generation of viewers, not just for its 40-something and 50-something cult fans. However he said the show's non-violent family values remained strong and it was true to the original story.
"What I can say is that people associated with the original series have had a tear in their eye watching it," he said.
Pukeko has been making the show at Auckland studios since June last year and has half the 26 episodes in the can.
