It is great that 7 is on Sky (ch 97) because of the much higher potential audience, including Back Benches, but it has highlighted a set of issues which the Nact Maori government have chosen to dodge.
Sky has effectively got it for free rather than doing the expected Prime to Freeview deal.
It does hightlight the problem that is emerging. I’m not at all technical. I hate having more than one remote or even learning how to drive one of the complicated ones .
What I do know is that at some stage the screen on my wall will be driven by a convergence of internet and broadcast systems . Quality will be fantastic. It will have thousands of choices. Most will be free but some will be on a pay system.
We are getting more and more systems and at some stage there has to be a winner. The shut down of the analogue system will be an opportunity to implement policy decisions. But before that happens we need a solid policy development process. Thats what the digital review was all about. Nact scrapped it.
Sky will take advantage of the policy vacuum. Their direction might be where we want to go in the end. But lets make a deliberate decision rather than being led by the nose by people whose long term obligations are to their overseas owners rather than New Zealand’s future.
“But lets make a deliberate decision rather than being led by the nose by people whose long term obligations are to their overseas owners rather than New Zealand’s future.”
@Trevor: the consistent Labour party xenophobia gets a little tiresome. Our economy depends on overseas money , lets layoff the anti-overseas investment nonsense. I know it plays well to your working class constituents but really – it is rather overblown.
Trev,
Take the word ‘policy’ out of your vocabulary and the idea of ‘policy’ as a means to achieve any end out of your way of thinking, and you might just be a nice bloke.
You could say Sky have gotten it free, or you could say that TVNZ is getting their content distributed for free
I’m not sure of what shape it should be but just about every other jursidiction has some sort of regulation around broadcasting and certainly where there is a pay tv monopoly. And what is xenophobic about considering whether the balance of payments is important and whether we want to develop NZ owned service industries or at least give them a chance to develop.
Colin Peacock covered this on National Radio’s SUnday morning media programme a couple of weeks’ ago. http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/mwatch/2009/07/mediawatch_for_5_july_2009
Basically the negotiations and the deal between TVNZ and Sky were secret. Sky gets TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7 for a song – or in return for some prime time sport. The bigger shame is that New Zealanders will be even less likely to access the excellent public broadcasting that is available via Freeview / Stratos such as Al Jazeera English, America’s PBS and local Triangle TV. The contrast between this programming (informational and professional) and FoxTV and the other commercial news channels available on the Sky platform could not be greater! Friends of Public Service Broadcasting anyone?
Dead right, Trevor. Really, how often has what is good for business aligned with what is good for people, especially in a near-monopoly context (a la Sky)?
Bryan/Dimmocracy,
So you are all quite comfortable with Sky having all the live sports coverage, all the decent programming and pretty much locking up all the decent TV in the country, leaving the free to air channels with only crappy reality shows.
I suppose you are against any form of public service broadcasting and intellegent TV shows, as well.
And you don’t see a problem with that?
Our economy can actually support itself and we would be a hell of a lot better off without the overseas ownership funneling the wealth that we create overseas to people who don’t create any wealth at all.
I think there is room for a considered post on overseas investment in NZ and to a certain extent vice versa. It is an issue we have to face up to and I will think a bit before doing one.