Ok. So the headline isn’t very sexy.
But why has the government bailed out Mediaworks with a $43 million low interest deferred payment for its radio spectrum licence while it appears set on axing funding for TVNZ7, the new and vibrant young digital public channel?
I’m not having a go at Mediaworks here. They’re an important part of our media. But surely TVNZ 7; an innovation which doesn’t cost much and is tackling how to deliver dynamic Kiwi content in a low cost but accessible format is something to be nurtured. It’s ours. It’s a public service. It’s a treasure. But apparently one that’s not valued by this government.
The cuts to TVNZ 7 funding haven’t been announced yet. But it’s clear they will be and we’ll lose some of the best shows to grace our screens in recent years; Media7, Backbenchers to name a couple.
TVNZ, our supposed public broadcaster, has been clearly told to stop doing the public bit and focus solely on delivering a profit back to the government. Which it’s doing. Sort of. Though much of what it delivers us isn’t produced by Kiwis about Kiwis.
Radio NZ struggles to keep its head above water.
And we have a very big player, Sky, which has captured 50% of NZ households and is doing very nicely thank you. Which you can’t fault because they’ve had pretty much a free run for years.
What’s wrong with our broadcasting (media) industry?
It’s not rocket science to conclude that if we don’t have a competitive private sector then we don’t have healthy industry. We don’t get innovation, investment, new markets opening up, old ones dying off.
And if we don’t have a strong public service, we don’t have a healthy society. It’s why we pay our taxes. It’s the glue that binds us.
A competitive private sector and a strong public service are not mutually exclusive.
A strong modern public media is critical to a functioning democracy.
I’m in London at the moment. The BBC, Channel 4, ITV are all hugely important. Critical analysis, breaking news, quality (and some rubbish) local content. It’s all part of the mix. The Brits are pretty well served by their media.
There are some double standards at work here. And blinkers on. You can’t give a break to one part of the industry and leave another in the cold. And you need some rules. That’s why government can’t be hands off.
The problems don’t just span the last two years. Let’s be honest. But it’s time we sorted it out. Because we’ll be a poorer country without a healthy media.
Agreed, Clare. TVNZ7 is great and they are just gutting public TV, leave us with nothing why don’t they?
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I actually agree with Trevor on this very rare occasion, the government has made the wrong call. Having personally dealt with mediaworks their management have a reputation as being some of the biggest shysters in the industry. They went around in boom times and brought up all and any competition, then when it got tough they couldn’t afford the licenses not withstanding being a license they had notice from the time they acquired it, that it was a significant contingent liability they should have planned for.
Rather than put aside funds to pay for it, they spent up large and then basically hit the wall in the recession. Mediaworks and The Radio Network breaking up / falling over would have been excellent for the broadcasting industry as it would in effect have been the market remedying the market failure which is the duopoly between Mediaworks / The Radio Network we have at present.
It is absolutely absurd that we have a radio market worth about $250-$300m in advertising $’s and basically two companies fighting it out for the biggest share of that pie.
Steven is way off beam on this.
ICE AV Technology with our interactive DJ desk The HoloDesk that we are taking to the world will ask John Keys also for a low interest loan. It will help us empoly more people and drow our export dollar. I was going to ask the bank but looks like the government is more generous with the terms.
The Brits are well-served by some of their media, but they also have some of the very worst in the world.
That’s fundamentally the point: in a big, mature media market, you get strong diversity, which includes both type and quality; extremes at the top and at the bottom. In a small, immature and undervalued media market such as our own, there’s really only commercial space for varying shades of mediocrity, because the cost of running a news organisation means that it has to suck in a big chunk of the population. With a domestic market of ~60 million pretty wealthy people, with regional and worldwide secondary markets many times larger, British media outlets can afford to cater to niche demographics of just a few per cent, or a small localised region. Many do, and they serve those audiences very well. That’s not true here.
To a great extent this is just a hard fact of mass-media economics: we are a small, sparsely-populated country with relatively low incomes, far away (culturally and geographically) from most of the rest of the world, and with a fairly low interest in it. We’ve also been poorly served by governments of both flavours — the last Labour government played TVNZ’s PS and commercial imperatives off against each other, weakening both, and continued to chronically underfund what is undeniably the leading news agency in the country, Radio New Zealand. National have been no better, and in some ways considerably worse, especially with the most recent announcement that, as far as they’re concerned, all TVNZ should do is return 9% on capital.
What I’m interested in is what Labour plans to change. For all your talk, you’ve not been very good caretakers of public service broadcasting. You mention Britain: the British broadcast media are very good indeed, and the main reason for this is the BBC. Yes, the BBC itself makes up a lot of the broadcast media environment there, but more importantly, it forces commercial competitors to compete with something other than lowest-common-denominator mass-market ratings. The same dynamic exists in the two other major media markets with strong and well-provisioned PSBs: Canada and Australia, where the CBC and ABC respectively set an enormously high standard for commercial competitors This is one of the major roles of public service broadcasting, especially in news: to set a high bar for competition.
If you want to solve the problems within New Zealand’s media environment, if you want to raise the bar: make the commercial media outlets compete with something that hasn’t been gutted and hamstrung. Fund TVNZ and Radio NZ properly, give it freedom to hire and retain the best people, buy the best content, and generally do what it does, and let the others work to match them. Everyone wins.
L
(Ahem, that’s the Royal You denoting the party, not Clare personally.)
L
POlitics aside, I thinkt he big question that needs to be asked here is when will TV and radio be regulated. At the moment we have a very big pay per view player (sky) getting bigger by the day whilst public TV struggles.
The sad reality of New Zealand TV is whoever owns the rights to rugby and cricket pretty much owns the viewer. Yet despite this we have some of the best current affairs coverage in the world (e.g. in depth analysis and impartial journalism)
With most journalists surviving on close to minimal wages the only real reason I can attribute to the seemingly high calibre of our current affairs coverage is job dedication from these journos
SUrely it is time to start asking why there isnt more of a level playing feild….
Clare
Is nt the point about public service broadcasting, is that it means that programmes that no one watches are still produced? I actually like Backbenches, but how many people actually watch it? Where will the big pot of gold come from to fund such public service programmes. Is it a public service to take money from everyone to produce programmes that only a very small minority are going to watch?
Mmmm… I think you are overlooking a major impact of this ‘bailout’ of a private media company during an election year. With one swoop the government (with taxpayers money) have got the National party a $45 million addition to its campaign capability; a cost which won’t show against their election spend.
If you think MediaWorks are going to be ‘fair and balanced’ during the election campaign, think again. They will not bite the hand that feeds them.
Another instance of private enterprise bludging off the taxpayer, but with a greater negative impact on democracy than normal.
rjs, chicken and egg. Few people watch it because it’s on a new digital platform requiring requiring people to buy new hardware in a recession, and not on Sky.
Now, there are some questionable decisions behind that, but you can’t blame the individual shows entirely.
In addition, it pays to note that TVNZ7 has cost the govt consolidated fund absolutely nothing; TVNZ borrowed the money on its own merits as an SOE, and the govt drip-fed it back to them for TVNZ7′s five year funding allocation. Not only that, but the whole funding allocation is $79m over five years, which is utterly trivial in TV terms.
L
@Lew – at least Labour got us the TVNZ7 in the first place!
I hope they don’t put it out to be shot. 
@Pat “we have some of the best current affairs coverage in the world (e.g. in depth analysis and impartial journalism)”
haha do you really believe that? Current affairs is a joke, and has been for a number of years. As for impartial journalism, it doesn’t exist in this country at all.
I agree that there is something very shady about this deal, especially as Steven Joyce sold Radioworks to Mediaworks for a very large sum back in 2001. Perhaps not so much outright corruption as helping out your mates in the private sector, whilst doing your best to screw the public sector.
Nevetheless, as a Labour supporter, I was always disappointed that Broadcasting Ministers (from Steve Maharey on) did not do more to change the system during the boom times–such as diverting the annual dividend from TVNZ (which Labour continued to milk) into investment in local production, or into ventures such as TVNZ7.
I don;t profess to understand just what has been purchased by mediaworks, but I am at least as concerned at this government locking private companies into a share of spectrum for as long as 20 years without any discussion, and then lending them the money to do it! This effectively limits future competition. It is also perhaps a sign of the extent to which ‘financier assisted’ mergers and acquisitions tend to leave companies short of capital and vulnerable to changes in the market – it must be nice to have a friendly government able to commit $43million during a National Emergency. Would they lend money to Whitcoulls who had also been purchased by an overseas company? The ready availability from government of this money must mean however that there is no real need to sell assets however – or perhaps the need to bail them out says that sales would be unwise anyway.
Interesting, cuts to TVNZ 7 and National Radio, but TV3 get a hand up so they can pay inland revenue?
Oh the deprivation of quality television!Groan!
Again with the bailing out of private enterprise by the taxpayer…meanwhile this government cuts jobs across the public sector (and we all know the work doesn’t decrease but will be picked up by contractors). This government really does love business…pity they’re using our money to show how much…
What is Labour’s vision for NZ media, public and private?
What should we voters know before casting our vote?
If TVNZ7 is forced to drop its public service broadcasting role the ongoing Americanisation of our TV schedules will increase the erosion of our national identity that has been gathering pace since the 1980s. New Zealanders used to be able to enjoy a wide range of home-grown entertainment and information augmented by programmes from Britain and the US, with added helpings of Australian material here and there. Now despite large numbers of New Zealanders having lived or been born in Britain, there is little British programming available on free-to-air channels, despite the BBC and Channel 4 producing loads of interesting material that would interest New Zealand viewers. Even a few Australian programmes would be a welcome respite from the sea of American dross that fills the screens. It will be a great pity if the death of TVNZ7 robs us of a singular opportunity to address the cultural wasteland of New Zealand television – particularly for those of us who are reluctant to shell out the best part of a thousand dollars per year to a pay-TV monopoly.
Sice when is 11% considered a “low interest” loan?
It took TVNZ hours to switch to the coverage of the Japanese earthquakes. If it weren’t for TV3, there would be no coverage of the quake on FTA television. Sometimes additional news channels – private, public or otherwise – are a good thing.
SBS took coverage before any NZ stations but they are a public service station
… in another country, where there are multiple state broadcasters. All I’m saying is that Masterchef is a more relevant event that a major earthquake that generated tsunamis in the Pacific, according to our state broadcaster. I’m grateful that there is more than one major network in this country at times like this.
…state owned does not mean public service according to our govenrment. It does mean make a profit which means popular prorammes. TV1 only interupted normal programmes after NZ issued a tsunamis advisory. Good on TV3 though
Dan, TVNZ didn’t take too long to switch — they took a bit longer than necessary (about 10m longer than TV3), and then cut back to regular programming after an hour. They did so on TV One, and also on TVNZ7, which is a supposedly dedicated “factual content” channel with no meaningful rating value.
This was an appalling, unconscionable decision by TVNZ, and one which indicates that they’ve now been so hollowed-out as a public service broadcaster that they’re worse than useless. I’ve written at considerably more length about this here.
L