1. There is no public television broadcaster in NZ. Our public broadcasting environment is depleted. Labour believes a strong, independent, free public media service NOT driven by commercial interests is essential to an informed democracy.
2. A Labour Government will immediately start a debate to establish a new non-commercial public broadcaster. It will include the functions of Radio NZ and TVNZ7. It will consider other functions. So to be clear we will keep TVNZ7. Radio NZ will retain its autonomy. We will strengthen them and may add services. We will ensure the governance of the new broadcaster is more arms length from government.
3. It will exist in the digital environment. Therefore it spans the traditional broadcasting telco industry and internet realms. This is called convergence. Labour has already signalled a converged regulatory environment for broadcasting and telco sectors.
4. A public and industry (broadcasting and telco sectors) debate will take place on the final shape and funding mechanisms. There are a range of options to be canvassed. The debate is important because it will be a New Zealand broadcaster that belongs to all of us and is about us. The lack of a public broadcaster has been debated. The shape of a future one has not. That debate has been sorely missing.
4. We don’t anticipate any extra cost to the taxpayer. We will asking the sectors how they think it should be funded. The outcome could be a mix of options. We are not prejudging or anticipating the outcome of this. The debate hasn’t been had. Many stakeholders are keen to have it.
5. The debate will be concluded within a year and it is anticipated that decisions will be made and any regulatory and other changes underway.
This is a significant policy. It marks an important change towards a contemporary Kiwi approach to protecting and promoting our culture in the 21st Century. It’s a commitment not made lightly and it’s a commitment we will see through.
I hope you agree.
I think you need to give some idea of how you can create such an organisation without it costing the taxpayer money.
You say it could be a mix of options. Fair enough. Care to share those posibilities with us before the election?
I am reminded of …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY4r0Co__R8
I’m very pleased to see this proposed Labour policy – our democracy needs it.
George, Peter Thompson (NZ academic) has researched public service broadcasting and funding options. His Peter Thompson MCH report on funding for public broadcasting in OECD countries is available online in a pdf file. The options other than user licence fee are listed as:
Industry levy- part of advertising/sponsorship revenue
Voluntary industry levy
Utilities levy – eg on electricity
Audio-visual retail levy
Broadcaster operational licence
Broadcaster concession eg on finances colllected by government from a PSB
Clare this is a good idea and I like it, it would be good also to put TVNZ7 into a streaming online free-to-air platform. I really do like what the BBC does in terms of its diversity and quality and I know this is not trying to achieve even an NZ-size version of that, but this is why I support this policy.
However, what’s the deal with a charter? To me the only relevant aspect of a state-funded broadcaster would be to ensure balance, which means you have to have a balanced Maori-Progressive-Liberal-Conservative editorial policy and none of those spokes should be out of whack with any of the others.
Everything else, in a competently run organisation, should just naturally take care of itself, as part of normal ordinary broadcasting and media professionalism, which doesn’t need a charter to achieve. However you can’t achieve that balance without a charter, but all the charter has to do is to establish a consensus mechanism whereby each of those groups has the ability to nominate and elect editorial people who have equal rights. Otherwise you’ll just get takeovers all over the place and that just pours taxpayer’s money (i.e. our money) towards a single, slanted and unbalanced perspective, and who on earth would ever want that?
Probably should give up the unequal struggle and take feeds from the likes of the BBC/PBS/ABC with a few local break ins.
with a few local break ins.
You mean about ANZUS, George?
We seem to be suffering from the two George syndrome again!
Mine was the first comment in this section, and I thank Carol for putting forward some posibilities. Like most ordinary punters (I suspect) I’d not heard of that academic or his report.
It does look as if most of the options are taxation in disguise (for what else is a levy), which everyone will be required to pay regardless of whether they see any value in the ‘service’ or not.
The second George’s comments weren’t mine.
As I’ve stated before, I’m grateful to those who put this blog together for providing the infrastructure on which we can debate. But as things can get heated at times and words thrown back in contributors’ faces, it’d be nice to have unique names so that one doesn’t get accused of saying things which have in fact been posted by others.
Sociopath I can take. I’d hate to be called a liar!
PS – do you really have time to waste at the moment moderating everything I post just because one of you got out of the wrong side of the bed on Sunday morning?
Good to see the call for debate. How is this debate proposed to be run? Is it going to be a Labour debate, or will it independently driven?
George_the_1st, I guess those levies would target users a little more than a licence fee of the BBC sort. The only way that I can think of to target users specifically, would be via small (not-for-profit) subsciption fee. Personally, I wouldn’t mind paying it, or contriubuting to any other levy. Although, it would still be likely to discriminate against low income people.
I liked the donation system that Triangle had (don’t know if they still have it, but haven’t seen a donation drive since I’ve been watching Stratos).
But I also think the whole society benefits from a good public broadcasting/narrowcasting service, even though not everyone will use it directly. The benefit is from the way it would help democracy to thrive, providing a ripple effect into the wider society.
The money has to come from somewhere for the public service broadcasting. If the commercial-profit motive is cut out, or minimised, the cost per person in the country is not very high. I know Peter Thompson has calculated the cost per household in NZ per month (something like a dollar or 2 as I recall).
Thompson’s MCH report on OECD public service broadcasting provisions also has a discussion of ways to prevent political interference in public service broadcasting.
Good idea, worth debating, but it won’t happen before this election.