As much as I’m reluctant to give any oxygen to the views of bloggers who are the mouthpieces for the National Party I think it’s time David Farrar at Kiwiblog was held to account for his disingenuous views on public broadcasting.
For months and months I have been saying the faux outrage over TVNZ7 is misguided. I have consistently said that what matters is the programmes.
Then he said this in a second blogpost:
I think this shows that the Save TVNZ7 movement is all about ego and politics, and has little to do with an actual desire to have good public broadcasting in NZ
David you should apologise to the Save TVNZ7 movement for that comment. You obviously missed their statement welcoming the news that TV3 is picking up Media 7.
It’s incredible that you can see the survival of a single programme as adequate compensation for the loss of an entire channel that delivered a full, advertising-free menu of great New Zealand and international content that isn’t being picked up by the commercially-focused networks.
The rescue of Media 7 – now Media 3 – is no great thanks to TV3. It won’t cost them anything. NZ On Air is picking up the bill. You might like to wonder how NZ On Air suddenly found that funding when it cut its funding for Q+A and the Nation by $156,000 this year, after the pressure came on from TVNZ for more “commercially attractive” New Zealand programmes.
You can find another measure of the pressure on the production of “good public broadcasting” in NZ On Air’s Local Content report last year. NZ On Air only managed to fund just 14% of all the first-run local content screened on the six major channels last year, compared to 21% the year before. While it trumpeted that it was funding more local content on our TV channels, it was in fact counting all the repeats. The real figures showed original local content had in fact decreased.
Its statement of intent indicates the decline is going to continue this year and again in the next financial year when total NZ On Air funded hours are forecast to fall to 767 hours, down from 788.5 hours this year, and 875 hours the year before that. That’s what’s happening to good public broadcasting, Mr Farrar.
No great thanks to TV3? Nice!
David Farrar has an open liason with National, but he often speaks independently. He offers a lot more than a “mouthpiece” of National.
I think this shows that the Save TVNZ7 movement is all about ego and politics, and has little to do with an actual desire to have good public broadcasting in NZ
I think he’s partly right, there are egos and there is politics involved, but there is also a strong desire to have good public broadcasting in NZ, which I think is the dominant factor.
At least they funded the gc. Best NZ program ever.
Just a couple of corrections Clare. TV3 is paying a licence fee for Media3 as required. NZ On Air ‘found the funding’ with some difficulty at the end of our financial year but we did. It has nothing to do with the budgets for Q+A and The Nation.
And the Local Content Report just reports the facts about local programmmes. We’re the only organisation in the world that compiles this kind of data and we do it so that interested parties have useful info. The report clearly staes which genres increase and decrease, it includes first run and repeat data as well as prime time and offpeak.
Thanks for your comments Jane
Do you agree that the real measure of NZ On Air’s effectiveness as a funder of public service television is the generation of first-run local content, not repeats of local content?
if so, why was there no mention of the increase in repeats in NZ On Air’s media release in March which would have their claim that local content increased 3.1 percent on the previous year ….
http://www.nzonair.govt.nz/news/newspressreleases/pressrelease_2012_03_22.aspx
Why not scrap NZ on Air? . I know it sounds unpatriotic but it was set up by Richard Prebble in 1989 as an alternative to a public service TV channel and strangely seems to be supported by the left and the right of NZ politics. I can’t understand why we are subsidising fully commercial private channels. I can’t understand why we own public channels which are fully commercial. Why not sell TVNZ and start again. The regional channels (such as Triangle/Stratos) show what can be achieved on a shoestring. No more publically owned celebrity TV stations or programmes brought to you by NZ on Air.