It's time to create a public broadcaster that meets Kiwis' needs

Thursday, 22 December 2022

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is asking her ministers to prioritise policy over the summer break, saying the Government needs a clear focus on the economy in 2023.

Geoffrey Whitehead was deputy political editor, BBC, director-general of Radio New Zealand and first managing director of the ABC.

OPINION: Smoke signals from the Beehive just before Christmas suggest that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is now prepared to withdraw the Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media Bill 2022, and also to scrap the proposal for a merger of the market-driven TVNZ with the values-driven Radio New Zealand, a step supported in a recent survey by only 22% of the population.

If that happens it would meet the first objective of my submission to the bill’s select committee in early September 2022, and clear the way for a comprehensive Broadcasting Corporation of New Zealand (BCNZ) Bill 2023 that would set up an organisation to meet our needs as citizens, and not our wants as consumers (which the private sector does very well).

The organisation I propose would deliver those services.

The prime minister is now asking her colleagues to review which policies to keep and which to drop for the 2023 pre-election session of Parliament, and we will learn the outcome of that review during January.

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Minister of Broadcasting Willie Jackson says he’s still on track to merge Radio New Zealand and TVNZ together to form a new public media entity.

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I hope she will now recall my 2021 suggestion to her that – in these unsettling times both globally and domestically – what the country needs most is a fully-funded national broadcaster, through legislation I provisionally labelled ‘’Communications for Citizenship’’.

$16.1m spent on merger to date, with some costs yet to be tallied.

The new body should be identified in the legislation as a both a ‘‘public good’’ – like schools and hospitals – and also as an important democratic institution.

Its legislation should begin with a ‘’purposes and principles’’ clause reference to Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s Bill of Rights Act 1990, which imports into our laws key elements of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), especially s.13 on democratic and civil rights and s.14 on freedom of expression.

These two umbrella statements would, at a stroke, make it clear that the new organisation would be relevant to 100% of New Zealanders and so counter past objections claiming that it would serve only a 30+ age group cultural elite.

“In addition to Māori Television, there should be a television and radio division to provide news and programmes for our historic partners in the Pacific Islands Forum,” Geoffrey Whitehead writes.

It would not only provide core television and radio programmes for that age group, but also market its content online and for all age groups, as the BBC (UK), CBC (Canada) and ABC (Australia) do very well.

The core elements of the new organisation should be the two long-established values-driven content providers: Radio New Zealand and Māori Television. They are the somewhat battered survivors of four decades of market-driven broadcasting and, initially, at least, would need minimal change from their present roles.

I see a very different future for a ‘’new TVNZ’’. TVNZ-1 should have a legislative obligation to deliver a high volume of local content to justify its new marketing label as ‘the Kiwi-1’ channel.

Geoffrey Whitehead: “The core elements of the new organisation should be the two long-established values-driven content providers: Radio New Zealand and Māori Television.”

This would be in dramatic contrast to the current tsunami of low-cost imported repeat material, largely from Britain and Australia, currently interrupted by up to 20 minutes of commercials an hour in a doomed attempt to raise revenue from an ever more complex and fierce battle for the 5+ age group – the age range provided by audience research organisations in order to feed the revenue appetites of the private sector.

The new TVNZ-1 would inform us about our place in the south-west Pacific and showcase emerging talent, both writers and actors – of which we have plenty – in prime time. It would deliver a range of quality material from both the US and from our Commonwealth partners: Britain, Canada and Australia, through programme exchange agreements or sales.

We would have an increasing range of content to offer, like the brilliant work of the Natural History Unit in Dunedin.

I see two major choices for TVNZ-2. It could become similar to SBS Australia’s services to a multicultural audience.

Alternatively, it could be based on the award-winning Canadian channel TVOntario, which provides educational programmes in the widest sense for young people for 80% of its daytime coverage and 20% of adults, with those proportions reversed for nighttime viewing.

A lot of adults here are going to need the ‘’second chance’’ for more career options, provided in Britain by the BBC’s Open University, and a public service like this could help them achieve that.

In addition to Māori Television, there should be a television and radio division to provide news and programmes for our historic partners in the Pacific Islands Forum, possibly distributed by agreement with our Australian partners if they have – or plan to have – an Australian satellite footprint covering the region.

This could be appropriately identified in the legislation as ‘Te reo o Aotearoa,’ which Haare Williams, the manager of the first Māori and Polynesian news-gathering centre set up in the late 1970s, told me can be translated as ‘’the voice of New Zealand’’.

All of this, of course, will also need the creation (or re-creation) within the new BCNZ of a unit for the sale or exchange of programmes with our overseas partners. There would also need to be a specialised unit to promote the services of the organisation across all media, which is done very successfully by the BBC, CBC and ABC.

There would be no need to fund a distributing body like New Zealand on Air, because the programme divisions could commission programmes themselves.

If the prime minister runs with a project like this she could well achieve all-party support for the legislation in the House of Representatives.

Since foreign policy begins at home, this would send a powerful signal both to our partners within the West and to our constantly-evolving relationship with China itself and the people of the emerging economies of South Asia.