Public broadcasting in NZ looks likely to get yet another major shake-up next year. By Russell Brown
Early in the new year, Cabinet will consider a proposal to merge TVNZ and RNZ into a single public broadcasting entity. The plan, which is very likely to be approved, would be the biggest reform of state broadcasting in decades. The road to it has been long, bumpy – and ultimately circular.
It begins in 1975, when, in its last few months, the third Labour government unbundled the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC), splitting it into three organisations: TV1, the new TV2 and Radio New Zealand (RNZ).
Most of the excitement at the time was focused on the unprecedented choice of TV channels, but it was the operational distinction between state TV and radio that would prove a more enduring influence on the media landscape.
Thirteen years later, the fourth Labour government finished the job, dissolving the now-renamed Broadcasting Corporation of NZ and reconstituting TVNZ and RNZ as separate state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that would take very different paths.
Labour governments ever since have fretted about and fiddled with the consequences of those actions.
Early in the Helen Clark years, broadcasting ministers Marian Hobbs and Steve Maharey legislated a new charter, which would oblige TVNZ to act more like a public broadcaster, and made it into a crown company rather than an SOE.
At the other end of the era, David Cunliffe was communications minister just long enough to deliver two new non-commercial channels, TVNZ 6 and 7. The charter and the channels did not prove a good fit at TVNZ and neither survived a change of government.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME./cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/nzme/YV3PL6HOMOEMKQLV6OA4IMEM7U.jpg)
In the last term of government, Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran pursued another path – that of making RNZ into a TV broadcaster, lining it up to receive $38 million in new public broadcasting money. The plan collapsed in chaos, along with Curran's political career, and the money went either unspent or elsewhere.
Now, a Labour Government is poised to reverse the 1975 split – to undo the original sin, perhaps – and, perhaps surprisingly, the television industry is largely on board with it.
The rationale for the reform was outlined in "Strengthening Public Media", a report presented to Cabinet in February 2021 by Curran's successor, Kris Faafoi. It has little to do with nostalgia but a lot to say about the future.
Enhancing values
The report makes the case for a stronger public-media entity, one that "contributes to living in a participative democracy and exercising democratic rights", "acknowledges and enhances cultural and social values" and, in a Reithian flourish, "contributes to personal well-being by informing, educating and entertaining".
But it also concerns itself with the broader media environment, especially in television, holding that "media are increasingly unable to meet the needs and interests of our dynamic and diverse population. Increased competition from international content providers, declining revenue shares, and a transformation in audience behaviour are driving changes in the media's operating environment. These factors are resulting in a fragile media system …"
The mood is hard to disentangle from the events of last year, when, just as the pandemic arrived, large parts of the media sector seemed to be facing extinction. Faafoi says he is "very optimistic, a lot more optimistic than I was in March and April of 2020", but the external threat remains.
/cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/nzme/6W4G4U7EVVWUK3MFGRHPOWQUIY.jpg)
For a long time, revenue from TV-type content was banked in New Zealand, even if most of it was made by Sky Television. Now, it's just as likely to flow out to Netflix, YouTube or Disney, whose New Zealand services are run from Sydney.
"My kids are like any kids – they'll jump on YouTube just as much as they'll jump on linear TV," Faafoi says. "And you know, if they're doing that, I want them to watch quality New Zealand content, too, that makes them feel like they have a place not just in their own community or city, but in the world.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME."It has to have our accent, it has to tell our stories. And while we might be producing it, if it's not in the right places, they're not going to see it, or listen to it, or read it."
Further, he says, many ethnic communities are already "digital-platform focused" and public media currently struggles to reach them "at a time when those communities need good information and messaging about public health".
TV industry leaders spoken to by the Listener universally subscribed to Faafoi's vision for a more collaborative, even collegial environment.
"If you look at the change that's occurred in recent years, you've seen a shift in competition from it being local players competing with each other to competition with global players," says TVNZ chief executive Kevin Kenrick.
"And all of a sudden, I think the local players have a lot more in common. Infrastructure and distribution feel like great opportunities to collaborate – and what we should compete on is the appeal of our content."
Glen Kyne, the Auckland-based general manager of Discovery Australia New Zealand, which took over the former MediaWorks TV business last year, agrees.
"That desire to share resources, I think, comes through loud and clear from everybody," Kyne says. It could be more common for only one camera crew to attend some news events and have rival channels compete on editorial value, he says.
Kyne actually worries about a new public entity withdrawing too far from the multiplatform commercial market TVNZ has done much to sustain.
"TVNZ needs to remain strong commercially," he says. "Because we need a strong commercial market – there are a lot of advertisers that hang off the back of commercial television. We will continue to aggressively fight one another for audiences and for the revenue in the market. I think all other things should be points of collaboration, and that's how it should be."
Māori Television chief Shane Taurima also expresses a desire to "be working constructively and collaboratively with the new entity if a new entity is being established. It just makes absolute sense."
/cloudfront-ap-southeast-2.images.arcpublishing.com/nzme/ICTUQMDI5RKPHKOP5AUNDVHHMA.png)
He observes that one element of this more collaborative future is already here. Māori Television is working with Newshub, NZME and Pacific Media Network on Te Rito, a collaborative project to hire and train 25 new journalists.
Taurima says the project – bankrolled by NZ On Air's new Public Interest Journalism Fund – will help fill a critical gap in training for te reo-Māori-speaking journalists.
Complex change
Public funding for the new entity is unlikely to be channelled through NZ On Air as RNZ's currently is, but the continued existence of NZ On Air as a source of contestable funding for the rest of the industry has been a key part of Faafoi's pitch to commercial broadcasters. The minister's apparent determination to bring everyone along with him strikes a contrast with the Curran years.
The proposal to go to Cabinet early in the new year will be based on the recommendations of a "governance group" chaired by former MP Tracey Martin.
Officially, Cabinet's decision was postponed because the Covid pandemic is putting pressure on executive capacity. But it may also be because the group's report has made clear how complex a reform would be.
Multiple acts of Parliament will require amendment and a new charter will have to be written. The group is thought to have recommended the appointment of a Broadcasting Commissioner, answerable directly to Parliament.
The commissioner would not only hold the new entity to delivery of its charter obligations, but also ensure it was not acting anti-competitively in the media market. While current public radio services would remain commercial-free, TV would continue to carry advertising – and potentially that advertising would provide the majority of the new entity's revenue. But how much? Seventy, 80, 90 per cent?
The job of merging two quite different organisations – RNZ, with a fairly basic management structure, ably producing most of its own content, and TVNZ, with a sophisticated management structure and a commissioning practice that supports much of the screen-production sector – may turn out not to be the most difficult challenge ahead.
A government already embarking on generational reforms of health and water infrastructure has given itself another big task of transformation.
One thing is certain – Kevin Kenrick will not be in the mix. After nine years during which he has steered TVNZ into a strong position, performing better than most expected when he was appointed and generating little in the way of offscreen drama in the process, he is stepping down in early 2022.
Kenrick came to the role after being head of House of Travel, but the Government may already be thinking in terms of someone with a journalistic background for the new position.
Kenrick's resignation has been widely interpreted as a judgment on the reform, but he volunteers a positive perspective on the looming change.
"The exciting opportunity for New Zealand is if Cabinet were to go ahead with this proposal, it would be creating a public-media entity in a digital world.
"If I look at all the other examples of public media around the world, they were all created in the pre-internet time period. And so they've all come from some form of traditional media, and they've bolted digital on to that with varying degrees of success.
"But there's an opportunity here to create a world first in terms of a digitally focused public-media business. That sounds like a pretty exciting opportunity."
