Greg Dixon: Fat refund on a junk diet

COMMENT

So far I haven't had a response. But then I wasn't really expecting one. Finance minister Michael Cullen was hardly likely to approve my request that he return $11.4 million of the tax I have paid over the years.

I thought I'd mounted a fairly convincing argument. He gave TVNZ back that amount and they only promised to make more local drama and kids' shows, and boost local content to 50 per cent. I, on the other paw, was promising to watch the damned stuff, which is very Charter-friendly of me, and had undertaken to reinvest my payout into the economy via the blackjack tables of the local casino.

But apparently there's no reasoning with the man.

That said, I have to say I was surprised at the announcement this week that TVNZ would get a $11.4 million rebate on its government dividend so the network might make more local programming. This fat refund coming on top of the $23.3 million it got from the taxpayer last year for the same thing.

I say surprised, because surely New Zealand On Air, as the body charged with funding local content, should be the recipient. Instead it's nearly ignored. It was given a boost of only $12 million over four years in May's budget. According to its statement of intent it will have just $61.98 million to spend on all television programmes on all channels (including TVNZ of course) in 2004/2005 - an increase of just over $1.5 million from the previous period.

Meanwhile TVNZ again hits the jackpot, though it's quite the mystery what the company that made $335 million from advertising revenue last year is doing with all this extra dosh.

It is certainly pretty hard to see where it's all gone in the pretty little folder that TVNZ issued this week to puff the network's 2005 programming.

The offerings, as advertised, in the key genres of local comedy and drama next year are paltry - much like this year. The only new drama announced is Last Man Standing (a TV2 show exploring, yawn, "the sexual and emotional terrain" of three 20-something blokes) and no new comedy at all.

The only really hot news for those with a brain is that TVNZ will at last - hoorah! - screen a documentary series on our history, which has, much like the country, been millennia in the making. But, as advertised, the remainder of its local factual programming is very thin indeed - surely something the Charter was meant to fix, yes?

However what there is plenty of is reality TV- of the Border Patrol-Piha Rescue-Dream Home variety. By my count there are more than 20, some returning, others new, from this cheap, cheerless genre.

Grrrr. The prospect of another year's forced diet of local reality junk makes me very sulky indeed. Though of course there's the promise of jam tomorrow: TVNZ's programming head Annemarie Duff says there are more local productions in the pipeline. But we have to wait until 2006 - by which time the taxpayer will have effectively given how much to TVNZ to allegedly fulfil its charter obligations?

I'm sure TVNZ is beside itself with joy at the Government's announcement this week. I just wish I could see a reason to be happy, too.