More local shows on the telly

By ALAN PERROTT

Local content on Television New Zealand has increased more than 10 hours a week in the past five years, a Weekend Herald study has found.

A breakdown of weekday schedules shows TVNZ broadcast 3610 minutes of local content between September 6 and September 10 this year, up from 3410 minutes for the same period in 1999, and only 1910 minutes in 1994.

The breakdown reveals that TV One's local content dropped between 1999 and this year, but that decline was more than offset by TV2 doubling its domestic programming over the same period.

Annemarie Duff, TVNZ's general manager, programming, said local product was increasing as viewer expectations changed.

"It's been a long time since people were brought up on the best of British. Viewers now want a much wider range.

"We are also seeing a lot of British shows becoming more parochial and regionalistic as we become more and more Pacific Rim-oriented."

ACNielsen ratings show we like watching ourselves: local shows made up 19 of the 30 top-rating programmes between October 10 and October 19.

Ms Duff supported the network's revised local content target of 50 per cent across both channels, which should mean new home-grown drama. But she said plugging the present gap in TVNZ's programming was a long and expensive process.

"It's very difficult, particularly when we know it will be compared with the best the rest of the world has to offer - programmes like CSI or Without a Trace, where each episode can look like a feature film.

"What we are looking for are unique ideas. Look at Insider's Guide to Happiness. It wasn't a major ratings performer, but it was unique."

Despite the absence of new drama, local shows made up 38 per cent of TVNZ's content over the past financial year, according to the network's annual report. That bettered the target of 35.5 per cent set last year by Rick Ellis, chairman of the Television Local Content Group.

Its report for this year said TV One screened 54.6 per cent local content, TV2 reached 24.3 per cent and TV3 hit 20.4 per cent, all higher than their targets, but still short of the previous record year, 2002.

While the Government-imposed charter has helped to drive up local content, Peter Thompson, senior communications lecturer at Unitec, said network competition also played a major role.

"How many of these new local programmes on TVNZ are simply replicating formats that are already on TV3 and Prime?" he said.

Mr Thompson questioned why supposedly charter-driven programmes were also receiving NZ On Air funding. He said charter funding was originally aimed at risky, non-commercial formats that might not fit within NZ On Air's more commercially oriented criteria.


"Many of the supposedly local shows like New Zealand Idol may have been high-quality productions and were certainly popular, but I question whether they are public service."

He said reality shows such as Motorway Patrol might attract large audiences, but they offered little if any depth or analysis of issues.

Programmes such as Eye To Eye and Insight showed the network was experimenting, but Mr Thompson said TVNZ remained caught between its public service role and commercial requirement to make money for the Government.

"So are we looking at more New Zealand content? Yes.

"Are we looking at better local content? In too many cases it's not of the quality we should expect from the charter and has no more merit than a cheap import."

Associate Professor Geoff Lealand, senior lecturer in screen and media studies at Waikato University, found consistency in the local content over the past decade.

"What changes there appear to be are more a matter of fashion or expressions of the political climate of the respective years."

But the latest shows were more varied and reflected the emergence of genre-benders such as Sportscafe (sport/chatshow) and Game of Two Halves (sport/ gameshow), he said.

"We should not forget the continuing importance of Shortland Street - multiculturalism is now a comfortable and unremarkable feature of New Zealand television as a result of the show."