Maori channel budget doubled

By AUDREY YOUNG

The Government has more than doubled the operating budget of the Maori Television Service to $12.98 million.

The $7 million increase in annual operational funding, from almost $6 million, will be a sweetener for the service's board, which has been ordered to use a transmission platform it does not favour.

The Maori channel will use a combination of UHF transmission through state-owned Broadcast Communications (BCL) and satellite transmission.

Households that want to receive the channel will have to have a UHF aerial - which costs about $200 - or receive Sky digital. An estimated 800,000 households could receive it now. The channel is expected to go to air in July.

Finance Minister Michael Cullen said it had always been intended to increase the budget. Details of the channel were unveiled in 2001.

"What is going to air is a more substantial product than what was scoped some few years ago. So I'm not in the least concerned that there is any kind of cost blow-out."

Board chairman Derek Fox has previously stated that the board would prefer to use the free-to-air TV4 VHF channel, which would have 75 per cent coverage, as well as satellite transmission. But yesterday he said the budget increase was always more crucial than the transmission platform.

A great deal of work had been done in building and equipment leases, recruitment, and training.

"We will now be able to sign leases and contracts and the public will start seeing the tangible results of the work that has been done over many months."

The service has looked at potential studio and office space in Wellington and Auckland.



Mr Fox told the Maori affairs select committee last year that original costs had been based on the channel operating for one hour a day.

However, the board had decided that eight hours' daily transmission would be the initial target. And 600 hours of programming had already been commissioned (85 per cent in Maori, 10 per cent bilingual and 5 per cent in English).

Funding for programming, which was not included in yesterday's announcement, is channelled through broadcast funding agency Te Mangai Paho. A total of $154.95 million has been budgeted for 2001-2005.

Dr Cullen said the Cabinet was certain it had made the best choice of platform in terms of coverage and development of a digital platform.

It also allowed the service to own its frequencies rather than lease them under the TV4 deal - a deal that would have meant offering CanWest two Auckland FM radio frequencies.

Dr Cullen said that proposal would have required the Cabinet to deviate from standard frequency allocation procedures. "In many respects, that was the sticking point."

It is estimated that in the first phase of UHF transmission through BCL, expected to take five to seven months, the Maori channel will reach 75 per cent of the general population and 70 per cent of the Maori population. As well as the main centres, Dargaville, Whakatane and Gisborne will be covered.

The second phase, which will take three months longer, would expand coverage to Taranaki and Hawkes Bay, giving 86 per cent of Maori access once they bought an aerial.

Prime's success in winning the rights to rugby league coverage might also encourage a take-up of UHF aerials, Dr Cullen said.

There were some technical problems with Sky using frequencies that had been reserved for Maori use since 1989, he said. But Sky recognised its duty to retune affected decoders.

Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia said the channel would enrich New Zealand's cultural fabric.

"Ill-informed people make decisions in their own heads. This TV can help in exposing positive things that happen for Maoridom."

National's broadcasting spokeswoman, Katherine Rich, said the announcement "has all the credibility of John Davey's CV", referring to the chief executive sacked last year for a fraudulent CV.

"This decision is not about giving Maori TV the best start,"she said. "It's about bolstering BCL, a flagging Government business."

Green MP Metiria Turei condemned the choice of UHF transmission.

"Relegating the service to the UHF band again demonstrates this Government's superficial acknowledgement of its treaty obligations."

Act's Deborah Coddington said the Government was "shafting the service and not allowing it to a mainstream channel."

New Zealand First's Bill Gudgeon said many homes would go into debt to buy UHF aerials to receive the service.


Herald feature: Maori TV