KEY POINTS:
Never in the field of government inquiries have we heard such self-serving, hypocritical crap reverberate through Parliament. And, for once, it is not coming from politicians.
Over recent weeks, the Ministry of Culture and Heritage's digital broadcasting review has provoked a vicious internecine war between the country's main
broadcasters and produced a weird reversal of the usual PR spin the big networks like to put out to the media.
Normally, all of the networks boast that they have the most viewers, the best programmes, make the most money and, generally, they are far stronger and smarter than their opponents.
Not in the submissions they have put to the digital broadcasting review. Each cries that it is being cruelly and unfairly bullied by the other and that it is doing very poorly indeed as a result.
First, you have to work out who is who in this crazy, three-sided battle. Basically, TVNZ, TVWorks (TV3 and C4), Freeview (TVNZ and TVWorks) are ganging up on Sky (Sky TV and Prime), although TVWorks is not averse to privately putting the dagger into rival TVNZ's back whenever it possibly can.
TVNZ wants the Government to "do a Telecom" on Sky, split it up and effectively "unbundle" Sky's lucrative TV rights to big sporting events, thus allowing it and TVWorks to compete more cheaply to show sport.
TVWorks wants the Government to regulate to make Sky sell Prime because it creates an "uneven playing field". Sky is desperately trying to cover its backside and hang on to what it has.
All sides are crying foul, which has led to a number of ludicrous claims and counterclaims by the spatting networks.
For example, TVNZ claims Sky is unfairly dominant in the New Zealand broadcasting scene. This whinge neatly ignores the fact that TVNZ in its own published strategy document, Inspiring on Every Screen, trumpets that "TVNZ continues to be New Zealand's leading broadcaster". Hello?
Sky counters by claiming TVNZ is truly the dominant player, with 46.4 per cent share of viewers in February this year and 18 out of the top-20 rating TV shows.
Sky claims, in fact, TVNZ has the highest percentage share of viewers anywhere in the world and it can find no other broadcaster on the planet that comes near. Normally, this would be TVNZ chest-beating but it sounds truly bizarre coming from a rival.
It also begs the question, if TVNZ has such a large chunk of the market why does it need so many millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies?
Sky makes the point that TVNZ pulls 65 per cent of the advertising revenue in the market and still gets handouts from the Government.
For its part Sky, in a "woe is me" moment, talks of its hugely risky billion-dollar investment in pay TV, how it lost $237 million in the long slog through its first 12 years, how Prime is still losing money and how Sky is now making only a modest profit because of its high infrastructure and client servicing costs. This is the kind of information companies usually try to brush under the carpet.
TVNZ and TVWorks claim Sky unfairly uses its financial muscle to snaffle top sports that they can no longer afford. Sky counterclaims that TVNZ, TV3 and C4 use their big bucks to tie-up exclusive top-rating entertainment deals with almost all the major international distributors, leaving it and Prime out in the cold.
TVNZ argues that Sky is a "gate-keeper", somehow blocking it from reaching a broad digital audience. Sky counters that TVNZ is being the gate-keeper, refusing to allow TVNZ 6 and 7 on to the Sky box and threatening to sue Sky if it shows those Government-funded channels, so wasting taxpayer dollars by denying the channels a bigger digital audience.
Forget the pathetic attempts at spin all the players are trying to put on the issue. A careful read of the submissions reveals a different and more interesting picture.
From the evidence, it is hard to escape the conclusion that TVNZ should be much more profitable than it is. The fact it can barely scrape a dividend together, and then only after receiving huge Government subsidies, must mean it is grossly inefficient.
Another picture that emerges is that TV3 is a slow starter in the digital race and lacks a real vision of where it is going in the new "wired" era.
Sky, for all its revenue, is hugely capital intensive and is not necessarily the goldmine its competitors paint it to be because it has to constantly keep upping its technology to keep ahead in the market - a fact its shareholders seem to have realised, judging by its share price.
The biggest question of all is why the Government has opened this can of worms.
