RNZ rules out new channel

Public broadcaster RNZ will not launch a full-blown standalone television channel after all, chairman Richard Griffin says.

The Government has previously signalled that it will earmark the lion’s share of a proposed $38 million annual boost in this year’s Budget for RNZ. But both it and RNZ had given mixed signals as to what that could entail.

Labour’s manifesto said the party would transform RNZ into a ‘‘truly multi-platform provider’’, including a ‘‘free-to-air noncommercial television service’’.

But Griffin told Parliament’s finance and expenditure select committee yesterday that it was not its vision that the newly dubbed RNZ+ would look like a television channel.

RNZ+ was ‘‘not about a new television station per se’’, he said.

Broadcasting Minister Clare Curran said it was ‘‘early days for RNZ+ but down the track there may be a free-to-air linear television station as part of it’’.

RNZ already has a channel on Freeview, which it uses to carry its radio service and which it sometimes uses to deliver television.

Chief executive Paul Thompson said RNZ wanted to deliver an expanded range of ‘‘high quality content’’, the delivery of which would in part be televisual.

‘‘But it won’t be a standalone free-to-air TV channel in the sense like any of the other broadcasters are doing. At the moment we have TV channels that we broadcast audio over and at times we go the ‘full television piece’. We will see that grow but it won’t be the focus what we are doing,’’ he said.

Thompson said RNZ would be talking in the next couple of weeks with a new advisory group set up by the Government. ‘‘Then it is about what is in the Budget.’’