Music for the ages
Classical-music stations are increasing audiences overseas, so why does RNZ see so little value in its Concert network?
Internal threats to the country’s sole classical music network are not new, but this version loomed as the most catastrophic. The international award-winning Concert network has faced numerous restructurings and downsizings over several decades. RNZ management has made no genuine attempt to understand Concert and its offerings, or, shamefully, the interests and opinions of its substantial audience. Recent audience-survey findings that listeners prefer music to lengthy talk shows, for instance, have been misinterpreted disingenuously to imply no on-air presenters are needed.
The reaction was loud and clear. A Facebook group called Save RNZ Concert gained more than 10,000 members. Prominent New Zealand musicians, composers, arts professionals and politicians at home and overseas weighed in online and in traditional media.
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of the proposed evisceration of this cultural gem would have been the effect on the wider arts ecology. RNZ Concert is a multiplier of arts funding and a vital hub for music and arts organisations; its team of skilled staff records concerts, champions musicians through interviews and broadcasts, and has contributed to the international careers of many of our shining stars. The Mobil (now Lexus) Song Quest was originally a Concert project, managed by Concert staff and is still broadcast on the network.
And what of the NZSO, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (APO), regional orchestras, Chamber Music NZ, Adam Chamber Music Festival, major city choirs, arts festivals? The list goes on. Concert has recorded and broadcast their work in high-quality stereo, taking it to New Zealanders in all regions, providing access to those unable to attend concerts through geography, age or disability.
It has interviewed their conductors, performers and guest artists and reviewed their concerts, promoting their work and contributing to their viability.
New Zealand composers are one group that would have potentially been hugely disadvantaged. Concert’s recordings of new works have demonstrably advanced careers. John Psathas tells the story of a recording of his fanfare for the opening of Te Papa leading to his commission to provide opening music for the 2004 Athens Olympics. This country took enormous pride in his international achievements. Rising composer stars such as Claire Cowan and Salina Fisher talk about the exposure and validation Concert provided early in their careers.
SOUNZ, Centre for New Zealand Music, has partnered with Concert to produce films of new New Zealand music. Highquality, Concert-recorded sound is an essential feature of these works, which are promotional tools for composers, audience multipliers and a major source of international interest. This video partnership and another with the APO would have ended if the staffing reduction proposal had gone ahead.
Ironically, in the UK, the BBC proudly announced new audience figures the day after RNZ’s destructive proposal became public. Radio 3 (Concert’s equivalent), posted its highest audience ratings in years, in part because young people have migrated to classical music. The
UK’s Classic FM also reports increased audiences for the same reason, supported by energetic social-media campaigns. Radio 1, the BBC’s flagship youth station, slumped for the first time, demonstrating the challenges in reaching listeners under 35. Is RNZ looking at international trends?
How do Concert’s audience figures compare? The cumulative weekly total for Concert is 173,300, about 4% of the New Zealand population aged 10 or above. This is an excellent figure for a specialised radio network. Radio 3 is celebrating having reached about 3.55% on a per capita basis.
And staff numbers? Radio 3 has more than 100 staff; Concert fewer than 20. In terms of Government expenditure, Concert’s approximately $3 million annual budget, about half of which is the cost of the FM transmission network, seems ridiculously small.
Concert’s music content director, Willy Macalister, “hopes to appeal” to a new youth audience. Macalister came to RNZ a year ago from commercial radio and has not consulted the experienced Concert team nor arts organisations and others about his youthnetwork plans. His risky proposal takes a punt on a potential new audience, one already well-served with radio and digital offerings, while sacrificing a loyal existing one. RNZ does not have a good history with the younger demographic – its online youth project The Wireless, from 2013, folded after five years having failed to meet objectives.
Labour promised to protect Concert in its 2017. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, also Minister for the Arts, has expressed a view that a youth network should not mean the loss of Concert. Additional FM transmission capacity has been found, but the real issues are still the Concert personnel and operational budget – until these are protected, the protests will continue.
New Zealand Symphony Orchestra chief executive Peter Biggs told the Listener. It was also likely that it would become more difficult for RNZ Concert to attract new listeners, he said.
“If listener numbers fall, that’s fewer people hearing the NZSO and other professional orchestras, or discovering the NZSO and other orchestras for the first time via radio. That could have a flow-on effect of fewer people coming to classical music concerts. It’s also likely fewer people will be inspired from hearing classical music to pursue a career in the field.”
But flow-on effects in the classicalmusic community were not and are not RNZ’s prime concern. The reasons for the proposed changes, Concert staff were initially told, was that RNZ was, “underperforming with younger audiences and with non-Pākehā communities”. RNZ needed to attract younger and more ethnically diverse listeners both to fulfil its charter obligations and to secure its audience for the coming decades.
The concern about RNZ’s audience should be no surprise to the public, even if the way the company proposed addressing it was. As audiences, particularly a younger demographic, shift to social media, podcasts, streaming and on-demand services providing them with what they want whenever they want and wherever they are, they have left traditional media outlets including newspapers, magazines, TV channels and radio struggling to attract the next generation of readers, watchers and listeners.
“The truth is that 50 and above is essentially the age catchment for all of Radio New Zealand’s quality products,” says former RNZ board chair Richard Griffin, who left the role in mid-2018.
“It’s unusual to have an audience in the 20 to 30-year age bracket – in fact, not unusual, it’s something of a miracle. Radio New Zealand is simply not pulling that sort of audience and, dare I say it, most radio stations aren’t either.
“Young people don’t go to what used to be known as ‘the radio venue’ to get what they want these days. They don’t have to because there are other options available to them that give them far more choice and allow for them to pick out what they want at any time not just when the broadcasters decide to put it on air. That’s what Radio New Zealand has to face as an organisation, and a lot of broadcasters, too.”
Commercial stations are having exactly the same problems, Griffin says.
“They’ll never acknowledge it, but most of their audiences are way past maturity. Most of their audience – even for the ones that run so-called young people’s channels – the people they attract are well over their thirties. They’re in their forties and fifties
“If listener numbers fall, that’s fewer people hearing the NZSO and other professional orchestras.”
and are people who are used to listening to radio.”
The need to find a younger audience, says Thompson, is not only about “remaining relevant” in the next 10 to 20 years, but also fulfilling the obligations of Radio New Zealand’s charter.
“About 50% of all [Radio New Zealand] National listeners are over 60, and twothirds of Concert’s audience is over 65 with little potential for meaningful growth with younger or more diverse audiences,” the consultation documents say.
“We will not be able to connect with young, diverse audiences through our
current live music brands.”
But RNZ’s problem in pursuing a youthoriented brand, the consultation documents show, was that it had no new funding to launch a start-up, and no available FM frequency to do it with.
If it was to try to attract a younger audience, RNZ had to make it happen within its current budget and using its existing frequencies. Its plan, which critics say reflects a total lack of understanding about Concert by RNZ management, was to move Concert to AM and other platforms, and to slash its staffing.
“The creation of the new music brand will be done by redirecting funding and resources currently allocated to RNZ Concert, which shares 60% of its audience with RNZ National, to a completely new music service, targeted at completely new and different audiences,” say the consultation documents, in the name of RNZ Music content director Willy Macalister, whose background is in commercial radio.
The new brand will be based in Auckland where the target market – younger New Zealanders (18-35) and especially Māori and Pacific Islanders – are concentrated.
The backlash was immediate, widespread and furious. Most of it focused on the prospect of Concert losing its FM frequency and thereby downgrading its sound quality, and also losing its knowledgeable announcers. Additionally, reaction was uniformly belittling of the idea that a youth station would work.
Admitting that the past couple of weeks had been “bruising” for RNZ, Thompson told the Listener that at some stage the company would “do a good debrief and see whether we could and should have done something different” in explaining the Concert proposals. In the ferocious early reaction, they were often mischaracterised as Concert closing altogether.
“But this became such a crescendo, frankly, that that [detail] was lost.
“Feedback’s been incredibly robust and illuminating, and coming at us from every angle, but we’ve certainly shown that for a group of New Zealanders RNZ Concert is really important,” Thompson says.
“We want to relate to younger audiences as well as more established, older audiences. We want to do classical music but we also want to provide a music service to younger New Zealanders, so it’s in trying to square all those things that we’ve really hit a nerve.”
He expected backlash, Thompson said, but not the ferocity at which it came, or that it would so quickly turn political. He confirms that RNZ had briefed Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi on the proposal before it became public. The fact that the Government was unprepared shows there was a miscommunication with Faafoi, Thompson says.
Whatever Faafoi was told, it was not until the public groundswell of opposition rapidly rose, and former Labour prime minister Helen Clark tweeted her horror at the proposal, that the Government realised it had to act.
In wording that can only have been designed to impel the Government to intervene, Clark tweeted, “This decision appears to have been taken without public consultation. Who’s in charge?” Perhaps answering her own question, ministers jumped. Finance Minister Grant Robertson replied on Twitter that ministers were on the case. “I am advised it is still a consultation and we will be talking to RNZ about their options.”
For Concert staff, the commentary from a number of prominent New Zealanders campaigning to preserve Concert’s staff and FM frequency was a mixed blessing.
“Helen Clark turning over tables is amazing. Just to know that there’s that level of support from across the spectrum and across young people and old people and across every demographic is really humbling and encouraging,” one Concert staff member told the Listener.
“[But] That comes with a two-edged sword in some ways, because … it’s like the elite coming out to support their older white community. So, when people like Helen Clark and Chris Finlayson step up, it’s great, but you do worry if it’s reinforcing people’s impression of where we are at.”
It’s not just elite commentators who give the impression that RNZ has a niche listenership. The evidence backs it and Thompson himself says RNZ thinks “it is very important that public broadcasting is not just for the privileged few”.
THE SAME, BUT DIFFERENT
For all the support in the past fortnight for Concert from Māori, Pacific and younger people, the statistics show that RNZ is right to be concerned that its charter obligations are not being met, and that its future listenership is not assured. The consultation documents reveal that RNZ has adopted a target of increasing its listeners from the one million per week (28% of the population) that it achieved last year, to 50% of the population by 2023. It will not reach that
Concert’s recordings of new works have demonstrably advanced the careers of New Zealand composers.
“Helen Clark turning over tables is amazing. Just to know that there’s that level of support from across the spectrum is really humbling and encouraging.”
with RNZ National and Concert alone.
The Government’s intervention on February 11 to furnish RNZ with an FM network that is not currently available to it, but was set aside for youth broadcasting about 20 years ago, has thrown RNZ a lifeline to pursue what it calls its “music strategy” while retaining Concert. The Ministry of Culture and Heritage oversees non-commercial radio licensing and one of the terms and conditions of a new operation is that it “offers services that complement existing ‘for profit’ services rather than duplicate them”. This is likely to be a point of contention with commercial radio operators once RNZ’s plans are revealed.
The proposed youth brand, which seems to be particularly championed by Macalister, is likely to create more tension with commercial broadcasters. RNZ, with its taxpayer-funded support that both enables and requires it to offer commercialfree broadcasting, will be competing more deeply in the market in which commercial operators have to make their living every day.
Thompson says an RNZ youth station would be different to commercial offerings. He is dismayed that the reaction to an RNZ youth brand has been so negative.
That negativity is typified by Kiri Te Kanawa Foundation deputy chair Diana Fenwick. “The excuse from RNZ that the new FM youth station is the way of the
future is laughable,” Fenwick said.
“Radio stations aimed at young people playing NZ content proliferate the length and breadth of New Zealand. Concert FM, however, is the only station of its kind. That said, increasing numbers of young people are not listening to the radio, may not even have one, and mostly listen to or download the content they prefer via devices such as smartphones, iPads and computers, or via sites such as Spotify and Apple Music.”
Griffin is also doubtful, but less scathing in his assessment.
“Quite honestly, I don’t know whether there’s any young catchment left for Radio New Zealand-type broadcasting, but if there is they’re doing their damnedest to try to reach it and this is an attempt to do just that.”
Thompson refuses to be defeated and thinks RNZ’s new brand will be a space to celebrate and showcase New Zealand artists and compositions.
“It has been quite difficult to get any informed or balanced discussion going on the gap as we see it. Australia has Triple J, which is a cultural force that has led to the growing popularity of Australian music among young audiences. Triple J is an amazing phenomenon, as is BBC Radio 1, which is a leading light for young audiences [in Britain]. So, what has been missing is any appreciation of the opportunity here. But I also understand that people will always focus on what is being lost and it is very hard to imagine the new thing until it is built.”
With the Government offering an FM transmission opportunity and now being willing to talk about funding, RNZ may be able to retain Concert as is and build the youth brand, though Thompson denies ever having tried to embarrass the Government into increasing RNZ’s budget. “That would be a helluva way to achieve an outcome,” he says.
“There was never any intention to force anyone’s hand, but I guess you don’t know what the conversation is going to be until you start the discussion.”
“It is very important that public broadcasting is not just for the privileged few.”