Back to future for broadcasting

Does the future of public broadcasting lie in the distant past? Some will see a proposal to merge TVNZ and RNZ as a return to the good old days of the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC), the state monolith that ran TV and radio from 1962 until 1975.

Be careful of nostalgia. They were much slower times – TV started in Auckland in 1960 but only got going in Wellington and Christchurch a year later – and there was a level of political control and interference in broadcasting that would be unacceptable today. It was often a pale, cautious imitation of the BBC at a time when everything British was better.

The NZBC was disestablished after the launch of a second TV channel. That channel, South Pacific Television, enjoyed relative independence before it merged with TV One to become TVNZ in 1980. Coinciding with the novelty of colour TV in New Zealand, the time of South Pacific is still remembered as a relative golden age of local content.

The future seemed clear to former TVNZ boss Ian Cross in the 1980s. He wanted to keep TV One as a non-commercial public broadcaster and sell the commercially-oriented TV2. But his was an unfinished revolution and when the Labour government deregulated broadcasting at the end of the decade, and TV3 and Sky entered the market, TVNZ stayed in a kind of limbo where it has largely remained ever since – owned by the public but competing commercially. It is easy to see why the likes of MediaWorks, which owns and is trying to sell the struggling Three, has cried foul.

Former MediaWorks boss Hal Crawford described the problem in a fiery column in August. TVNZ, he wrote, is neither a public broadcaster nor a commercial entity. It has no quota nor charter but is also allowed to lose $17 million and not return a dividend to the Government. Crawford was ‘‘angry that the market for television advertising in New Zealand is distorted by this bizarre, anti-competitive set-up’’.

Everyone is struggling in a time of Netflix and YouTube, but TVNZ is cushioned by its public ownership. The proposal to merge it with RNZ, which was leaked this week, might have a contradictory effect. A merger would enshrine the idea and tradition of public broadcasting into an uncertain future, while also creating enormous disruption in two media organisations that have grown very dissimilar since 1975.

RNZ has remained strictly noncommercial and still maintains a public service ethos that probably seems quaint and old-fashioned for some in more commercial media organisations. TVNZ, as any viewer could tell you, happily embraced commercialism decades ago. The difference between them is the difference between stereotypes of cerebral Wellington and shallow Auckland. There are serious doubts over whether these two very distinct cultures could easily fit together.

But if at least one of the TVNZ channels becomes entirely non-commercial under the new model, that would ease pressure on the likes of MediaWorks. The early leak of a proposal that will take at least two years to become a reality could be valuable in these unsure times, given it has been suggested MediaWorks could close Three if it cannot find a buyer. This news would at least offer potential buyers some certainty.

More important, viewers would continue to be offered a real choice in local content if Three survives. Viewers are best served during times of genuine, thriving competition.

The difference ... is the difference between stereotypes of cerebral Wellington and shallow Auckland.