TVNZ-radio merger a hare-brained idea
Media’s issues bigger than just the bits the Govt has power over
Iam lucky. I have been in broadcasting for going on 38 years. I started when I was 16, in the days when a degree wasn’t required . . . skill, hard work and a modicum of talent were.
I have worked in one way or another for virtually everyone.
For private commercial radio, for public commercial radio, for noncommercial radio, for state TV under a charter, for state TV when it was primed to be sold, for production houses that put product on TV3.
I have done news and current affairs, game shows, music shows, talkback, talk. I have written, I have hosted, I have been in print, radio and TV. The only thing I missed was doing any of it in black and white.
I know broadcasting.
If reportage is correct and the Government is looking to merge TVNZ and Radio NZ, it is, in my opinion, a monumental catastrophic hare-brained mistake. Like Auckland Port, if it had been done differently at the start it wouldn’t be a problem
now. But it wasn’t.
TVNZ and Radio NZ are two completely different entities with two completely different outlooks, temperaments, revenue streams, attitudes, performance measures, skill bases . . . I could literally go on till lunchtime tomorrow.
Their “commonality” is that they are in the same industry, but that bow is so long it’s dangerous.
The merger, if that’s what it is, is based on the generally accepted belief media in this country are in trouble . . . which is true.
But a Government coming to the financial and worryingly ideological rescue of bits of the industry is not the answer, or anywhere close to it.
The man in charge of this is Kris Faafoi, a good bloke, a performer in a party of largely non-performers, duly rewarded this year with a Cabinet elevation. But in terms of actual broadcasting, he’s a bloke who arrived at the same time as me to start the Breakfast show on TV1 20 odd years ago. He arrived fresh as a daisy, I arrived with close to 20 years already under my belt.
I have no real ideology around broadcasting. I do know all models can work if they’re executed well. I worked for RNZ hosting Morning
Report. I left after three years pleased I had done it and appreciative of some of the elements it provides the public that commercial radio would never deal with.
But it’s an acquired taste. I believe many inside its walls are virtually unemployable in the real world, their
Wrecking two businesses to help a bigger industry with worries only gives the bigger industry more worries.
budgets are absurd compared with commercial radio, and they have the worst and most overt of agendas while operating under the delusion of neutrality.
TVNZ under the previous Labour Government and charter, as scribbled together by Marian Hobbs — a principal of a girls’ school — was a basket case of indecision secondguessing the Government’s mood, and a constant touchy-feely nod to the chattering classes.
TVNZ these past few years, under a hands-off, market model, was a vastly improved, commercially (largely) successful company, with a vision and a desire to compete with all who came towards her, either nationally or internationally.
If you want to blow both places up and start again, you can, but that’s not what Faafoi will do. He will look to blend or mould or join together.
A Victorian villa and a Carnaghan townhouse, a Morris Minor and a Toyota Corolla, a Sunday roast and a vegan burger . . . mash it together and hope it all looks good and everyone gets along.
Lord knows where Ma¯ori TV is in all of this. If you have three of something, like newsrooms and cameras and techs, lump the lot in and save the money. But in saving the money you’re destroying what you are trying to save.
The media’s issues are wider and deeper than just the bits the Government has power over.
And this Government is driven sadly and dangerously by ideology, not practicality. Wrecking two businesses to help a bigger industry with worries only gives the bigger industry more worries.
This is 37 years of experience speaking. I know more about this industry than anyone making these calls, and the ones making the calls are wrong.