Broadcasting (was: The New Zealand economy)

Bill Rosenberg w.rosenberg at cantva.canterbury.ac.nz
Sat May 16 05:18:38 PDT 1998



> Trond writes:
>
> >While in NZ, we discovered with increasing depression that *all* TV channels
> >were commercial. And news and current affairs had attained the corresponding
> >character: Americanized predictable establishment blah blah with
> >"distinguished" male anchorperson and ditto female "representative"
> >business-suited partner. And commercial breaks. And even more commercial
> >breaks. In what once was a public broadcasting channel. Coming back to
> >Australia, the difference really struck us, between a wholly commercialised
> >broadcasting system, and a system where at least one big and one lesser
> >channel (ABC and SBS) do some credit to what TV journalism ought to be.

The situation in New Zealand is just as Trond describes. 15 minutes per hour of commercials is not unusual. And often the commercials are better than the programmes. There are regular (and continuous simmering) public uproars about it. It's one of the things politicans make promises about because there are votes in it, but never carry out. It looks like it will get worse: the government has announced a review of its ownership of TVNZ - the state owned TV corporation with two channels - despite promises that at least one channel would remain publicly owned.

Rob Schaap replied
>
> I'm with you all the way on this, Trond. Simply put, the lesson
> from this is that commercial broadcasting is not something for which
> you need private ownership. Commercial broadcasting is simply to be
> defined as broadcasting with commercials on it - no matter who or
> what 'runs' the channel.

It's not quite that simple: commercial broadcasting (or not) is determined by the objectives of the channel. Like everything else they touched, Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble et al set up TVNZ with purely commerical objectives; hence the result. If the objectives had been public service broadcasting (a la Oz), the result would have been different. I don't see a private channel accepting public service as its objective: there's not enough money in it.

A good book on the history of how New Zealand TV got into this situation is "Revolution in the Air!" by Paul Smith, Longman, Auckland, 1996. If you want detail of the ownership of New Zealand media, I have a short paper which I keep up to date.

Bill Bill Rosenberg, w.rosenberg at csc.canterbury.ac.nz. Ph 64 3 3642801. Fax 64 3 3642332. Room 211, Ext 6801



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