Classic Blunder - The Sequel, Final Part

In what TV reporters call “a bizarre new twist” the long-running saga of Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi’s search for a business case for his new media entity has stolen its latest plot line straight out of Noddy Goes to Toyland.

In the first of Enid Blyton’s famous children’s books, Noddy arrives in Toyland and decides to build himself a house. He wants to start with the roof so as to stay dry if it rains. But his friend and mentor, Big Ears, tells him he will need walls to keep the roof up. There being no shortage of framing timber in Toyland at that time, Noddy sets to work on building his house in the conventional manner.

Starting by creating a governance structure to oversee the development of a business case for building an organisation that might never exist would surely meet the approval of the little guy in the blue hat with a bell on it. Big Ears, however, was notable for his absence this Wednesday 31 March when Faafoi proudly unveiled his Strong Public Media Business Case Governance Group (the Governance Group) — a title that represents the culmination of 13 months intense policy churn at the Ministry of Culture and Heritage and an admission of the Ministry’s failure to rescue Jacinda Adern’s Labour Government from a dilemma created in 1988 by her predecessors in the Fourth Labour Government.

As revealed this week in a Cabinet Economic Development Committee minute, dated Wednesday 17 February 2021, six weeks before Wednesday’s announcement, the Governance Group effectively relieves the Ministry of responsibility for developing the business case, first kicked off by Faafoi on Friday 7 February 2020, nearly 14 months ago.

His ministerial media release on Wednesday was headlined: “Work to begin on a possible new public media entity”, and was immediately echoed almost word-for-word on Radio New Zealand’s web page on Wednesday: “Work begins on business case of potential new public media entity.” Deja vu, anyone?

The whiff of old news coming off Wednesday’s announcement could explain why it failed to attract little attention from mainstream media — with the notable exception of Radio New Zealand.

“A group of eight experts has been commissioned to work on a likely new public media entity, the government has announced.” That story followed another on RNZ’s web page, filed a couple of hours earlier by Colin Peacock, host of the public broadcaster’s Mediawatch programme. Clearly intent on demonstrating the potential scope of the multi-media, platform-agnostic strategy championed by his chief executive, Paul Thompson, the story is illustrated with pictures taken by an in-house photographer. One of them shows five of the Governing Group’s eight experts, seated stiffly in a row like defendants at an Egyptian show trial, as the minister explains how they will “oversee the development of a business case … which will look at how a potential new public media entity could meet the changing expectations of New Zealand audiences and support a strong, vibrant media sector.”

The minister’s reference to television viewers and radio listeners was significant in a conversation generally tightly held by a small group of public servants, funding agencies and senior broadcasting executives.

Audiences, though, might be surprised at the minister’s belief that their expectations are changing. Radio and television audience statistics over the last two decades show a reasonably stable demand from just under a million individuals — roughly 20% of the population — for the two evening television news bulletins and the radio breakfast shows on the three national talk radio networks.

There is no similarly reliable data for the number of people using phones and computers to get their news. Systematic collection and interpretation of

“audience engagement metrics” is the top recommendation out of a recent review of NZ on Air’s “Media Fund”. No informed decision on creating a new media entity is possible without this data. As the review notes: “People can only enjoy content they know exists”. The fundamental problem with using the internet as an alternative to conventional publishing and broadcasting is that it lacks a programme guide.

The Strong Public Media Business Case Governance Group (SPMBCGG) has until the end of the year to complete a detailed business case, with the expectation that the new “entity” will be up and running by the end of 2023.

But there is also an admission in the Cabinet papers that the establishment of the group is yet more film-flam. The rationale for it, according to the paper, is “to ensure the business case provides practical options that have credibility with stakeholders and the audiences (that) a new entity will serve, and visible momentum for the work programme following it passing due to COVID-19.” In other words: waving, not drowning.

As if one impossible task was not enough, the Governance Group of Eight will also have to “undertake public consultation to inform the development of a draft charter that will define the role of the new entity and principles to guide its operation.” It is not possible — or necessary — to write a charter for a commercial broadcaster working to maximise audiences for advertisers. The charter that Helen Clark’s Labour Government’s imposed on TVNZ in 2003 was abandoned after five years.

That charter, and TVNZ’s addition of a couple of advertising-lite channels, also ditched in 2008 when their funding ran out, was Labour’s last attempt to escape the ideological straitjacket thrown round state broadcasting in 1988.

A plan, on taking over from National in 1999, to make one of TVNZ’s channels non-commercial was stymied by opposition from the television networks, the advertising industry and the Treasury. These powerful vested interests were joined in the next decade by NZ on Air. Created in 1989 as a way of channelling public funds into making television programmes to secure a place on the box for some local content, the broadcast funding agency grew into a powerful lobby for the screen production sector, forming a co-dependent relationship with government akin to that found in your military-industrial complex. Now, any move back to the practice in all other western democracies in which public broadcasters are funded directly, creates an existential crisis for NZ on Air which would be made redundant.

The task of writing a charter for the proposed new media entity is made all the more difficult for the Group of Eight experts of whom only two have any experience of working for a chartered broadcaster.

Radio New Zealand, as a fully-funded public broadcaster, already has a charter, which is due for its five-yearly review as soon as practicable after this Good Friday 2 April. But the Group of Eight will have this part of their task done for them now that the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee has taken on Parliament’s statutory obligation to conduct the review. Submissions to the committee and its public hearings will avoid the need for the Group of Eight to “undertake public consultation”.

That will allow them to concentrate on the question that a new media entity is meant to answer — should the state’s two broadcasters, TVNZ and Radio New Zealand, be merged? That question was actually answered 33 years ago when, on Monday 22 August 1988, the Labour Government accepted the Rennie Committee on Broadcasting’s recommendation that they should be separate. The committee’s reasoning, as valid today as it was then, came in the conclusion to its report.

“The needs (of the two businesses) are different and both TVNZ and RNZ would gain from the specialist focus of management and boards on their target industry namely on television and radio. This was seen by the Committee as the most compelling argument in favour of the separation and although it is not easily quantified it is nevertheless a key to the success of TVNZ and RNZ in the future environment of competition, falling advertising revenue and rising investment demands to keep up with the latest television and radio technologies.”

Any so-called business case for putting them back together would have to find fault with that argument. To assist them, the Group of Eight can call on yet more experts and get staff and support from the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. They will meet at least monthly and, while called a Governance Group, they are officially a Ministerial Advisory Group — the same as the one set up in 2018 by Faafoi’s predecessor, Clare Curran.

Eventually, though, this is a decision that cannot be made by public servants or experts. It can only be made by Cabinet Ministers, led by the Prime Minister and her Minister of Finance. They should get on with it and stop wasting their time and our money.

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