Merger Charterchat Part 4

Instead of the much-anticipated ribbon-cutting ceremony to unveil the shiny new model of a modern public media entity, fully future-proofed and hot-to-trot, Labour’s Broadcasting and Communications Minister, Kris Faafoi, proudly announced the creation of . . . drum roll . . . yet another committee of experts.

Called the “Strong Public Media Establishment Board” it is faced with making all the decisions left unresolved by its predecessors: the “Ministerial Advisory Group on Public Media”, established just over four years ago by Labour’s first broadcasting minister, Clare Curran, and the “Strong Public Media Business Case Governance Group” announced almost exactly three years later by her successor, the hapless Faafoi, on Wednesday 31 March 2021.

While following the classic political procrastination strategy of farming out difficult decisions to a committee, the appointees for the ministerial groups and boards set up by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage are not politicians, answerable to voters for their decisions, but so-called “experts”, mainly drawn from the television industry’s recycling bin of executives put out to graze on the lush pastures of consultancy.

The reason for the predominance of television managers and executives among the “experts” is the behind-the-scenes role played by the government’s broadcast funding agency, NZ on Air, one of the two driving forces behind the development of the so-called public media entity.

Within minutes of the minister’s unveiling of the new “Strong Public Media Establishment Board” at the Broadcasting School in Christchurch on Thursday 10 March, NZ on Air released a statement firmly nailing itself to the side of the new entity “created from TVNZ and RNZ, alongside NZ On Air” and describing it as “a significant investment in public media in Aotearoa.”

Welcoming “the endorsement of its vital role in ensuring market gaps in public media content can continue to be addressed through contestable funding across multiple commercial platforms,” NZ on Air came out from behind the Ministry for Culture and Heritage to claim credit as the prime mover and shaker behind the biggest shake-up in state broadcasting in 30 years.

But, wait, there’s more: “NZ On Air will continue to engage constructively with the process and bring a broader media eco-system perspective to the considerations,” said the statement, attributed to NZ On Air’s chief executive, Cameron Harland.

Citing ongoing research showing audiences “choosing to consume content on an ever-increasing range of platforms,” Harland said: “Alongside the new entity, NZ on Air will continue to innovate and find audiences on the platforms they are using.”

And so NZ on Air celebrated the success of its plan, hatched around 2014, to use the internet to expand its programme funding role and avoid its inevitable demise should the government decide to have a commercial-free television channel, adopting the model used in almost every other western country by funding the broadcaster directly.

At the same time as NZ on Air was manoeuvring, in the words of the current chairwoman Ruth Harley, to get their “big fat foot inside the policy machine”, Radio New Zealand’s board appointed a new chief executive who believed radio was a medium on its last legs.

“We are now in a different age,” Paul Thompson wrote in his speech notes for the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Conference in Glasgow on 12 May 2014, “one that is characterised by information abundance and the ease

and affordability of its creation, distribution and access.

“The very term ‘broadcasting’ hints at our vulnerability as it speaks of a time when our control of the means of distribution — through transmitters and masts and the like — gave us control of our audience's attention.

“But we are now in a new age in which the means of distribution will increasingly be dominated by the publicly-owned internet.”

Radio stations and television channels would be replaced by multi-media platforms carrying video, audio and text.

The internet platform’s potential for carrying advertising in text and video would have appealed to Radio New Zealand’s board, appointed by a National Government with an irrational aversion bordering on superstition to taxpayer-funded broadcasting.

Radio New Zealand’s transition to transmission via the internet got the green light in 2016 when Amy Adams, National’s third broadcasting minister, amended its Charter to require the broadcaster “to take advantage of the most effective means of delivery” of its programmes.

The significance of this change, concerning transmission and having no place in a charter that should be solely about the nature and quality of content, is apparent in Radio New Zealand’s submission to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Select Committee’s Inquiry into the next review of the public broadcaster’s charter last year.

“RNZ welcomes the opportunity for New Zealanders to give their views on how well RNZ has responded to changes introduced to the Radio New Zealand Charter by the Radio New Zealand Amendment Act 2016,” the submission began, like a butler welcoming visitors to his master’s home as if it was his own.

“The changes were very specific,” it continued, “and encouraged RNZ to make the transition from a traditional radio broadcaster to a modern multi-platform public service media organisation, producing, publishing and distributing a diverse and unique range of content and services that reflects and connects the communities of Aotearoa.”

While multi-media public service media organisations may find internet platforms “the most effective means of delivering” content, experience here and overseas shows that, for radio listeners in particular, they are the least effective means of actually receiving content.

While NZ on Air and Thompson may believe internet platforms are like a Swiss Army knife with multiple blades and tools they overlook the fact that you can only use one of them at a time.

And while they insist the new entity is needed to create new forms of content and reach different audiences, it is really about cutting distribution costs by moving transmission of programmes from broadcasting to the internet.

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