A real alternative on the remote
Sue K this morning released a leaked copy of a memo from outgoing CEO Ian Fraser to the TVNZ Board back in October.
In it, he argues that TVNZ, as a commercial broadcaster, simply can’t meet the public service goals set by its Charter. To realise the need for true public service television Fraser suggests switching channel One to either a fully Government-funded, no ads, public service model or at least a fewer ads, semi-commercial model, or else set up new dedicated public service digital channels.
One thing that pretty much everyone but the Government seems to agree on is that the Charter compromise between public service and commercial goals doesn’t, and probably will never, work.
So politicians across the spectrum agree that the Government can’t have its televisual cake and eat it too, but they disagree on which should now happen.
The Greens and others argue that New Zealand needs true public service TV to provide an independent, non-corporate option on the remote, safeguard the nation’s culture and facilitate informed citizenship. Essentially, all the arguments for National Radio, applied to TV. Everywhere else in the world they are non-controversial and having at least one non-commercial channel is the norm.
Some will inevitably argue that New Zealand simply doesn’t need or can’t afford true public service TV. They would assert that *worthy* Charter programming doesn’t rate and is therefore a waste of effort and resources.
I would suggest that public service programming that people consistently want to watch can only be provided by a dedicated public service broadcaster. You wouldn’t expect, say, Newstalk to switch to National Radio mode now and then and expect the results to rate relatively well, because the expertise required is so different and a different audience has been assembled.
And why should a channel that only some people watch be paid for by everyone? For the same reason that everyone pays for everything else the Government provides, but not everyone uses all the time, such as the health, education and roading systems - for its ‘option value’. You may not use it every day, but your’s, and everyone else’s, life is richer for having the option of using it and you may have to use it some day.
December 13th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
The BBC, on the other hand, worked and worked well.
December 13th, 2005 at 10:24 pm
“You may not use it every day, but your’s, and everyone else’s, life is richer for having the option of using it and you may have to use it some day. ”
This isn’t health, come on - “have to use it”? Who has to use any TV channels? This sounds like the wonderful line from Yes Minister which was commenting on BBC Radio 3 - “nobody listens to it, but people like to know it’s there”.
What is stopping the Greens and all of the advocates of commercial free broadcasting starting up a non-commercial TV network throughout the country paid for by (shock horrors) voluntary donation rather than compulsory taxation? There IS a UHF non-commercial TV network reserved for not for profit broadcasters, which is used in very few centres (Auckland for Triangle TV specifically). This would be a very positive step forward, and Triangle IS a good broadcaster.
The arguments against corporate driven commercial TV are just as valid against state driven TV - the BBC, ABC and CBC all have a leftwing bias and allow little debate about NON-state driven solutions to problems.
December 13th, 2005 at 10:48 pm
hahaha, the bbc, abc and cbc have left wing bias!!
To think something like that true just goes to show how truely skewed media is by corporate interest.
I wouldn’t call the national radio station a public service station, it is usually pretty corporate wheneva i listen to it, as you’d expect in this day and age.
The reason a “real” community people values public media service will never happen is because media controls what people talk about and think about….if it didn’t it wouldn’t be so completely owned by corporate interests. So anything that resembles opposition to those with the power of ownership will off course be opposed-whether it’s a totalitarian corporate fascist state or communist state, the results are the same.
Democracy is suppose to to give power to the people, that is why media is such an important tool to undermine it.
December 13th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
When have you ever heard National Radio debate whether people should be forced to pay for a radio station they don’t listen to, or whether NZ On Air is a good idea? Never -because it is skewed towards statism.
Besides, what is stopping you setting up a radio station yourself or with like minded people, or buying time on access radio to express your views?
You can do it online easily enough.
December 14th, 2005 at 6:54 am
The corporate ownership of the media has given it such a right wing bias that the centrists are perceived as leftist by people like yourself. That’s too bad. It isn’t getting better.
respectfully
BJ
December 14th, 2005 at 10:05 am
bjchip - I couldn’t agree more!
December 14th, 2005 at 10:13 am
This debate always ends up the same way, you have to decouple the comercial concept of “advert free” from the principles of “pubic service broadcasting”,otherwise it does end up all about the money, and the reason for having a public service broadcaster is lost.
There are people who say the BBC is left wing, its opinions are often more left than other organisations which are more right wing, but those who say that are being very selective in their view. The Beeb is basically a good thing, but with a dodgy method of financing (licence fee) and its unwilling to be a “public service broadcaster”, it wants to be right up there with its rivals, which I dont think is nesessarily what the people want from a public service broadcaster, but the licence fee method of finance makes this inevitable, or folks would whine about paying for something they dont want.
December 14th, 2005 at 12:30 pm
The BBC do not have a left-wing bias. They have an establishment bias. If you think the british establishment (and the UK Labour party) are left-wing then you are clearly in need of professional help.
December 14th, 2005 at 10:24 pm
Stuey, so what do you think of a BBC journalist who describes stockmarket traders as performing a “useless task” if that isn’t a leftwing view? I’d say it was biased towards the right if it called welfare beneficiaries bludgers or protest marchers “trouble makers”.
Besides, what is stopping ANY of you from getting together and establishing your own broadcast outlet to express your views? What stops voluntarily funded public broadcasting?
December 14th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
scott, to you I would have to say:
http://www.medialens.org/
The ridiculousness of the arguments in your first para only makes me think your second is pants too. It reminds me of Libertarianz who argue in favour of private roads by saying that in a free market we will be able to choose which of the private road companies we want to frequent with our business and that this competition will drive improvements in the roading network.
December 14th, 2005 at 11:32 pm
libertyscoot said “what do you think of a BBC journalist who describes stockmarket traders as performing a “useless taskâ€??
I think i would like to hear the specifics of why that person has formed that particular opinion and then decide if i agree or not.
I also think that it has extra interest value because alternative opinions, like that persons, are not given any worthwhile coverage in media for a reason, and i’m betting that reason is not because they have no merit or wide support of sentiment in the general public.
December 14th, 2005 at 11:51 pm
The real pity over the current TVNZ debacle isn’t about the future model to be chosen (PBS core and sell off the rest, IMHO), but the slow train-wreck that we are witnessing. That’s draining value, energy, spirit and creativeness out of TVNZ as we blog on here, and the more the Govt digs away in the apparent interests of transparency, the worst it will get.
Whatever the future holds in terms of models, it certainly won’t have much in the way of human resources of any quality to build with. The brightest and best in TVNZ have long since left the building.
December 15th, 2005 at 2:23 am
Stuey, I will read that site with interest, though I note their acknowledgement of Noam Chomsky - a man who is on the record for dismissing the claims of genocide under the Khmer Rouge as “CIA propaganda”, he shut up when the number of “CIA agents” (Cambodian refugees fleeing the killing fields) started to be too high. He also said “eastern Europe under Russian rule was practically a paradise” - I’d like to think the authors of that site are interested in non-violence and peace, but such blatant ignorance of the murder of anti-American regimes is revolting. 250 million people killed in the 20th century due to goverment, 6x the figure for war - seems to me the state is a bigger threat than corporations ever are. You can always not buy products you don’t like, even if it is “hard” to wean yourself off them, you can’t defend yourself against the state when it attacks you.
I wouldn’t argue that privatising roads is about competition, it is about getting the government out of what it is not very good at. Privatising roads can mean many things, on the one hand it can mean running highways as commercial concerns, on the other local streets being owned collectively by adjacent property owners. One of the safest and least congested main roads in Australia is the privately funded and operated Melbourne Citylink.
I still can’t figure out why people who are against “corporate media bias” don’t just set up their own broadcasters?
December 15th, 2005 at 10:57 am
Libertyscott, if u find corporate media so fulfilling, what r u doing here? i wish u wern’t to b honest.
December 15th, 2005 at 11:19 am
Good (non) use of ellipses and context LibertyScott.
So why do you state that “privatising roads is about competition”?