Q:        What do you call public service television that almost no-one watches, because almost no-one knows about it?

A:        TVNZ7

Q:        Why aren’t the programmes advertised?

A:        Because they might attract viewers from the commercial channels run by TVNZ.

It appeared to be an inspired plan, to get our state broadcaster to run the two commercial-free channels TVNZ6 and TVNZ7. TVNZ had the infrastructure, the studios, the staff and the know-how. It also had millions of dollars, kindly donated by the Government, to run the channels.

It was in fact an invitation for TVNZ to shoot itself in the foot. 

Our state broadcaster operates with one hand tied behind its back at the best of times. The mixed model that requires it to be mindful of public broadcasting requirements and programming  and at the same time be commercially successful and return a healthy profit to the government, is as daft as claiming someone’s a little bit pregnant. You can be a successful public broadcaster; you can be a successful commercial broadcaster. You can’t do both successfully because their aims and objectives are antipathetic.

Every viewer who switches to TVNZ7 is a viewer who isn’t watching TVOne or TV2. Why on earth would TVNZ  encourage people to switch to it? That would be commercially irresponsible. It’s also a dilemma the network faces every time it puts a public service programme to air, which is why most of them are broadcast in the dead of night or on Sunday mornings. The programmes that make up good public service broadcasting are in the main programmes that networks believe would spell death to the ratings.

I applaud the principle behind Clare Curran’s private member’s bill, intended to save TVNZ7 and force TVNZ to pay for it. But it’s never going to succeed as a public service channel until the divorce is at least decree nisi. Yes, TVNZ could pay to run the channel, but that funding should not be direct; direct funding means control.   The money should be ring-fenced from the annual dividend paid to the government – and that funding should not be direct either. It should be channelled through NZ on Air as is Radio New Zealand’s funding.

Arms length is the only safe place for a government when it comes to broadcasting. The temptation for politicians and ministries to meddle, and the temptation for their opponents to claim political interference is too great. That’s why the NZ on Air model works so well – it distances funding and monitoring from government. (I’m a former Deputy Chair of the Board of NZ on Air, so I’m allowed to be biased!)

The channel itself should be a  totally separate entity, run by a separate organisation. Whether that’s a trust, a government entity or a company is a detail that can be worked out later. What is important now is to remove the channel from the control of TVNZ  altogether – mere editorial independence isn’t enough.

The separate entity could still use TVNZ studios and staff and equipment if need be.  It would hire them, just as private companies do. It would, and should, expect mates’ rates, but it shouldn’t expect to use the facilities for nothing, although perhaps the cost could be absorbed and become a paper addition to TVNZ’s annual dividend.

Our new public service channel could then promote itself and its programming, it could advertise, it could make sure it was prominent in newspaper and magazine listings. In other words, it could become visible to a huge audience that is largely unaware that it exists, or what programmes it broadcasts and when they are available.

TVNZ7 deserves to exist in some form. For goodness sake, do we want to rejoin Mexico as the only country in the OECD without public service television?

But it should not be TVNZ7. It should be PSTV1. That’s the only model that is fair to TVNZ, and it’s the only model that would be fair to us, the public. 

Image created by Alison Withers

Here’s the tape that’s caused all the fuss. Fairfax has confirmed that it’s the real thing.

After listening to it, you might well decide that it is truly a storm in a teacup. But – it got Winston Peters and his motley crew into Parliament, so the PM may now be wishing he’d released it on the spot!

It’s difficult to decipher, but here’s a link to a transcript on The Jackal’s blog.

Time for a little light relief. Brilliant mock-advertisement by Jesse Rosten.

Photo: Dorothea Lange

Today  the Herald published a story lamenting the extra cost of local, free-range and organic foods, the very foods we’re being encouraged to buy and eat.  They estimate that the clean, green Kiwi options cost us on average 25% more. For people on a limited budget, that isn’t an option at all.

The Taranaki Daily News got closer to the heart of the problem with a story headlined ‘Free food draws poor kids to class’.  It quotes principals from Taranaki schools who say that some of their students rely on their school to provide breakfast and even lunch, just to survive.

Poverty in New Zealand is a problem we often conveniently ignore, preferring to see our country as a land of milk and honey.  Unfortunately, milk and honey are off the menu for hundreds of thousands of Kiwis. More than 200,000 of our kids are living below the poverty line; over 48,000 of them go to school without breakfast.  

This is a disgrace. No child in this country should go hungry. No New Zealand child should be cold or ill-clothed or living in an unhealthy or overcrowded house.  No child should be denied an education just because learning is too hard when you arrive at school cold, wet and hungry – if you get there at all.

The government has prioritised a number of policies to stimulate the economy in an effort to get us out of the current recession. None of these policies, to my mind, tackles head-on the most urgent task of all – eliminating ‘child poverty’.

This should be the number one priority. Nothing is more important. Nothing is going to stimulate the economy better in the long run than having our kids grow up healthy and well educated.  It’s a damn sight more important than ultra-fast broadband and super-highways.

‘Child poverty’  is a misleading term. It implies that the only people affected are the children.  But every child living in poverty is part of a household that is also living in poverty.  Whether that’s the result of generations of welfare dependency or a lack of jobs is not the issue.  The issue is how to break the cycle and get these kids into a situation where we can be confident they have a better future – by giving them a better present.

Brian and I used to support hungry kids in Africa; today our donations go to Kids Can to support hungry kids in New Zealand. If you’d suggested a few years ago that people might need to do this, we’d have scoffed.

But this isn’t a problem that can be solved by donations and charities and volunteers. This needs a full-frontal government assault; it needs policies and budgets and resources; it needs cross-party co-operation.  Above all, it needs the courage to accept the reality of the problem, and the will to make this shameful situation one of the past.

While this website is generally a sports-free-zone, I can’t resist sharing this – possibly the greatest fluke in soccer!