Debate on Crown Entities, Public Organisations, and State Enterprises — Television New Zealand

Well, it is just over 2 years ago that Television New Zealand was turned from a State-owned enterprise into a Crown entity, and given new legislation, a new charter, and a new mandate. There was a tremendous amount of hype and, indeed, a lot of hope. We were going to have a State broadcaster that would reflect New Zealand to New Zealanders. It was not going to show the same incessant diet of foreign programmes available on TV3 and other commercial television channels; it was going to show New Zealand to New Zealanders. We gave it money to implement its charter—about $25 million last year and the previous year. I think it is timely, 2 years later, to take stock and to ask ourselves whether it has worked. Has TVNZ lived up to its expectations, and have we seen, as we were told at the time that we would, more and better of New Zealand on our television channels?

💬 Hon Marian Hobbs: All that ballroom dancing!

I will come back to the ballroom dancing. When I looked at the fine print, which I did recently, I discovered that we have had less, not more, New Zealand programming on TVNZ since it has turned itself into a Crown-owned entity, since it has had its charter, and since we have been pouring money into it. The total number of first-run New Zealand programmes is actually down by 3 percent, or 185 hours, since the charter came in in 2003. If one takes out the repeat programmes, and looks at the 6 a.m. till midnight figures—which is what, internationally, one normally does—one finds that the Television One figure was actually down last year from 43 percent to 42 percent, and the TV2 figure was down by 1 percent, to 17.9 percent. Overall, for both of our publicly owned television channels, 38 percent of the programmes that screened from 6 a.m. till midnight were New Zealand programmes—in other words, 62 percent of the programmes were foreign. Frankly, that is appalling. In particular, what is the point of owning a television channel, TV2, when 83 percent of its programmes are foreign? We were assured that we would not see the same incessant diet of foreign programmes available on other channels. In fact, that is exactly what we have.

The television channels have managed to hide slightly the fact that we are actually going backwards in terms of New Zealand content, by setting voluntary quotas. That is basically a public relations exercise, where one sets a quota one would like, then trumpets that one has met the quota. But when I actually looked at the quotas, I found that Television One has reduced the quota it has set itself. It was 53 percent in 2003; in the last year, it has reduced the quota it has set itself to 52 percent. And TV2 has set itself a quota of 19 percent. We have to ask why TV2—the channel that our young people watch—is screening fewer than half the number of New Zealand programmes that Television One screens. It is quite extraordinary. The total number of first-run New Zealand programmes has gone down by 3 percent since the charter came into effect, in 2003.

We have to ask ourselves what the point of it is. We are not getting more New Zealand programming; actually, we are getting less. Where has all that money gone? What was the $25 million spent on last year, if it was not spent on increased numbers of New Zealand programmes? It certainly was not spent on children’s programming, which was something else we were assured we would have more of. In fact, TV2’s children’s programming was down by 115 hours to the lowest level in 5 years. Once again, we see a steady decline, and that is exactly the opposite of what we were assured would happen—we were going to see more New Zealand programmes, and so forth.

Everyone is asking where all the charter programmes are. People are talking about the fact that we seem to have an off-peak charter in that the charter is being met in off-peak hours.

Report noted.

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