'Local Content: King or Courtier?'

With Andrew Shaw chairing, the Minister of Broadcasting Hon Steve Maharey, Rick Ellis (TVNZ), Kelly Martin (CanWest/TV3), Karen Bieleski (Sky/Prime) and Larry Parr (Māori Television) discussed the future challenges and opportunities for free-to-air television in New Zealand, and whether local content will be king or courtier in a globalised, unregulated, multi-platform broadcasting world.

Andrew Shaw talking to the Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey.

AS: Well do you think the adventure has been worth it?  Has the experiment of changing TVNZ’s role and its funding mechanisms been a success?

SM: It’s been worth it – whether or not it’s been a success yet...  I think the goal’s been worthwhile – but whether we’ve succeeded or not, I think probably not – I think Rick would probably say that himself.  We started off down the road at the beginning of the century with probably not enough money to drive the Charter idea, we have put a bit more money in there; I think the real start in a way is now: because its giving TVNZ an opportunity to have a look at what a modern public broadcaster can look like, not try to be one of the traditional public broadcasters, which of course is both irrelevant and unaffordable for us –so I think in a way the idea has always been worthwhile, but in a way we’re at the beginning of the real quest for this now.

AS: Pretty much the point of view, or perspective of the majority of people in this room who run small production companies is - going forward – how important in the mind of the Government in setting policy, is local content?             

SM: I think the old adage of the industry is that ‘content is always king’ because in the end an audience has to watch it - so that means how important is local content to winning that audience.  My argument would be that we’re just about over the bridge now that NZ music has already crossed over with local content – we’ve talked about this before in forums like this – that NZ’ers are now very comfortable watching themselves on screen they actually want to seek it out; they like the drama they’re watching etc., so I think we’re now in a situation where you would expect local content to be at the centre of what people do – so then of course you pass onto the affordability question; given the amount of capacity we’ve got to fill in the future – that raises some difficult issues, but I’d expect NZ content to be a corner stone of what we’re going to do in the future.

Q: There’s often a dilemma – the Volume v Quality question arises is that as a small nation the hardest things for us to achieve are the top-end dramas docs and large multi-part high budget documentaries and like, and so an outcome is - not exclusively – but is it volume across the channel and into new broadcasting channels or is it finding a way to make it possible to still make the blue chip?

SM: Well it can’t be just volume because there’s just too much to fill capacity to fill – so that starts to raise questions like what do you do with archive material what do you call a repeat – if it’s been seen by 10% of the audience, and then another 10% see it – do you call that a repeat?  You’re moving it around the multi-channel environment – lots of questions like that.  What room does it leave you for large scale productions I notice just recently that the BBC who made the Recreation of Rome have decided they can’t afford to carry on doing it – I guess all broadcasters are facing the fact that in this environment it’s very hard to find budgets for these types of productions.  So I guess going forward you’d argue that its not just volume, its what you do with all the programming, and what you do creatively with the money you’ve got available, rather than perhaps constantly always be thinking how do we afford a constant stream of large costly productions.

AS: What about the rights issue: where producers want more ownership of rights, balanced against the funding agencies that want to recoup their investment?

SM: The issue has gone round long enough, hopefully within the next six to eight months we will have something positive from an industry point of view. We want to be able to resolve the issue of foreign sales.

AS: How do you protect local content?

Rick Ellis: TVNZ’s a public broadcaster and we have to be dominant when it comes to local content.  We want to extend the accessibility of our content through new platforms. At the same time there’s a drive to take costs out of business.  We’re enormously excited about the future and increased accessibility to local content in a digital and broadcast world, especially making use of our archive of programs.

Rick Friesen: We (TV3) see a strong future for traditional broadcasting, and are expecting to see more local programming. We do have a new media department that we are just getting up and running. Referring to new free-view offerings – from a commercial point of view initially the audience will be miniscule and the audience will take a while to grow.

Larry Parr (MTS): Put forward the idea that MTS is the only truly public service broadcaster and asked what this meant in terms of future commitment by the government e.g. for digital service.

 Producer: Penelope Borland

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Digital But Were Too Afraid to Ask

Battling with the questions about what the digital transition means: the “buyers” - representing producers, regional broadcasters, viewers and potential IPTV partners Ian Taylor, Jim Blackman, Russell Brown and Philip King faced off against the “offerers” Steve Browning, Kelly Martin, Geoff Hunt and Jo Tyndall.  Rick Friesen indicated that TV3 would like dialogue with producers to get the rights needed to digital content transmission; while Jo Tyndall advised that the MOA has been invited to consider options for digital, with the clearance of rights issues up front.

As another panellist pointed out, the business model needs to change; and the producers need to take control.

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