With just 24 days left until this year’s Budget, you might be wondering what is next for Radio New Zealand? For the first time in over a decade, RNZ is due to get a major boost to its funding in this year’s Budget. $38 million extra has been earmarked to go to New Zealand On Air and it is believed that between $20 and $30 million of this will go directly to RNZ. According to The Spinoff, NZ on Air may even be getting an extra $152 million extra over 4 years, it is unclear how much, if any, of that would go to RNZ. The question is whether any money that is allocated to RNZ should go towards expanding RNZ into having its own fully fledged television channel or whether it should be spent expanding its video content and other operations?
Paul Thompson, CEO of RNZ, has a huge repair job on his hands. Until last year, RNZ was operating under a 9 year funding freeze. At last year’s Budget, RNZ only got $11.4 million dollars extra over 4 years, that is just $2.8 million extra in funding per year and the last funding increase before that was just $2.4 million and that was allocated in 2008! A lot of people think that RNZ got its funding increase when the new government got elected, but RNZ actually doesn’t get its extra funding until after this year’s Budget which will be held on Thursday the 17th of May.
The priority for RNZ should surely be to fix the organisation as a whole, not establish a brand new television channel. This seems to be the direction that has finally been settled on and this is a good thing because RNZ is already doing very well at expanding its operations. Last month, CEO, Paul Thompson, said that he saw the changes that would be happening at RNZ as an evolution. It is RNZ’s plan to increase their video content which is broadcast out from its television channels and online. There is no urgency for RNZ to add a new TV channel at this time. RNZ already broadcasts out over television, radio and the internet. Indeed, Checkpoint with John Campbell, which broadcasts out five nights a week, can be accessed in the following ways: radio broadcasts on 101FM, livestream from the RNZ website, televised on Freeview Channel 50 and Face TV on Sky Channel 83. RNZ is going from strength to strength in its visual broadcasts. Last September, RNZ received its highest ever viewer numbers. During this time, they did a televised broadcast of the General Election results as they came in. Part of this is could be due to the big names involved in hosting the show, e.g. John Campbell. It is this televised show that is credited for RNZ achieving this milestone. Incidentally, Election 17 is also a finalist in the NZ Radio Awards this year.
You might be asking yourself, why doesn’t TVNZ establish a public service television channel instead? The last time we had a public service television station was in 2012. Despite the fact that TVNZ7 would have only cost $16 million per year for it to continue to run, the funding wasn’t renewed when it ran out in June of that year. TVNZ7 was a great channel and had good audience numbers .The dilemma for TVNZ had with running TVNZ7, was that it was essentially in competition with itself. TVNZ7 wasn’t advertised very frequently on its commercial channels because it wasn’t in TVNZ’s best interests to draw their audiences away from their advertisers’ content. TVNZ does have the infrastructure, what it doesn’t have is the will to produce public service television. However, TVNZ is only one charter change away from being made to produce public service television again. Should it? (Mwahahahahaha).
RNZ has a role as a Lifeline Utility radio broadcaster in the event of a Civil Defence emergency. In 2016, RNZ couldn’t afford to replace its analogue AM transmitter, which broadcast out over the South Pacific. They ended up being left with only a digital AM transmitter. I think that the funding increase could pay for a new analogue AM transmitter. Yes, the South Pacific is going to get more internet connectivity, but AM radio is still vital in an emergency and is going to be the most accessible form of information, for many, in the South Pacific for quite some time. Here in New Zealand, AM radio is still a vital resource in the event of a natural disaster. There is no guarantee that people will have electricity, access to the internet or that telecommunication networks will be functioning properly. Even if they are functioning, priority is likely to be given to emergency use. Radio is an effective way of keeping people informed.
Then there is the criticism from Tom Frewen, in the Otago Daily Times, that there are better things that the government could be spending its money on than RNZ. I have heard this argument a lot from various members of the public. To that, I would say that it is the media that informs the public or any problems that may exist in other parts of the public sector. For example, it is through the media, including RNZ, that the case of the woman losing her benefit due to a false tip off has come to light. Other things, the public know about the problems at Dunedin and Middlemore hospitals, and within the public health system generally, largely because of the media informing them. So, I would argue that having a well-resourced public broadcaster is actually a great way of helping other parts of the public sector.
RNZ has the opportunity to repair many years of damage to its organisation, maybe even reopen some of its closed regional offices! It can still expand its range of content for the diverse audiences that are in New Zealand and the South Pacific without going the full TV, at this stage. We will soon find out the fate of their funding!
I would be interested to hear from you. Which would you prefer? RNZ Plus the fully fledged TV channel or the evolution? Feel free to add your comment below.
UPDATE: 24/4/18 at 12:30pm: ” Members of a Parliamentary Committee are returning to Wellington today from their recess break to presumably complete their review of Radio New Zealand. At the same time the Broadcasting Minister is hinting that RNZ is not now going to get the funding promised in Labour’s manifesto.”
Richard Harman.
Sources:
Cabinet Paper on the Advisory Group for the Public Media Funding Commission redacted
Terms of Reference for the Advisory Group on the Public Media Funding Commission PMFC redacted
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12035952
http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/307195/rnzi-moves-to-a-one-transmitter-operation
Fund RNZ 
Prefer the status quo with extra funding for evolution
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Me too. I was originally a fan of RNZ Plus the TV Channel, but only if RNZ as a whole could be adequately funded to repair the organisation and that the TV Channel come from additional spending and not take away from RNZ’s other operations.
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Focus on evolution of RNZ.
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Radio New Zealand is a National Treasure and should be funded as such. It would be great if it could also have a National Television Channel so that both Radio and Television could Educate, Enlighten and Inform
There is funding available it depends on what other areas government will speed on.
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That would be fantastic!
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Absolutely continue the evolution – funny how the “if it works, change it” mentality is always waiting in the wings to grab what it can, and RNZ a dozen years ago was, to my ears, really going places – and then we got a National Government, with its anti-public-anything philosophies, which has laid waste public broadcasting (public ANYTHING, come to think of it….) – forget TV, and let radio be proper radio, and grow and develop as such!
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If the extra money is going to be reduced, as it seems probable from your update, I would get that charter changed for TVNZ and channel 7 up and running again letting RNZ continue to expand as they have been doing. More video coverage and more journalistic discretion on content would be something I’d like to see from RNZ, as over the past couple of years they’ve become more mainstream and less critical in its attitude, probably the political cost of securing money to continue.
It’s exciting that more money is going into public broadcasting to benefit us all – looking forward to better journalism all round.
ps. Is there any way to prevent future political parties, with different ideology, from interfering in public broadcasting? Is there some sort of charter which would bind politicians into providing the funding?
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Hi Sarah, I don’t know off the top of my head. What I do know is that the government has the ability to secure RNZ’s funding increase for several years into the future. As for legislation to enshrine it? I don’t know, but could look into it.
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RNZ was a Taonga. Not so now after 9 years of fiscal starvation from the Government it has lost its integrity, funny that! To restore public trust and relevance in a world of fake and selective content is a very high hurdle to overcome. I have lost faith in the executive and the Minister. TVNZ is a disaster for our Dimocruptcy. In short, ‘Fake news is bad news ‘ imo.
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