Election Concerns for Screen Industry
Our election is not far away!
Naturally, our thoughts are turning to what whichever coalition is formed after November 8 will do with broadcasting, as well as with the arts in general and screen arts in particular. The Film Commission, NZ On Air...?
We’ve written previously of the National Party’s plans in the past to sell off TVNZ, and the disaster that would be for the local screen production industry. Many think that John Key still maintains a hidden privatization agenda – perhaps we’ll see if that’s true sooner than some might wish.
But we should consider some other serious factors: for example, that New Zealand is the only “western” country with no fully public service (and therefore commercial-free) channel. In fact, not only do we have a government-owned broadcaster that is far more driven by profit and advertiser satisfaction than fulfilling (the joke that is) the Charter, we have more commercials per hour – even excluding the station and programme promos that they pretend are not ads! – than any other western country. Germany does not allow ads within TV programmes – on any channel.
Of course, no Guild member wants to stop TVC production. But equally, many of us also wish to work on the kind of quality public broadcasting that Maori TV is showing us is still viable in NZ. It is time to get rid of the nonsense that is the contradictory briefs given to TVNZ.
Perhaps the solution is the (not new) idea of selling off TV2, and using the money to establish TV-One as a genuine public service network. But would any potential NZ governing coalition seriously consider public service TV as a right and need, rather than an unaffordable privilege?
Although National’s broadcasting spokesman Jonathan Coleman has been frighteningly vague and waffly so far, we do know that National has no intention of enhancing public broadcasting – they intend to remove the TVNZ charter funding altogether. (I wish I had space to reprint Gordon Campbell’s article on this in the latest TAKE, the Screen Directors Guild magazine.)
Personally, like MP Jim Anderton, I’d also like to see the right of Kiwis to watch their national sport live on free-to-air TV protected, the way it is in the UK, Canada, and Australia.
But as well as being screen people, we are also ordinary citizens, with a wider concern for society as a whole. Thus, it disturbed me hugely when I heard the CEO of one of our major (Aussie-owned) banks say on National Radio that he wanted unemployment to rise, because “it would be good for the economy.” The arrogance, the callousness of such a remark, the gobsmacking indifference to the situation of a large segment of society – including no doubt many of his bank’s clients!
My perhaps forlorn wish is that one day we might be able to elect a government that understands that the economy was created in order to help people to survive and get along together – People were not created to be Units to enable an Economy to Function! Perhaps we could all think about that on polling day…
Tony F.
