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Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

MediaApril 11, 2022

Is it time for the TV licence fee to make a comeback?

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

With New Zealand’s new public media organisation officially a go, heated conversations on how it should be funded are all but inevitable. Samson Samasoni looks at the options, and finds out how other countries fund their own public broadcasters.

During the 1990s, a TV commercial featuring the Christchurch Wizard urged people to pay their broadcasting licence fee and posed the question: “How do you put a price on homegrown television?”

That will be the challenge for the government’s new public media entity: working out the price and a plan for sustainability when it swallows up TVNZ and RNZ sometime in 2023.

Broadcasting and media minister Kris Faafoi was tall on ambition but short on detail when he recently announced the as-yet unnamed public media operation. He was confident the new setup will guarantee free access to trusted news and information, future-proof public media in New Zealand, and showcase our unique voices and stories. But the mechanics of how it will work is being left up to a soon-to-be-announced establishment committee.

Given the evolving media environment and highly competitive advertising market, will the new non-profit entity – which will have both commercial-free and advertising revenue elements – be properly funded by the government to achieve the minister’s bold goal?

The financial details associated with the new organisation were redacted from the cabinet paper released with the announcement, so it’s hard to know at this point.

Some though, like Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington associate professor of media studies Peter Thompson, are concerned that the entity will rely too much on government funding.

“Crucially, balancing public service and commercial expectations requires the organisational structure and funding arrangements to be in sync. But this is unlikely to happen if one is determined by a committee and the other is left to the uncertainties of the Budget,” Thompson warns.

Myles Thomas, chair of the Better Public Media Trust, says how much the government spends and what precautions it puts in place will decide the fate of the new entity.

He’s concerned the funding will not be sustainable, the appointment of board members will be too political, and there’s no statutory watchdog to safeguard public media values.

The governance group tasked by Faafoi to come up with the business case for the new entity will undoubtedly have looked overseas for successful public media and funding models during their deliberations. RTE in Ireland, CBC in Canada and the BBC are often cited as excellent examples.

But RTE and the BBC still get much of their funding from a licence fee that’s collected directly from the TV set-owning public.

New Zealand scrapped its $110 licence fee (about $190 in today’s money) 23 years ago. Should the fee or something similar make a comeback to reduce the reliance on government funding and advertising? What happens elsewhere?

In Ireland, all television-owning households (even if your TV is broken) must pay an annual fee of €160 (NZD$254). Certain beneficiaries and those over 70 are exempt.

RTE gets roughly half of its budget from the licence fee and half from advertising. But like many public broadcasters, increased competition from digital platforms and private operators has impacted on its advertising income.

In 2019, the Irish government came up with the cunning plan of introducing a “device independent broadcasting charge” – if you had a TV, smartphone, laptop or tablet you’d have to pay because you’re “capable” of watching RTE, whether you did or not. But that idea was too hot to handle, so now a commission will soon recommend other possible reforms for the Irish TV licence scheme.

In Britain, 74% of the BBC’s £5.06 billion (NZ$9.66 billion) income is derived from a licence fee. The balance comes from commercials, grants, royalties and rental income.

For the British public, failure to pay the £157.50 (NZ$300) for a colour and £53 (NZ$101) for a black and white TV can result in a fine and, in some cases, a criminal conviction.

But controversially, earlier this year, even before the Conservative Party Christmas bunting had come down, the UK culture secretary Nadine Dorries tweeted that the licence fee would be abolished from 2027. Some of her colleagues weren’t impressed, as it hadn’t been fully discussed by the cabinet.

Whether or not Boris Johnson’s party is in power in 2027 to scrap the fee, the writing is firmly on the wall that the BBC will have to find new sources of revenue in the future. Various options are being mooted including a subscription service, part-privatisation, direct government funding or a hybrid model.

Certainly, New Zealand thought the licence fee model was imperfect, as it was axed in 1999 after a “three-year campaign of civil resistance” against what the anti-fee lobby called an immoral and unfair tax.

Investigative journalist Ian Wishart even wrote the book Beating Big Brother about the campaign, which he said was a tribute to the 100,000-plus who chose not to pay the tax and the 300 “freedom fighters” who went to court over it.

There’s no doubt that proposing a 1990s-style TV licence fee would be political suicide for any New Zealand party – potentially more unpopular than announcing there’ll be an announcement about another national Covid lockdown.

Even French president Emmanuel Macron is partly pinning his hopes of re-election on a new policy to remove that country’s €138 (NZ$218) broadcasting fee.

Left-leaning French politicians are concerned about leaving public broadcasting at the whim of government budget decisions, with one Socialist senator saying the implications would be “serious” for the independence of public media and amounted to “dangerous demagoguery”.

Canadians don’t appear to have the same concerns as the French senator. In fact, efforts by public broadcaster CBC to introduce more sponsored content have been so controversial that the Liberal government is now tossing in another $400 million (NZ$456 million) over four years to make the CBC less reliant on advertising.

The CBC gets about 70% of its funding directly from government and 30% is self-generated through advertising, subscriber fees, rentals and other financial arrangements.

If a broadcasting licence fee is out of the question for New Zealand, what are other ways of generating revenue?

Telecommunications Development Levy

Better Public Media Trust says revenue for the new organisation should come from industries that benefit from public media or the digital disruption that has driven the TVNZ-RNZ merger, and it should come via a repurposed TDL. Currently the TDL is paid by companies earning more than $10 million per year from operating a component of a public telecommunications network (fixed or wireless). The government uses the annual levy to pay for telecommunications infrastructure including the relay service for the deaf and hearing-impaired, broadband for rural areas, and improvements to the 111 emergency service.

Device levy

The Irish didn’t quite get there with a device levy, but Turkey employs a system that imposes different levels of levies on importers and suppliers of TVs/devices (including computers and cars), as well as a levy that retail customers pay. While the Turkish model seems a trifle complex, the principle of a levy collected by the private sector that contributes to the greater public good is already well established in New Zealand. For example, the National Disaster Fund run by the Earthquake Commission gets revenue from a levy placed on home insurance policies, collected by insurance companies.

Taxing the streamers

Many developed countries have already introduced or have well advanced plans to tax international streamers like Netflix and Disney+. In France, Netflix has committed to invest 20% of its annual revenue in on French content, both series and movies. Denmark will soon be charging international streamers 5% of their annual turnover to fund local film and television productions.

While there’s apparently some backroom work being done by public servants in Wellington on the matter, our government’s view on this is not yet clear. Many in the New Zealand screen production industry believe international streamers are getting a free ride by launching their services here with no commitment to New Zealand storytelling. Ideally the tax or levy on streamers would support the local screen production industry by going to New Zealand on Air for the contestable funding of local productions commissioned by subsidiaries of the public media entity.

Internet levy

How this differs from the TDL is that the levy would be a percentage of your internet/broadband bill whether you have a smartphone or home connection. The internet provider would pass the levy on to the public media entity or New Zealand on Air. Some argue that New Zealand internet connections are already more expensive than many other countries – mostly due to our smaller population – and that an extra charge would be unreasonable, especially on low-income earners. But there’s something elegant in a system that requires the digitally capable to support the digitally deprived, who rely on free-to-air TV and radio.

Electricity bill add-on

In Italy the €90 (NZ$142) licence fee is added to people’s electricity bills as 10 equal instalments paid from January to October. If you don’t own a TV, are over 75 years of age or on a low income, you can apply for an exemption. Their fee is lower than most other countries’ partly because they don’t have the exorbitant collection costs and high evasion rates they used to experience. South Korea also bundles its TV licence fee with electricity bills. South Korea’s national public broadcaster KBS gets about 45% of its income from the  licence fee, 25% from advertising and the balance from government and other sources.

Public broadcasting tax

In Finland the tax is automatically included in taxpayers’ withholding calculations. Those who earn more than €14,000 (NZ$22,119) pay 2.5% of their income up to a maximum of €163 (NZ$257).

Household levy

While it harkens back to bad ol’ days in New Zealand, every German household has to pay €55 (NZ$87) every three months. South Africa’s broadcasting corporation is advocating a similar approach, as currently it’s based on having a TV. But SABC believes a device-neutral household levy, based on the “possibility of access to SABC services” would be more appropriate.

Clearly, New Zealand is not going to return to the days when we could expect a heavy knock on the front door from someone chasing us up for our TV licence fee. But we will need to think more creatively about how to achieve sustainable funding if this is truly going to be a new golden era for public media and broadcasting.

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Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

MediaApril 9, 2022

How Whanganui became the backdrop for a 70s Texas porno slasher

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

Alex Casey chats to Jacob Jaffke, producer of the critically acclaimed A24 slasher X, about bringing Hollywood to Bulls. 

Movies don’t get much more meta than X. The film follows a ragtag group trying to shoot a low-budget R-rated movie (porno) on a creepy farm in Texas, before their hosts start to get decidedly inhospitable. But the actual production of X found itself in a similar situation. Forced out of America due to the pandemic, the low-budget R-rated movie (slasher) upped sticks to the other side of the world, transforming a farm on the outskirts of Whanganui into Texas in 1979. 

Mercifully, their hosts on the farm were a lot more obliging than those in X. 

“Oh no, they were great, they loved us,” laughs producer Jacob Jaffke (Uncut Gems, Sleepwalk With Me) over Zoom. “They had this delightful sort of darkly humorous sensibility – they loved the idea of someone making a film about blood and guts on their farm.” Part of their local hospitality included showing the cast and crew what “real sheep guts” looked like, and introducing the big-wig Hollywood crowd, including director Ti West (The Innkeepers, The House of the Devil) and stars like Scott Mescundi (aka Kid Cudi), Brittany Snow (Pitch Perfect) and Martin Henderson (Grey’s Anatomy) to the concept of an “offal pit”. 

It was a dream come true for Jaffke, who has wanted to make something in New Zealand ever since he visited in 2015 during pre-production for another project. But his fixation with the country began even earlier, around when a certain gargantuan fantasy series arrived in the early 2000s. “I got out of film school in 2003, which was basically when the extended DVDs for The Lord of the Rings hit the market,” he explains. “I sat there watching the umpteen hours of special footage about the making of those movies and just marvelling at the craftsmanship.” 

The opportunity to bring X to New Zealand arose in August 2020, right in the throes of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. “The Covid numbers in Texas were really high, and given what the movie is – scene after scene of very very intimate circumstances with characters – from a risk management perspective there was just so much that could go wrong,” Jaffke says. But they weren’t going to consider moving to New Zealand, which at the time was a Covid-free outlier, unless they could find the perfect farm. 

Stephen Ure and Martin Henderson, down on the farm in X. Image: Supplied

Local location scout David Curtis got to work photographing farms around the central North Island, and sent over a batch of options which included the farm that would make the movie. Neither Jaffke nor West saw it as an option at first, but Curtis insisted it would work, so they asked him to take more pictures. With a better understanding of the expanse of the farm, West looked again and told Jaffke: “wait, this is actually perfect”. A24 were plotting another production at the time – Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s TV show Mr Corman, which was eventually shot in Wellington – so the two were bundled together, opening the financial door for X to move its low-budget blood-soaked skin flick to Whanganui thanks to the New Zealand Screen Production Grant.

Production began in early 2021 after the international members of cast and crew made it through quarantine, which Jaffke describes as a “pretty great” two-week period of productivity. Director Ti West ended up writing a prequel to X, titled Pearl, while in MIQ, and Jaffke got to work on budgets and schedules so they could start shooting immediately after X had wrapped. “I remember sitting in the parking lot of the hotel where we were doing spatial diagrams like ‘the barn will go here, the house will go here’, so it was very productive. When you need to get to work, there’s no better thing than two guys left alone alone in a room.” 

Although shooting around the North Island, the farm is a central tenet in the world of X, as were the people who lived on the land – two women in their late 80s and early 90s named Joan and Spin. “They were amazing,” Jaffke says. “They had been on this farm for their whole lives, they raised horses and they were still active every day.” Joan and Spin were more than happy to advise production on all the ways they were wrongly representing farm life. “I think they really enjoyed seeing the circus come to town and what our interpretation of farm life would be.” 

Mia Goth stars in X. Image: Supplied

For X star Mia Goth, who plays both the role of young woman Maxine and spooky elderly farm-dweller Pearl, their hosts became even more useful. “Without the murderous rage buried inside of her, they were basically who her character is,” says Jaffke, explaining there was no better way for an actor to understand what life was like for a 90-year-old woman managing a farm. “It gave her a lot of rich things to pull from, but also everyone,” he explains. “They loved it too, they would be like ‘is there any killing today?’ and I would be like ‘I’ll check the schedule’.”

One the other perks of filming in New Zealand was that X was able to benefit from productions that had gone before – employing 226 local crew members, many of whom had just come off the Avatar sequels, and unearthing props used by other big movies. Finding period-accurate vehicles was a challenge until they discovered some 1970s police cars that had been left in a junkyard after appearing in Pete’s Dragon. “Three of them were operational so it was just like ‘great, lets fix ‘em up and get ’em out here’” Jaffke says. “Farmland is farmland, it was just the details that were tricky.” 

That said, X did face some hurdles in making New Zealand in 2021 look like Texas in 1979. “We had a hard time finding anything we could sell as a Texas gas station,” Jaffke recalls. The Bayou Burlesque strip club used in the opening scene ended up being part construction build, part VFX. The Wellington skyline has a starring role as Houston in the opening sequence too, but eagle-eyed viewers will notice a few digital additions – namely a swathe of oil refineries. Prequel film Pearl is also littered with local landmarks (and even more local actors), but you’ll have to wait slightly longer for that one. 

Brittany Snow in X. Image: Supplied

Jaffke thinks that X’s connection to New Zealand goes deeper than just the locations. Both he and West are big Peter Jackson fans, with Bad Taste inspiring West to direct and Braindead making an impression on a young Jaffke. “For me, I just didn’t think you could make anything that bonkers and just off-the-wall crazy,” he says. “Even with the Taika Waititi films and What We Do In the Shadows, there is this darkly funny sensibility that Kiwis have that is tied to mortality in some funny way. X is very much in that spirit too, it is in the spirit of a New Zealand film.”

Local audiences should see X in a particular state of mind, says Jaffke. “Don’t go in with prejudice or preconceived notions of what a slasher is because that will do you a great disservice watching this film.” Given the overwhelmingly positive critical response in the US, with Rolling Stone saying that X “marks the spot where baser impulses meets artistry” and The Atlantic praising the film for “taking the formula somewhere original”, audiences should be prepared for some surprises. 

“The movie is a lot more than what it seems to be on the surface or from watching the trailer,” says Jaffke. “For me it is funnier than it is scary, and that’s intentional. There are some kills that are straight up vaudeville comedy gags.” So, along with the North Island landmarks, keep an eye out for the local influence seeping through in the jaw-dropping Weta prosthetics, Peter Jackson splatter homages and Joan and Spin’s offal pit aesthetic. 

“We wanted it to feel as Kiwi as possible,” says Jaffke. “Not just because we were getting a good deal on a tax incentive or because of Covid, but because we are actually becoming a part of its film history.”

X is in local cinemas now for a limited time and will be available from on-demand rental services including Google Play and iTunes from April 21

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