Wheels squeaky and wobbly on public media reform

Editorial independence and competition concerns dominate submissions from commercial and public media on public media bill but there hasn’t been a lot of reporting on what audiences might think, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in The Bulletin.

“The worst day yet for the merger”

You might have noticed that the Queen’s memorial service was broadcast yesterday on Newshub and RNZ, and not via the state broadcaster, TVNZ. Duncan Greive writes that in the current climate of discord about the proposed reform of public media and merger of RNZ and TVNZ to form Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media (ANZPM), that call had “more than a whiff of passive-aggression”. Late last week, submissions on the Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media bill were made public. Greive describes the tone of the submissions and their publication as setting the scene for “the worst day yet for the merger”.

“Need to go back to the Muldoon government to find a similar power”

As a complete tragic, I had a read through of some of the submissions over the weekend. BusinessDesk’s Daniel Dunkley summarises (paywalled) the ones from TVNZ and RNZ media well. Both raised concerns about editorial independence but diverged on the form the entity should take. TVNZ questioned why ministers would need further powers of direction over ANZPM as laid out in the bill, writing: “Our research suggests that in the New Zealand context, members of the select committee would need to go back to the Muldoon government to find a similar power.” Commercial media concerns are well summarised here and centre around the ability of ANZPM to outcompete commercial media on talent, content and advertising revenue. The Herald’s Damien Venuto (paywalled) situates the debate among some facts about the success of mergers.

The key stakeholder in all this is the audience

By way of a counterpoint, Better Public Media chair Myles Thomas labels the concerns raised by media in the submissions as scaremongering. He picks up the news that the government will redirect nearly $85m from NZ On Air to the new public media entity. He makes the point that without a platform willing to broadcast certain types of programming, that programming doesn’t get made. The move to shift commissioning funding to the entity, a ready-made platform, makes sense, he writes. Thomas concludes by saying “the key stakeholder in all this is the audience – not advertisers, not the industry, certainly not politicians and not journalists.”

Where is the audience?

In my days of column writing, I once riffed off a comment from Glen Scanlon, who is now working on the creation of ANZPM at RNZ, where he noted that the audience voice is so often missing from media commentary. From a random sample of submissions, here is what some of them think. Alastair would like less reality TV on TVNZ. Elaine is worried about Concert FM. Nicolla is a fan of Māori language content aimed at kids. There were also a lot of synchronised submissions on media independence, some of which vibe with what media see on their Facebook pages. Meanwhile, a recent US survey found 54% of 13 to 38-year-olds want to become social media influencers. Quelle horreur but that generation presents one of the biggest challenges to media today and weren’t super prominent in the submissions. They don’t just want to passively consume media, but create it. When talking about that audience, concerns about competition within existing New Zealand media may eventually pale by comparison.