Save Radio New Zealand

I was called yesterday by a man who works as an electricity meter reader and who cant be here tonight. He phoned me to say that he cares passionately about saving Radio New Zealand because it is such an important part of his life. He listens to Radio New Zealand all day long, and says it keeps him sane, as well as well informed, and he looks upon it as his university of life.

And that is the case for thousands of New Zealanders, myself included. Radio New Zealand is an important part of our daily lives, a way of keeping ourselves well informed and up to date. And that is why the government's move to freeze Radio New Zealand's budget indefinitely has created such widespread opposition.

But to understand just how important Radio New Zealand is, we need to consider the wider context of the media in New Zealand.

We have the most deregulated media environment in the Western world, with no restrictions on foreign ownership -or just about anything else.

As a result, virtually all of our radio stations, all of our newspapers, all of our television channels are run by foreign corporations.

The only New Zealand owned media left in New Zealand are the Otago Daily Times, a few West Coast papers, Maori TV, TVNZ and Radio New Zealand.

And you could be forgiven for thinking TVNZ was not owned by New Zealanders anymore. Stripped of its Charter and all of its public service functions by the National government, its two main channels are indistinguishable from any other commercial channel. They are saturated with commercials, and broadcast as much as 80-90% foreign content on TV2.

In such a commercially focussed, foreign controlled media environment, Radio New Zealand stands out as a genuinely unique New Zealand broadcaster, with 92% New Zealand content and the most extensive news and current affairs service in New Zealand. It is as Brian Rudman puts it, a sort of town hall for a community of 4 million people widely dispersed from the North Cape to Stewart Island.

It is also one of only two broadcasters left in New Zealand-the other being Maori tv—that exist to serve the public interest, rather than to expand the profits of its shareholders. It is the only broadcaster left in New Zealand that is free from commercial pressures, that is not beholden to advertisers and sponsors -that is not beholden to anybody, in fact, other than its listeners. This gives it an independence and an ability to provide in depth coverage of social and political issues that no other media in New Zealand can match.

And so in a sense our campaign to save Radio New Zealand is also a last ditch campaign to save the last vestiges of public service broadcasting in New Zealand.

Yet some commentators are asking, why shouldn't Radio New Zealand tighten its belt and pay its own way, and have sponsors and advertisements, as other broadcasters do? Why should it remain commercial free.

Brian Edwards answered that question in a recent blog. He argues that it is almost impossible to have quality broadcasting in a commercial radio environment, because the saturation level of advertising required to keep a commercial radio station viable makes in depth coverage of complex social and political issues almost impossible. Everything is reduced to bite sized chunks that fit around advertisements and there's no room for extended interviews and in depth discussions of complex ideas, which are the daily fare of Radio New Zealand.

And you need only look at television current affairs to see how true that is. The constant refrain of both Mark Sainsbury and John Campbell, is sorry, we've run out of time. We've got to go to an advertising break.

There are other reasons why Radio New Zealand should resist the pressure to commercialise its service and introduce sponsorship. If a broadcaster becomes reliant on advertisers and sponsors it is in some sense beholden to them, and this will almost inevitably compromise its editorial independence somewhere down the line. I mean realistically you cannot get stuck into a sponsor.

The falling out between McDonald's and the New Zealand Herald after the Herald exposed the fact that a woman found maggots in her McDonald's hamburger, gives some insight into the pressures advertisers can bring to bear on the media. McDonalds tried to stop the Herald publishing the story, and once it had printed it, it removed all copies of the Herald from its restaurants and is in talks with the Herald about its future advertising spend—said to be about $2 million dollars a year. That's no doubt code for saying it is threatening to remove all of its advertising from the Herald.

Good on the Herald for having the courage to publish the story, but it begs the question, how many stories are censored or watered down as a result of pressure from advertisers and sponsors; and how many stories never get to air?

That's why its so important that we have one broadcaster left that is free from these sorts of pressures; that can hold corporations as well as governments to account without fear or favour.

An independent and impartial news and current affairs service is a crucial part of any democracy, a powerful check on governmental as well as corporate power. That's why I am so concerned about the pressure the Minister is bringing to bear on Radio New Zealand.

It's not just that he has told the broadcaster that its budget is frozen for the next 6 years -- despite advice from an independent KPMG audit that Radio New Zealand is severely underfunded, under staffed and under-resourced, and unviable even in the short term without additional funding of 5-7 million a year. It is the fact that he is using the funding crisis he has created to try to radically change the way Radio New Zealand operates and force it to adopt a more commercial model -just as he did with TVNZ.

In a bullying letter to the Chair of the Radio New Zealand Board the Minister told the Board it needed to change its mindset, and look for different revenue models. That's code for saying it should shed its commercial free public service mandate and adopt a more commercial approach -even though this would undermine its independence, and its raison d'etre.

The Minister has obligingly told Radio New Zealand that he would be happy to amend its legislation to allow it to accept sponsorship, but if Radio New Zealand capitulated to his pressure and went down that track, and we began our days listening to MacDonalds Morning Report, it would be the start of a slippery slope to full commercialisation. And one only has to look at TVNZ to see what happens when a public broadcaster is forced to rely on the commercial dollar.

That's why we must resist the Minister's demands for Radio New Zealand to adopt a more commercial approach, and insist that the government fund Radio New Zealand properly. The Minister is giving the impression that New Zealand cant afford Radio New Zealand in its present form. But its all a matter of priorities. If any project is called a motorway the Government can't bend over far enough to find an extra billion dollars or so, and now we learn its about to give a 4 million dollar subsidy to mining companies to help them explore mining in our national parks. And somehow it managed to find 40 million dollars to invest in private schools and other pet projects.

Yet at the same time it is deliberately putting the screws on Radio New Zealand, and Radio New Zealand is bleeding. With the costs of electricity, transmission, rent going up all the time, freezing its funding is actually cutting its funding -that's why Radio New Zealand had to cut $1.5 million from its budget last year and will have to make even more drastic cuts this year.

It's death by a thousand cuts.

The Chief Executive of Radio New Zealand admitted that as resources tighten there will be a deterioration of standards in Radio New Zealand-more overseas, pre packaged programmes, cutbacks in regional offices and even the Auckland office -and all of these will reduce the quality of Radio New Zealand.

There are signs too that the government is trying to gag Radio New Zealand.

Creative New Zealand's acting Chief Executive advised the Minister of Broadcasting recently: "You may wish to indicate your concern to the Board about continued public comment by Radio New Zealand about funding." In other words you may wish to gag Radio NZ. So its great to see Radio NZ here covering this meeting regardless of that veiled threat.

And lets not forget the pressure that private radio stations are putting on the government to cut Radio New Zealand's funding. Brent Impey former chair of Radio Works has been publicly campaigning to cut Radio New Zealand's funding -no doubt because commercial radio sees it as a threat to their ratings. Their pleas may be falling on receptive ears as two Cabinet Ministers had former careers in commercial radio.

Conservative governments seem to dislike public service broadcasting. George Bush spent years targeting American public service broadcasting and John Howard spent years attacking Australian national radio, and it was only a popular revolt that saved it.

But we cannot stand by and allow our government to destroy the last remaining public service broadcaster in New Zealand. We need to learn from our Australian cousins and stop it by a popular revolt.