KEY POINTS:
Television New Zealand is trying to outbid TV3 for rights to Fox Television programming - begging awkward questions about the taxpayers-can-pay logic underpinning the Kiwi television business.
The state broadcaster has been crying poor. It can't deliver profits, it has to cut back its news operations and starting this year it needs taxpayer subsidies for the Sunday current affairs programme.
Yet TVNZ - which already holds the rights to Warner Bros and Disney content - is willing to bid tens of millions of dollars to challenge TV3 for shows like Boston Legal, House and The Simpsons.
They would fill TVNZ programming vaults to overflowing and devastate TV3. Then - a delicious irony this - the Government releases TVNZ submissions that accuse Sky Television and its free channel, Prime, of being a domineering, acquisitive menace in the TV world.
Where will the money come from? Most likely more subsidies - and more bizarre claims about advertising-earning commercial content being charter shows.
TVNZ programming last year received $40 million from New Zealand on Air and $16 million of charter funding. Alas, the TVNZ charter has become the TVNZ Survival Fund.
Lets be fair to TVNZ. Under its governing legislation it has to make a profit, and starving TV3 of content makes short-term business sense. There are solid arguments that Sky should be regulated to maintain the strength of free TV for the advertising market.
But the Fox deal - with TVNZ crying poor while spending up in Hollywood - goes to the heart of why the model for Television New Zealand, with its hands-off regulations, is truly broken. Politicians have never been willing to fix it.
WHO OVERSAW THIS?
Who are the politicians that have controlled the broadcasting portfolio?
* Maurice Williamson: "Minister of Market Forces."
National's private-enterprise-friendly Communications Minister was even less tempted to regulate Sky Television than he was to rein in Telecom - though some argue that the results there have been similar.
Williamson was an admirer of entrepreneurs Craig Heatley and Terry Jarvis who started the pay-TV firm. Lack of regulation ensured that it was able to grow swiftly and unencumbered. To be fair, Williamson inherited a new system from Labour that was light on regulations unlike Telecom, Sky was small, and during his era at least, no threat to anybody.
* Marian Hobbs: "Minister of Muddles."
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and there were lots of potholes during Marian Hobbs era as Broadcasting Minister. It was a period marked by muddled ideas about social and cultural goals mixed with overseeing the Beehive's paybacks to TVNZ for imagined wrongs.
Hobbs never understood the idea of broadcasting as a business. In her era Labour killed off TVNZ's early, flawed aspirations for a digital strategy to challenge Sky - which some believe was a missed opportunity. Like another Labour politician, former Speaker Jonathan Hunt, she took advice on the state of broadcasting from Tony O'Brien, Sky's ubiquitous political lobbyist who kept other politicians apprised of industry developments as Sky-funded organiser for the parliamentary rugby club.
* Steve Maharey: "Minister of Broadcasting Bureaucracy."
Broadcasting was a minor portfolio for a busy minister; Maharey privately lamented the state of the portfolio he inherited from Hobbs.
Former Massey University media studies lecturer Maharey worried about the influence of Sky's controlling shareholder Rupert Murdoch, but reacted not by regulating Sky but by bolstering a complicated and bureaucratic concept of public service broadcasting. Maharey's approach centred on giving TVNZ whatever cash it wanted with as little scrutiny as possible. An anti-Murdoch phobia held sway with the implementation of Freeview, a new platform for digital free-to-air television that would act as a counter to Sky. But some believe the idea is too little, too late.
* Trevor Mallard: "Minister for Holding the Fort."
Pragmatic Mallard is largely disinterested in his smallest portfolio, which he picked up when Maharey resigned from Parliament. Mallard was stunned by the "money for nothing" terms of state subsidies to TVNZ and approved by Maharey, and instituted changes. Broadcasters have talked to him about the growing influence and power of Sky. But he has shown no interest in rocking the boat with any media player in the run-up to the election.
MEDIAWORKS' ME-TOO
MediaWorks and TV3 have never been shy putting hands out for a subsidy. NZ On Air approved indirect subsidies to TV3 and C4 owners for $23 million last year. But in its submissions to the Ministry for Culture and Heritage review, MediaWorks had the obvious solution to challenging Sky's dominance. More taxpayer grants.
"Our recommendation is to provide seed funding for additional Freeview channels to provide diversity of content without direct consumer cost. This would have the added benefit of creating additional interest in the Freeview platform and will allow analogue shut-off to occur earlier, creating additional value for New Zealanders as the VHF frequencies are reclaimed."
It questions rules that allow Sky to own free-to-air channel Prime, saying this has the potential for additional monopolistic tendencies.
KIWI MOVIE RIGHTS
The film production company that won critical acclaim for its movie Out of the Blue, about Aramoana killer David Gray, has picked up the rights to children's book series Pony Club Secrets, by New Zealand writer Stacy Gregg. Gregg has signed a deal with the film production company Desert Road Films for the rights to film the first three books in the Pony Club Secrets series. Pony Club Secrets is published by HarperCollins UK, but the books are set in New Zealand.
The books have sold more than 100,000 copies aimed at 7 to 12-year-olds. The fourth novel comes out next month and there are to be 12 books in the series.
Gregg said she had an expression of interest in the series from a major US film company, but she was glad the story was going to a New Zealand producer.
Gregg founded the fashion website Runway Reporter with her partner Michael Lamb but stepped down recently. She remains editor-at-large for Fashion Quarterly Magazine.
THE PEOPLE'S FLAG
Left-wing political commentator Chris Trotter raised some eyebrows at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival this month, where a panel of two writers discussed the dangers of free-market globalisation.
After handling the session with some aplomb, the high-profile journo became animated in his praise of the panellists and finished by paying tribute to those who had fought for freedom.
And let us remember the words of Bob Dylan, he said, before breaking into a verse of Dylan's Chimes of Freedom, in full voice. The sing-song is a bit of a party piece for Trotter, who stood up during coverage of one election to break into a full-throated chorus of the Socialist anthem Internationale.
MOVE ON BOTANY?
Talks for Reading Cinemas to buy SkyCity Cinemas are close to fruition, but with the value of the cinemas written down. If Reading needs the cash, a High Court decision has indicated it might have a buyer on the horizon for its Botany Downs cinema in Auckland - co-owned with Everard Entertainment.
On May 7, the High Court at Auckland ruled Everard Entertainment was entitled to acquire Reading's 50 per cent interest in that cinema for $4.3 million. The quarterly report for US-owned Reading said it had been advised that it could appeal. But it is "currently reviewing options, given that the offered price may be attractive".
