Letters to Editor: Goggle box turn off

SWITCHOVER: Plans are advanced to scrap analogue television for digital. For over a year now, we have been flooded with the pros of the coming digital TV revolution.

Goggle box turn off

From this year, our regular analogue form of broadcasting will start shutting down and we will all have to switch over (or off) to digital television whether we like it or not.

For those of you like me who can't or refuse to fork out over $100 a month to media giant Sky, Freeview is apparently the answer to our prayers.

When Freeview started out I would have loved to have been able to get it. All those new channels: Educational and informative Stratos and TVNZ 6 & 7, Music channel C4 and also "TV3 Plus One" - whatever is on TV3, played one hour after it originally aired. All looked to provide a larger range of informative, fun programming than the current offerings with some good, old-school TVNZ repeats thrown in for good measure.

But Freeview, or at least the TVNZ side of it, has now utterly lost me. TVNZ 6 was the first to go, replaced by Kidzone and "U" - The trashy "reality" programming for "U" would make the simple lessons taught on Kidzone look like nothing short of astro-physics by comparison. Stratos has also gone - folding just before Christmas.

And now TVNZ 7 is being scrapped and sold off to become, it would appear, an abominable Home Shopping Network.

The once great TVNZ bastion of quality New Zealand television, whose programming quality and ratings have continued to slip over recent years appears to have sold its soul and a large chunk of its old repeats (mostly paid for by New Zealanders' broadcasting fees) to Sky with the Sky-only "TVNZ Heartland" (Kiwis having to pay to see programmes we have already paid for!) and "Igloo": Pre-pay pay TV.

Local businessman and founder of TV Hawke's Bay Murray Sawyer is the East Coast spokesman for the "Going Digital" campaign.

This is a good sign, as one of the few hopes I have for digital television is that TVHB can develop and expand from its current snowy reception, local "Shopping Spree" mini- infomercials and constantly repeated musical pictorials of regional locations (I have never been to Porangahau and, after seeing pictures of it over 100 times, I now no longer need to).

It could also be the perfect outlet for students in EIT's "Diploma in Screen Production" to get work experience and offer the region wider viewing options.

We in Hawke's Bay have an added chance to help improve the viewing options of the nation, as the National Government's new Broadcasting Minister happens to be our very own Craig Foss.

Craig states on his website that he will "champion and make sure that our region's point of view is heard in Parliament".

So here is a worthy cause for Craig to champion and my challenge to TVNZ, Freeview and Murray: why should we bother? If viewers have to spend up on a new set-top box or new TV to receive our free-to-air viewing in "better quality" digital transmission, shouldn't the product we receive be something of equal quality to appreciate?

At the current rate good old TVNZ is running its business, channels and schedules, Freeview will no longer be delivering much quality programming by the time it (or whatever alternative people choose) becomes compulsory in 2012.

This could, of course, be the best thing to happen to the nation's fitness, intellect and relationships in decades, as New Zealanders turn the televisions off en masse and head back to reading books, newspapers, playing sports, spending quality time with their families or just going for a good old walk.

Andrew Frame, Napier

Unfinished business

It was good news for Hawke's Bay to read in your paper that a revitalised Labour Party and new leader David Shearer have made sure that Stuart Nash's skills and work for the Labour Party in Napier and nationally have been appreciated and retained.

The important role of chief of staff for Labour leader David Shearer will complement Labour's renewal and retain Stuart as a future leader for Napier and Hawke's Bay.

Thank you Stuart and Sarah, the people of Hawke's Bay are proud of you and look forward and an eventual return for "unfinished business".

Brian Gardner, Napier