Allow television board to get on with the job, says Fox

11.50am

The chairman of the new Maori Television service, Derek Fox, says yesterday's decision to fire chief executive John Davy need not delay the launch of the broadcasting service.

"It needn't be a set-back in time terms at all, if we are allowed to get on with it right now," he told National Radio this morning.

"We had a roller-coaster week last week. We very nearly got all the ducks in a row, which would allow us to set a transmission date and commission some programming and move forward."

He declined to say when he expected the Maori TV service to go on the air.

"At the beginning of last week - on this very day last week - I thought we were 85 per cent of the way there."

He said that, as a result of the sacking of the chief executive there would be a "crisis of confidence in some people's minds". Members of "the bureaucracy" were starting "to put the brakes on and starting to become very conservative".

Mr Fox said the TV service was facing a "dual difficulty". There was pressure to have the channel on the air and from producers to be commissioned to make programmes while, on the other hand, the brakes were going on somewhere else.

Prime Minister Helen Clark and Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia have said they still have confidence in the MTS board.