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Radio New Zealand are cutting their payments to fiction writers. If you have a short story, a series, or an adaptation of a novel broadcast on National Radio, you'll now earn about 25 per cent less.
A letter to contributors broke the news last month. The drama and spoken features department has been under budget pressure for years and they can't perform any more miracles. They had two choices: stop buying any uncommissioned work, or keep buying but pay less.
They chose the latter. Good on them. RNZ have encouraged local authors for decades and decades. They hate having to cut back their support; the tone of their letter showed that. They're going to keep promoting New Zealand fiction as much as they can. Good on them No 2.
On the new scale, the pay will be $350 per quarter-hour story. At my geriatric slug pace, it takes me about 20 hours to plan/write/edit/re-edit something that length, which means I get $17.50 an hour before tax. I'm not putting down the deposit on that second yacht just yet.
And I'm not complaining. I still feel delighted and slightly incredulous that I can make a living ("living" being a term that makes my accountant gnaw his calculator) from writing. I just think it's such a pity that RNZ, in spite of its admirable efforts, isn't able to help more of our authors the way it used to.
Would it matter if we heard less local fiction on air? Of course it would.
If we lose such content, we start to lose our national voice. I don't mean affected beer-commercial drawls or references to pongas and pukekos; I mean the egalitarian, demotic, subversive viewpoint that's part of the New Zealand identity. Our fiction helps remind us who we are. It's our own lives speaking to us.
It also affirms that those lives are worth writing about. Cutting local fiction would imply there's nothing really special about New Zealanders; that we're just part of a global bland brand.
Good fiction explains things, puts them in context. Julian Barnes puts it perfectly: "Life says this happens. Books say this happens because ... "
Hearing quality New Zealand stories helps us see our lives in terms of pattern and meaning. When you read or listen to fiction, you become part of the story. You help complete it. You're made to feel special. Locally written material makes that "special" immediate and relevant.
Roger Hall, Graeme Lay, Fiona Kidman, Maurice Gee and many other major New Zealand writers started to become known through radio. Getting on air and getting paid for it helped them build writing skills, confidence, a profile to help them keep going. It'll be sad if, in spite of their continued efforts, RNZ aren't able to provide that opportunity for the next generations of our authors.
Up till 1999 in New Zealand, a public broadcasting fee meant that everyone paid a tiny sum towards funding local content on TV and radio. The fee was wiped as an election sweetener. How terrific if any political party this October has enough vertebrae to propose a similar source of funding for our writers. Or maybe that scenario is pure ... fiction.
David Hill is a Taranaki writer.