First to the Future - at a cost

By JAN CORBETT

No one will be more disappointed if you don't enjoy yourselves going into the new century than those anxious people at the Millennium Office.

After all, they have spent a considerable amount of your millennium money on giving you a good time, even though some of that cash has gone to the America's Cup and Olympic torch relay, both of which would have happened anyway.

To ensure you don't grumble about all that, the Millennium Office has also invested your money in a campaign to convince you that it was a good idea to spend it all in the first place.

That campaign will be most familiar to TV3 viewers. Called First to the Future, it looks like a branding exercise for TV3.

In fact, it is a branding exercise for the millennium celebrations. Taxpayers provided $1.7 million to produce it while TV3 "donated" $6 million of airtime.

A further $2.8 million of public money has gone to Canadian-owned TV3 as host broadcaster. This creates the ironic situation of privately owned TV3 having $4.5 million of public money while publicly owned TVNZ is relying on a private sponsor, Telecom, to finance its millennium-related broadcasting.

As part of the arrangement, TV3 also gets to have its logo embroidered on the official millennium clothing being produced by Ezibuy.

Toward 2000 Taskforce chairman David Beatson says the Millennium Office does not see it as the taxpayer paying for a private firm such as TV3 to promote itself.

"It's stimulating interest in millennium celebrations and giving us a very good promotional deal for the investment."

The crucial thing about the millennium programme, he says, is that "New Zealanders own the process and feel positive towards it."

Why?

Mr Beatson says taxpayers and Lotto ticket buyers seeing their money go towards a celebration will want it to be successful. "The last thing you would want is for it to be a fizzer."

Enter the Bank of New Zealand, also a foreign-owned private company. Relax, it did not get any taxpayer money, even though the Millennium Office approached it to become involved.

Instead, the bank gets to use the First to the Future millennium brand in its marketing in exchange for paying for the millennium programme advertisements placed in metropolitan daily newspapers.

Millennium office brand manager Mike Noon sees no contradiction in one private firm being paid to market the brand and make it its own and another paying to use it. TV3, he says, is essentially giving hours of airtime.

The former National Government agreed to spend $20 million celebrating the new millennium.

That is $5 million less than the Towards 2000 Taskforce asked for, and at $5.60 a head of population, less than other developed countries are spending. Australia is spending $82 a head, Britain a generous $220.

Of the $20 million New Zealand is spending on the millennium, half comes from taxpayer funds and half from the Lottery Grants Board.

The Lotto money is being distributed across an enormous, bewildering and sometimes comical array of community-based projects.

The tax dollar is going on a far smaller but at times no less bewildering list of millennium events.

The largest handouts of taxpayer money have gone to TV3 ($4.5 million), the Gisborne dawn events ($1 million), the America's Cup ($1 million) and the Olympic torch relay ($440,000). Next comes $400,000 each to the Chatham Islands and Mt Hikurangi dawn events.

Early on, the Towards 2000 Taskforce identified several risks for the Government's hope of generating between $99 million and $194 million on the back of millennium publicity through increased tourism and trade.

One was that the media coverage might be "dominated by negative images - of excessive revelry, protest, confrontation or crime."

Another was that the world would ignore us at dawn.

The answer was to invite both TVNZ and TV3 to bid for the role of host broadcaster.

TV3 won the $2.8 million contract. What that buys is its participation in a consortium of international broadcasters led by the BBC under the banner 2000 Today and in the Millennium Live broadcast being coordinated by the US-based Millennium Television Network.

Before it won the host broadcaster role, TV3 was offered 20 minutes in the 2000 Today schedule. TV3 millennium project director Andrew Stefanou says it would probably have not been taken up because of the huge investment required and the poor advertising return over the holiday season.

But as host broadcaster, on the editorial board of 2000 Today and now with Millennium Television, TV3 promises that two hours of New Zealand footage will be shown internationally.

That would never have happened without taxpayer funding, says Mr Stefanou. "We certainly wouldn't have mounted a 30-hour comprehensive broadcast with live coverage ... to cover events and locations to take to the world - there'd be no commercial sense for a commercial network to do it."

Although both Mr Beatson and Mr Stefanou say the $2.8 million covers the cost of the broadcast, TV3 has also found a sponsor for the show - the BNZ.

The further irony is at least 14 international television networks will be in New Zealand to cover the millennium.

Television video news agency APTN is one consortium member sending its own crew. Sandy MacIntyre, its man in charge on the night, says: "APTN prides itself on being first with the news and New Zealand that day is big news."

Ironically, although it will take TV3's pictures, APTN will work from TVNZ's headquarters and use its satellite network.

TVNZ will also feed millennium-related news to its international broadcasting affiliates.

Does this mean taxpayers have been overcharged by $2.8 million to put New Zealand into the living rooms of the world?

Not according to Mr Beatson, who says that international media would not have come without the base TV3 provides for getting pictures from difficult-to-reach areas of the country, particularly the three critical sunrise sites in the Chatham Islands, Mt Hikurangi and Gisborne.

Although Mr Beatson scoffs at the suggestion that the Government will control TV3's coverage of celebrations, the Millennium Office is consulted on programme content. Many of the events being filmed on the night are happening because of Millennium Office funding.

Publicly owned Radio New Zealand has also been appointed an official millennium broadcaster, a contract worth a comparatively paltry $39,000.

It, too, says it could not have provided the comprehensive 24-hour coverage it intends without that money. Although essentially for domestic consumption, the programme will be broadcast on shortwave across the Pacific.

RNZ's millennium programme executive producer, Don Rood, says the Millennium Office has set guidelines for what it wants from the broadcast, that it reflects what New Zealanders are doing on the night and concentrates on events in the Chathams, on Mt Hikurangi and in Gisborne.

Has it been instructed not to cover riots or revelry?

No, says Mr Rood, adding that it would be "silly to gag the media in that way."

No print medium has Millennium Office funding.