Brian Rudman: Sky getting all presents at NZ TV's 50th

Rick Ellis (left) and John Fellet waxed lyrical at the announcement of the new exclusive-to-Sky TVNZ Heartland channel. Photo / APN

Only in New Zealand would public television mark it's 50th birthday by throwing a party to celebrate its final capitulation to the dark side that is pay television.

What was distasteful was the brazen boasting from the public television managers about all the "public good" loot they were dragging out of TVNZ's vaults and off to their new best friends at Sky.

If they hadn't bragged so loudly, and their party not tumbled into the weekend gossip pages, the 50 per cent of us who have yet to succumb to Sky's nocturnal recruiting calls might not have realised what we're about to miss.

Even allowing for normal television-land hyperbole, it would appear quite a lot. TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis was holding nothing back when he announced the new exclusive-to-Sky TVNZ Heartland channel. "Heartland will be a celebration of New Zealand and New Zealanders through some of our finest TV shows - some classic and some more recent shows."

Sky's chief executive John Fellet responded like a pig in muck. "This vault of content, which includes some of New Zealand's most beloved shows, is the biggest untapped resource since the Maui oil fields."

Eric Kearley, TVNZ's head of digital media, was just as effusive, saying the new channel "will strongly reinforce Kiwi roots" with "programmes that have helped shape our country, and shows that continue to influence our culture and way of life. It is a proud tapestry of our cultural identity."

All of which are great and commendable reasons for it being broadcast on the free-to-air channels from whence it came. But that isn't going to happen.

We haven't seen anything on TVNZ likely "to influence our culture and way of life" for many a long day. Not in a positive way at least.

And with this deal, we won't get to see the programmes that shaped ye olde New Zealand either.

Ironically, the purple passages mouthed by the TVNZ executives to describe the mission of the new exclusive pay channel could have been lifted straight from the ministerial briefing paper prepared for incoming Broadcasting Minister, Jonathan Coleman, in late 2008.

It emphasised that "yours is a role of considerable importance in the support and development of New Zealand's culture" and pointed to "the very great influence of broadcasting media on New Zealanders' understanding of their society and their involvement in its development".

It noted that New Zealand's distinctive culture was maintained by, among other things, "engagement with our history, heritage and environment, and by language, film and broadcasting ..."

Yet here, at a single leap, we have state television deliberately excluding 50 per cent of New Zealanders from engaging in, and being influenced, for better or worse, by the 50 years of filmed records that Mr Kearley calls "a proud tapestry of our cultural identity".

As one who has lived through NZTV's 50 years of rise and fall, I suspect that for most of us, rather than revealing a "proud tapestry" of the past half century, the recycled programmes will be more a Linus blanket, recalling memories to cuddle up with, or squirm with embarrassment over.

Still, they are our collective memories, paid for by our collective licence fees and tax dollars, and to deprive half the population from viewing them because they haven't paid for a private television decoder goes against the whole public service ethos that is the raison d'etre for having a state TV service.

Then who am I kidding. Last week's 50th birthday celebration for television in New Zealand could equally have passed as a delayed wake for public service TV, deceased after a long and debilitating terminal illness.

TVNZ says the "all New Zealand content" TVNZ Heartland will only appear on Sky because of an "all or nothing" deal with the private company. What, one wonders, has Mr Coleman to say about that. It seems only yesterday that pressure was put on TVNZ to allow Sky to broadcast the state provider's two new exclusive digital channels "6" and "7" on the grounds that Sky viewers were taxpayers too and state-funded shows should be available for all.

The new channel is also a betrayal of customers TVNZ persuaded to buy Freeview decoders and TiVo recording devices.

Back in November 2006, Mr Ellis announced how he'd persuaded the Government to spend $79 million over six years to establish two digital free-to-air channels as an incentive to lure viewers into buying set-top decoders and move over to the new digital platform.

"This is about offering compelling additional content to New Zealanders to encourage them to go and buy a $200 set-top box ..."

More recently, state TV has been trying to off-load their TiVo personal video recorders to viewers. Now customers learn these machines will not pick up all TVNZ programmes. To do that, they should have gone to the rival private provider.