KEY POINTS:
One of my New Year resolutions was to give up all radio and television work. Begone interviews, standing in for holidaying talkback hosts, panel discussions, political commentary, manufactured outrage, failed attempts at wit or defending articles that upset readers' delicate alimentary canals.
I thanked Newstalk ZB for bringing fun into my life in bleak times when I didn't feel like getting out of bed, let alone engaging with Paul Holmes and John Tamihere at breakfast time, and kissed them goodbye.
I trained in print journalism at Wellington Polytechnic 35 years ago; I return to my roots, so to speak.
Television producers appear bewildered when I turn them down. This is the age of instant celebrity - doesn't everyone want to appear on the telly? It used to be so easy to say yes when a producer rang from Close Up, Eye to Eye, Campbell Live, Larry Williams Live, Breakfast, or the TV3 Election Night Special. But then there's hair to be washed, makeup to apply, soundmen shoving hands up your jumper securing microphones, dry mouth, fixed smile and remembering all the pithy words you've practised. Sometimes it's hard to restrain yourself from throttling other guests.
Next day, some media commentator bags you, asking why the network saw fit to have you appear. Some days later, your mother rings to berate you for not telling her in advance, and how come all her friends see her only daughter on television but she never does? (Deborah Hill-Cone won't like this one bit, but these days Mum's friends mistake Hill-Cone for me - shows how much attention is paid - so if Deborah would kindly tell me when she's going on telly, I'll tell my Mum and she can pretend it's me.)
Nonetheless, I have a high regard for (most) people who work in broad-casting. Television, for me, was similar to my doctor's recollection of obstetrics (in the olden days, when GPs delivered babies). He said it was "90 per cent boredom, 10 per cent panic".
At this stage I'll make another personal disclosure. My eldest daughter has worked as a television current affairs producer for the past 13 years or more, beginning as a soundie, then camera operator. Objectively speaking, she's the best there is - totally professional. And before you blutters (blog nutters) try tracing her to visit the sins of the mother on the daughter, she doesn't share my surname, so there.
But I do know how hard those in radio and television work to bring us programmes we sometimes love but too often rip apart. It's curious that this country's execrable fiction and poetry receives glowing reviews because it's "literature", but highly entertaining New Zealand-made drama is panned by po-faced critics. The rule seems to be, as with so-called installation art, if you can't understand it, it must be good and worthy.
These same guardians of culture think nothing of interfering to the nth degree in the lives of those who work in television drama and documentary - not least in the state-owned broadcaster.
The latest shake-up at TVNZ proves this yet again. Poor old Bill Ralston is just the latest pea in the projectile of human vomit belched out of state broadcasting every time a government gets the wobbles.
It's like the government planted a tree, called it TVNZ and now keeps digging it up and peering at the roots, wondering why it won't grow. If saving money is the only objective, why don't they just film news and current affairs in black and white?
Good journalism is not synonymous with losing money but, like cheese, it can take time. Similarly, state-owned doesn't guarantee quality - the public health system is a good example. And National Radio (sorry - Radio New Zealand National Sounds Like Us) needs a boot up the bum, too - Morning Report has taken to recycling its items every hour. Can't we have Harry Wakatipu the Packhorse instead?
In the late 1990s, when TVNZ made over $60 million profit, the government treated it like a cash cow. There was nothing in the SOE Act which prohibited the government from taking just $1 in dividend, then allowing the broadcaster to plough the rest into programmes.
Now TVNZ's situation is worse - it must make a profit, yet somehow implement the charter - the Labour Government's idea of foisting worthy programmes on us for our own good.
Governments should not own broadcasting channels.
The state doesn't own (and I'm whispering this sentence, lest the PM gets ideas beyond the Waitangi Treaty grounds) our newspapers, and neither should it.
State-owned broadcasting is an anachronism - clung to in radio's case because people don't want to hear commercials. And TVNZ, mutter the state-embracers as they adjust their Sky digital aerials, should not be sold off to overseas interests.
The question I'd like answered is, if good television is so important, how come the pre-television generation, reared on books, is better educated than the current lot?
Can some rent-a-quote who didn't eschew interviews for New Year enlighten us?
