The prostitution of TVNZ

Ian Johnstone

Ian Johnstone has an amusing vision of how New Zealand would look if the Government did to its other services what it did to Television New Zealand, which was to "prostitute it".

"Why only public television? Why not public libraries? That would be a good idea. You could put hoardings inside libraries and every time we went in we'd see McDonald's and KFC, and every book you open could have a leaflet, or three or four or six leaflets, telling you about tyre retreads."

Then there are plaster casts, ripe space for advertising to make money for the health system, and all that space for hoardings on Parliament's forecourt.

"This is my anger. Why have they decided television should be debauched and prostituted like this? Why only television?"

Johnstone was a ringleader of an unlikely group of revolutionaries. There are only 31 of them, most are greying, and there are no placards or pistols at dawn, just a few words banged out on an old typewriter.

But the hit packed by the letter comes clear with the list of names, all well known, and many from the Sirs and Dames brigade. Because they are famous and respected, the revolutionaries got traction in their call for TVNZ to better reflect New Zealand and to cut the advertising.

In a flood of responses, in support or saying the 31 were behind the times, it also helped that they were erudite and well able to fight their corner.

Johnstone is a veteran TV presenter and producer. Since he arrived in New Zealand in 1961, his career has spanned public television and radio and the development of television in the Pacific Islands.

He doesn't mince words either. What we have now, he says, is "a mongrel". He blames the changeover of Television New Zealand to a state-owned enterprise in 1989 - the point at which TVNZ was "led down the garden path of commercialisation, through no fault of its own."

Johnstone has been there before, mounting a one-man campaign in an opinion piece in the Herald in 1998.

He is frustrated in hindsight by the lack of action when "the, ahem, reforms" were pending in the late 1980s. "In Australia when they talked about reducing some of the ABC's services, at about the same time as our reforms, the Australians actually marched. They got in the streets and said, 'Don't you interfere with our ABC. We all said, 'Oh dear me, what a shame' and didn't do a thing."

So the present action came up late last year, when former TVNZ chief Ian Fraser appeared before a select committee and James McNeish's wife Helen noted the broadcaster was supposed to hold the politicians to account, rather than vice versa.

Soon after came the appointment of Sir John Anderson as TVNZ chairman. Recalled Johnstone: "We said, over a glass, this is not a bad time really, because they will have a new CEO and a new chair and those people won't be able to change anything or even think about their viewers fully unless they get a better prescription. That's the basis of the moan and we thought we might as well do it because everyone else seems cowed. "

The 31 took some flak for mention- ing nostalgia-loaded favourites such as Close to Home.

Of his viewing habits, Johnstone says his summer diet is pretty much restricted to the news and cricket.

"News, current affairs and documentaries are what I watch most of. But I didn't watch the documentaries this week, because although I'm interested in aphrodisiacs I didn't think the documentary on them would tell me much. Nor did I think the one about getting more sex on the internet would tell me much.

"I realise it's summer and these are fillers, but I'm a news junkie and would like to see issues like the sea bottom, and what we are going to do about it, covered."

His fellow traveller, former Victoria University vice-chancellor Professor Les Holborow, feels the same. He watches sport - cricket and golf - but not a lot else. His favourite show is the arts programme Frontseat.

He was initially sceptical about whether it might be lightweight, coming after his favoured Backch@t.

He likes documentaries, and admits to being transfixed by a David Attenborough piece he stumbled across on Prime. "This one was quite a good one on fruit flies and things, which I was quite surprised actually held my attention."

Johnstone is gratified at the response, from "people behind me on the bus saying, 'Quite agree, I hardly switch it on these days'," to screeds of letters to the editor.

"I'm very pleased people feel that way, as if there's something they can do about it. If you make a fuss, at least you don't have to go down without a whimper, just falling asleep in front of the telly as if it didn't matter to you. What people are saying is it really does matter, and that heartens me."