Chris Barton: Maori TV World Cup bid should be celebrated

There is something unseemly about the outcry against Maori TV making a bid for free-to-air Rugby World Cup broadcast rights.

It's doing what any decent public broadcaster should do - putting culture and customers first - something our state-owned broadcaster seems to have entirely forgotten.

Our national game. Our haka. Our identity, not to mention our Maori heritage, resides here.

Watching our national team do well, not just in rugby, but any sport, gives many of us a sense of pride.

But instead of celebrating Maori TV going for another world first - an indigenous broadcaster winning against the odds - there is shrill braying.

Thousands will be unable to watch the games. Outrageous. Not something a taxpayer-funded broadcaster should be doing. Uppity.

"It is my absolute expectation that all New Zealanders get an opportunity to view those 16 games free to air," sniped Prime Minister John Key on TV One's Breakfast.

Would he have said the same had Prime won the rights? The same thousands wouldn't be able to view the games on that channel either, because it too has inadequate reception in some areas. Ditto for some parts of the country unable to get TV One, TV2 and TV3.

The PM is similarly silent about Sky winning the host broadcast rights to all 48 World Cup games and other major sporting events, like the Olympics, which it siphons off to its subscribers.

Fair enough, that's the pay-TV business. But allowing Sky such total control so it can deign to give the great unwashed scraps of free-to-air and delayed coverage as it sees fit is allowing business, and its profit imperative, to dictate the public good.

Sky's pay-TV monopoly means half the country is routinely denied watching live sporting events featuring our national teams, sportsmen and women. Where's the outrage about that?

Australia, Britain and Europe all have anti-siphoning legislation to stop pay-TV operators denying citizens access to major cultural events - usually by giving free-to-air broadcasters the first right to bid for rights to specific significant events.

New Zealand was finally waking up to this inequity with the previous government signalling anti-siphoning legislation as a way to address the imbalance, promote diversity and put our sports' heritage back where it rightly belongs - with the country's citizens.

But Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman ditched the idea in favour of supporting a pay-TV monopoly's profit. That's commercial reality, said Coleman.

As to the problem of incomplete coverage by Maori TV, it's easily solved. Simply introduce an "impoverished broadcast zone" subsidy - an interest-free or low-interest loan so the small number of homes that can't get pick up free-to-air terrestrial broadcasts, can do so by installing a Freeview satellite set top box.

As well as providing 100 per cent coverage, such a move would also advance digital TV and enable the Government to cash in earlier on the $300 million "digital dividend" that comes when we switch off analogue TV.

It's a dividend that comes through getting access to freed-up spectrum - providing not just more digital TV, but also mobile digital cellular services for voice and data, and wireless broadband.

With more convergence of the way - "triple play" TV, internet and phone coming into our homes via fibre optic cable - the need for anti-siphoning legislation becomes even more urgent.

Just as Sky now owns most of our broadcast sport content, so, too, could other providers monopolise and siphon-off sports content to online, mobile or other new platforms.

Coleman needs to think about this country's citizens and our culture, rather than lining the pockets of Sky.

As for World Cup commentary "peppered" with Maori phrases, I reckon it will be brilliant. So much better than Murray Mexted's blathering about psychic energy. Like the haka, it would be something unique to us, something to be proud of.