Gordon Campbell talks to Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey about new digital TV.

For local directors and producers, digital television carries a set of risks, such as the audience fragmented across new channels and NZOA funding spread too thinly. But it also provides opportunities.

Courtesy of Take Magazine, Issue 44

$79m for 2 new digital channels - announced 2006-11-14Gordon Campbell talks to Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey about new digital TV.

For local directors and producers, digital television carries a set of risks, such as the audience fragmented across new channels and NZOA funding spread too thinly. But it also provides opportunities.

Courtesy of Take Magazine, Issue 44

$79m for 2 new digital channels - announced 2006-11-14The proposed Freeview digital platform will offer eighteen free-to-air channels where now there are five, including four new TVNZ channels. At long last, quality local content might get scheduled at reasonable times.

This is a sore point. People have complained about TVNZ's programming department since John McCready's reign in the late 1980s, at the birth of the mixed broadcasting model. Even so, the scheduling of director Dan Salmon's recent architecture series, New Zealand at Home, on Saturday afternoons was the sort of decision that drives key creatives overseas. So, is there anything in the digital strategy to induce them to stay?

"I sense this is a yet to be decided question," says Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey. He says that none of the Freeview companies have decided what they will do with the new capacity. "Clearly, digital is a cheaper format to run. You'd hope costs would go down, which creates more room for content."

Maharey adds that digital content can also be linked with telcos, for podcasting, and to generate other revenue streams. But not without initial costs. "Is there," he asks rhetorically, "going to be more money for NZOA?"

He's not yet talking amounts. TVNZ will present its strategic plan in early September for two of its new channels, with costings. Former TVNZ CEO Ian Fraser was to provide this, he says, and the new CEO Rick Ellis is under pressure to make up for lost time.

To date, government has allocated only $25 million (spread over five years) to create the Freeview platform, with nothing yet set aside for content. Initially, will TVNZ mainly be re-packaging its existing content?

"I think so," says Maharey. "With some exceptions. Television is now remarkably cheap, and Maori TV has shown us that if you offer people space to do something, they can give you a high-quality product for very little money. This is not said to scare the Screen Directors Guild - that this is going to lower their revenue for its directors - but it does offer a variety of options for people who can say, 'I could offer you a very different kind of programme that would hold a particular audience at quite a low cost'."

NZOA may end up with more money. "What I've said to Cabinet is that it is almost inevitable people are going to come and say more capacity adds up to more money [But] we shouldn't commit ourselves to anything like a sum of money until we've seen strategic plans on the table."

Some production funds will also emerge from outside the NZOA model. From the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, for instance. The Television Content Group, now headed by Andrew Shaw, Maharey adds, also recognises that more commercial revenues will have to be diverted into digital production. "And we've always said, we do expect [TVNZ] to turn up at the door, and say, 'You can't run public television on 10 per cent public funding and 90 per cent commercial revenue. There's got to be a better balance, and here's the price ticket.' It doesn't mean they'll get the money, but the conversation has been invited."

Clearly, then, digital television will not free documentary- and art-filmmakers from their current commercial pressures? "No," Maharey replies, "and most public broadcasters have already moved away from that. The pressure will be on public broadcasters to make some of their revenue, simply because they can."

How many of the new state channels will be commercial free? Maharey says he doesn't know as "[TVNZ] hasn't turned up with a plan yet". Couldn't the establishment and annual running costs in the first five years easily run into hundreds of millions? "I honestly don't know," Maharey says. "The state has to make up its mind about whether it wants to fund NZ content, for example, across a whole lot of channels... Do you say yes, we'll increase NZOA's money, but we'll be asking our television public broadcaster to do more? What are we prepared to pay for here? So, the questions are still highly elastic."

He maintains that no minister will become "captive" to the costs. He believes that people simply misunderstood the digital decision from the outset. "They said immediately what's the content implications? I'm saying to them, actually there are none. Having all this capacity implies that yes, you're going to do it. You don't have to. You could just say you've five or six channels now. You don't have to use them."

The date that analogue finally gets switched off, he concludes, will partly depend on the uptake of digital. "It will depend on what you and I feel like paying 200 bucks for." And those decoder costs, he says wistfully, could come right down, if 40 per cent take-up occurred around start-up, next February.