2.45-4pm : 20.11.03
Chair: Jane Wrightson, Chief Executive, Broadcasting Standards Authority.
JW: We're getting our riding instructions to start, so if you could take a seat that would be most appreciated.
Kia ora tatou, I'm Jane Wrightson from the Broadcasting Standards Authority, one of the most popular players in the broadcasting arena. After Brent Impey's speech this morning what you see here is not a woman but a whole pile of chicken feathers. So it's a pleasure to introduce this panel talking about initiatives and innovation. Still reflecting on Brent's words I should point out that in the Corngate decision the BSA didn't uphold the allegation that TV3 ambushed the Prime Minister. But for our sins our panel's been ambushed, as Michael Stedman has called in sick having had a remarkably toxic to China just earlier this week. Nevertheless we have here three gifted broadcast professionals, all of whom are pioneers in finding new ways to attract audiences. It's great that programme makers and programmers have a voice at the conference. Mind you they'd shout a bit if they weren't given any space.
We have Ian Taylor, international multimedia star and very smartly dressed in the Vodafone ads. Manu Taylor, Programme Director for MaiMedia, a commercial broadcaster which, because of its kaupapa, includes ways of operating sometimes closer to traditional public broadcasting and Janine Morrell, children's programme maker extrordinaire who's making and selling in several countries and who provides material for both commercial and public broadcasters. Without further ado, Ian Taylor, Taylormade.
Ian Taylor: See I think this is really very encouraging. See how far we've come. Three cheeky darkies and look at that. You see I was meant to, I'm not sure what this subject was about, sort of innovation and so we've gonna make it up. I mean when I spoke to Paul he said look talk about all the sort of technical things that you do overseas, how you're doing, racing cars around the world and golf courses and all that sort of stuff. I don't know how we do it. I have absolutely no idea and it's totally irrelevant.
I've sat here, we've sat here listening to broadband and I don't even know what the terms are, you know, DT this and satellite that - who gives a damn? It's about what we make. I'm always amazed that when the word “innovation” gets rolled out, so do I. I'm a simple bloke from Dunedin and there are those unkind people who suggest that by choosing to live in Dunedin I've proved just how simple I am. Well, here's my simple view on public broadcasting.
First of all, why do we call it public broadcasting? Why did we create a thing called the charter, doesn't that sound like, boy do I know what is good for you? I mean why don't we just call it what it is - bloody good television. Because if it isn't then what are we doing it for? I doubt that there is a single programme maker in this room that doesn't believe he or she is in this business to make really good television about New Zealand for New Zealanders, and I have to tell you in the course of making the kind of television we've been making, I spent 28 weeks overseas last year and am heading to 28 again this year. That means you get to see a lot of overseas television and you know what? We are actually doing a really, really good job of it.
We've taken enormous strides. Now as programmers, as programme makers all we need is some consistency. We need to know what our goals are, are they going to be moved again, who do I deal with next week?
Public broadcasting, that's how it used to be. I know because thirty years ago I began my career in television with a public broadcaster and it was fantastic. We decided what we thought our viewers would like and we went out and made it. We screened it, they watched it. They didn't mind paying their licence fee because that's what you needed to do to get the telly in your lounge. We, all of us, were just grateful that it was there. Those of us working for public broadcasters were pretty grateful too because it was impossible to get fired no matter how average you were.
But times have changed and the greatest threat facing public broadcasting today is the public, or more specifically the fact that we gave them a choice. That's the problem. You give people the opportunity to choose and blow me down they go and do exactly that. I remember when those cold winds of change first swept over me. I was working on Spot On, one channel, no choice. Man, we were successful.
Then came South Pacific Television and Alias Smith & Jones and our viewers started exercising that opportunity to choose. Actually there are probably a few of you in here who did that. Traitors. But you know it was exciting, shaken out of a comfort zone, we knew that if we were to survive then we had to be the programme of choice for the audience we were targeting. There was no point in making what we thought were great programmes if no one watched them. It meant we had to be innovative.
So the first thing we did, well Michael Stedman did, was we started a fan club and the first club member number was 50,001. I mean how could you close something down with that much support?
So today we aren't just talking about choosing between one channel or another, we are now talking about choosing between multiple channels, the internet, broadband and watch this space as the game box wars start to crank up. We can't look back to the way the world used to be and I'm heartened to hear that we aren't. But nor can we assume that the public want us either. Surveys keep telling us that they do but I have a sobering lesson from my first forays into setting up a regional channel in parochial old Dunedin. Everyone you surveyed told you they really, really wanted it. But guess what - when it finally turned up they didn't.
We have to earn that space. I've heard a number of people talk about connecting with the audience. Well that's easier said than done. I was walking through Dunedin yesterday showing off this flash new shirt I'd just bought in Italy. You know, the way you sort of stroll along the street and you check yourself out in the windows. Fantastic. This car pulls up full of young people and this guy winds down his window and he says “hey poofter go get yourself a girlfriend!” Well other than a straight left you have to wonder how you connect with someone like that.
But if we are to make a difference, if we are to nation build we have to find a way to do that and I think we need look no further than the music industry and our young people. Now looking around this room I can see that most of us would have been brought up on a diet of overseas music. For some of us that would have included Bill Haley and the Comets and a couple with Vera Lynn.
Now we went through the argument of quotas, we went through the argument of regulating to make stations play New Zealand music and we kind of finally come up with a solution where the industry agreed to share in a target of 20 per cent New Zealand music on air. That shared target let loose a breed of young kiwi musicians who had discovered who they were, making music they liked, they believed in and guess what: their contemporaries came to believe in the same thing. My kids don't listen to New Zealand music because it's New Zealand music, they listen to it because it is good. And it is good on a world scale. Just an interesting - New Zealand On Air, just a little survey that was done. A survey to young New Zealanders about what gave them pride in New Zealand and I find it really staggering actually. At 69 per cent it was the clean green image, so that still gets across, 62 per cent it was New Zealand music, at 60 per cent it was the All Blacks which is now down to 12.
And when you think about it the long term future of public broadcasting is actually in the hands of these young people. All they need to do to television what they have done to music. What Flipside is doing to the news. We need to make it relevant.
In schools all over the country kids are wising up. Kids are finding ways to get what they want. Kids are going global and as we give them or as technology provides them with new tools if you're not careful they will, you will find that they make public broadcasting irrelevant.
Now I listened to the Minister this morning, and Minister you are right to say that it is not the role of government to decide what needs to be made. But if you are to continue to fund television in New Zealand then you have every right to demand that it is bloody good television. And you know what, the public will decide whether or not it is and they'll do it by exercising their choice. And whilst it's valuable to look offshore for experiences of public broadcasting or bloody good television we have to find our own answers and we can. We have to set our own goals and we have to set up a structure that allows us to reach those goals.
I've heard all sorts of talk about public broadcasting being really important for nation building, for sharing, for all of this. Well the BBC gets £2.7billion a year and I have to say that on a numerous times I've been to the UK I have yet to see any evidence of £2.7billion worth of nation building. I've seen some really good television but nation building it ain't. £20m spent on the English rugby team however is another story.
Now along with a whole lot of other things, we make kids' television. Ten years ago we were collecting money from New Zealand On Air and making programmes that met the New Zealand On Air criteria, half an hour, standalone, full of really good New Zealand content. They weren't bad programmes. They even won awards overseas at festivals where old people looked at stuff and says, oh that's really good for kids. Well it might have but they didn't watch. They were watching cartoons. They were exercising their right to choose so we had to innovate.
First we had a way to create a cartoon character or characters that kids would choose to watch and that we could afford to make. Then we decided we needed to take that character and the New Zealand content around him and sneak him into where the kids were, watching cartoons. But we also set ourselves a goal. We wanted to build New Zealand content that kids would watch in place of some of those cartoons. Our goal was to build that show up until it could stand on its own no matter what overseas cartoons were placed against it. The great thing was that both the broadcasters, and I say broadcasters because it started on TV3 moved to TV2, and New Zealand On Air shared that goal with us. This year Squirt moved from being 25 minutes of material propped up by overseas cartoons to a standalone show from 8.30 to 9, and it has won that slot every day this year.
Now of course TV3 are now running Nickelodeon against us. Sky launches the Disney channel against us very shortly but hey that's choice with us. Now I just want to show you, and I know a number of you will have seen this character, but I just want to rerun Spike and show you some of the innovation that we needed. I mean, in order to make stuff that was cost effective we had to find out a way to animate someone.
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He's really embarrassing. Ever since he got his own show he thinks he Paul Holmes, only taller.
So I mean I think my time's run out but I think Spike makes a really good point there because on the topic of Don Brash, our other greatest threat are politicians. Now the only way, because as you know the minute he got hold of Spike's suit he whipped it on and started expounding the fact that he was about to sell Television New Zealand. Now the only way we can ensure that TVNZ doesn't get sold off, and I believe that there is a role, not for public broadcasting but for bloody good television, the only way to ensure that TV[NZ] doesn't get sold off is that the public refuse to let it be sold, because we are delivering them programmes they want and they are afraid they might lose. And you'll notice that I didn't once mention money, thank you.
JW: Hard act to follow, Manu off you go.
MT: I looked yesterday when I arrived from Auckland around the room at so many people that I've admired. I looked at what you have to deliver to a public which is demanding service. I look at a public that genuinely doesn't know, and I mean this with all due respect, what they want because broadcasting is actually about providing them choices and you need to take a risk and provide it to them for them to make the choice. I work for Mai FM, I have for the last seven years. My experiences in the music industry, that's a 20-year-old job. I love it, I am passionate about, I believe in music, I believe that communicating dreams, aspirations, your world is an opportunity that should be given to everybody. With that, though, there is the proviso that it must be of quality.
The issue that I've had in listening to everything that I've seen today is one thing that I felt was missing and it was brought up by Ian here. It's about content. It's about relevance. Pipes, computer games, whatever. Whatever the choice that is going to be made by the user, it is because they want to participate, because it's relevant to them. There are a million ways to get a million things now and the scary part about technology is that with technology comes choice, and unless you are directed well you will make wrong choices. And public broadcasting in my mind is about assisting good choice, about creating leadership, about creating standards, about creating ways to get there that inspire people to participate.
Mai FM is an iwi radio station that started 11 years ago. It was a dream to have an urban radio station because at the time that's what they thought, the rangatahi, the young people wanted. Mai FM is now Mai Media, it has four different functions. It has Mai Media, which is the communications device, it also does some public relations and is doing very well at that at the moment. We have Ruiamai which is a national news network. We have Mai music whose artist Katchafire has just sold 15,000-plus records. They're touring Perth at the moment to sell-out audiences and they're touring Perth because their cousin's over there. And he's making a lot of money selling Katchies. And we also have Mai Publishing, looking after the works of the artists and making sure and negotiating that they get paid and that we push their work onto compilations and you'll see Mai Music artists represented and non Mai music artists represented on Off the Hook, The Rhythm, and all those mainstream commercial compilations that dominate them at times like Christmas.
Mai FM survives on commercial advertising. Mai FM sells advertising. I've had one of my clients bumped today, which is just a lovely feeling and they are freaking because it's Christmas. Mai FM lives off that, that's how we make our money. We live off that by having an audience to sell to. We have an audience to sell to by striving, arguing, debating the fact of relevance. We go out, we try and participate with our audience. Every single request that the station gets, I get. I get the traffic logs, I get the phone requests, I get the whole nine yards, and I sit there and every day I make up a radio programme to that audience. I break rules, much to the disgust of my boss, when I play Scribe three times in three hours. But the audience wants it, so I go and play it. I'm a DJ. We work that way. We work to the audience, we serve the audience. It is our job to do that. If we do that well we have a job. If we don't do that and if I had a bad book last week or this week, it is possible that we wouldn't be doing it.
Now that might be seen as not serving the kaupapa or the delivery of the kaupapa of what Mai FM is, because Mai FM is about promoting tikanga and te reo Maori. For me we do that by having the biggest youth audience in the country, in the metropolitan area and we are Maori and we speak Maori and they speak Maori back and they participate with us. If we don't have an audience, and I mean don't, you don't tell anybody or guide or assist anybody. We serve ourselves pretty well. We feel comfortable with that, but we are not doing our job.
And our job is to spread the kaupapa out to people, not to nobody. So we work really hard on that, we've just got a station in Whangarei, that's just started and that will be interesting how that turns out. And we've got Rotorua. And this is as big as we can be and this is as big as we can get, and it's only as big as we can cut it. We're owned by Ngati Whatua and we work really hard at delivering that back to the shareholder. There is a responsibility of financial return and social return. And we debate hard on all those issues.
What I think is interesting for me is that it is the same challenge that we deal with daily that public broadcasting I think is going to be presented to deliver. The fact that “oh yeah Mai FM can do it. You can have a, you can serve, you can do te reo you'll just have a, you know a Maori language station here and you'll have a commercial part over here” and there is a potential to deliver both things. I think the thing that gets missed out in the middle is quality. The thing that gets missed out in the middle is relevance and communication with your people, the audience, the people that you're actually talking to.
It's all very well, as Ian's mentioned, to have pipes, to have internet, to have SMS, to have ways of communicating, but you do need content to communicate with and it needs to be high quality and you need to invest in that. You need to invest in the people and invest in that to have that. I look around the room and I wonder where the younger programmers are, he younger people that are going to give us that programming. We just have hired interns who are actually listeners, which is a scary proposition in anybody's book because you never hire a fan.
But these kids are working their butts off. They're getting paid, it's a day job and they're out there working it and they're growing and they're learning. And for us when I see Stacey on the screen, when I see all these people grow and grow and grow as broadcasters we are succeeding. And that is the aspiration that we carry, that is the kaupapa of what we deliver and that's what we are attempting to do.
The exciting thing for me is there's just so much opportunity. It creates so much opportunity for partnership, for partnership and programme creating, ie, there's a DJ down the road that's really, really good. We'll pay you a thousand dollars a month to give us a show. We aren't importing the shows, we'll pay you the money. Bring me the show every Thursday, get disciplined, mix it up, give me a track run and you are a paid DJ and we're not doing it for free. We have an audience. And then they become household names, like Bevan Keys and Nice ‘n Urlich. Bevan and I have been together for seven years and when I put Bevan on, he was playing house music like he's doing now and it's so wasn't Mai. It's the biggest rating show in Auckland. It's always at ten plus share, it's probably just Indian taxi drivers, but it's big. It's a risk and it works.
The other opportunity we have entered into obviously is music production, and thanks to New Zealand On Air and all the support we get with them trying to get other radio stations to play our music. The issue with music production is simply one of a mandate from the RBA, bless their cotton socks that we'll play 15 per cent New Zealand music. Good.
There are no Polynesians in record companies. None. There are no Maori in record companies, so let's go look for that R & B Hip Hop tip straight from the south. We have a great bunch of independent music producers, Dawn Raid, Bounce Records, Nesians is Bounce, Dawn Raid is Mareko. Callum, who's just used the family farm to fund Scribe's records, so go out and buy he needs the money. But these are all independent producers going to major record companies saying “please, please love me. Please represent me”. In the mainstream market other than a Bic, bless her cotton stocks and a Che, but they are six years old. And the thing about music and the thing about young people's music, it's about now. If I said to you “not many, if any”, six weeks ago you wouldn't know what I was talking about. Now most kids know exactly what I'm talking about. Music is about now. The currency is now. Music production is about now.
So the partnerships that we find so exciting is working with these cats because they are unbelievably creative. They're inspiring, they are dangerous and they take risks. And that's exciting for us because it gets our audience excited and it gets my staff excited.
The other opportunity is in distribution and working with major record companies and selling records, making them money. Selling things, getting people excited about music. I don't care about I-Pod downloads. I don't care about access on the Net, I don't care about free. I care about people that are passionate and excited about what they're into. And if they are, lo and behold they actually care about us and what a winning situation that is.
The other thing is the simple education of young people. They are the fuel. The one thing that I read, in reading the cover, is the word "future". The future is the young people. The young creators, the people with the ideas and the future are you, the people who are going to drive that. As I said at the beginning, it's a hell of a responsibility for you to entrust your people around you to take you further. But you have to do it. You have to take that risk because quite honestly that's all we've got.
The other thing is: Mai shouldn't exist in a commercial environment that we have in Auckland and you can say that, you know, you've got loads of Polynesians and yeah, yeah they're going to be into that music, don't worry about it. But the proof of that pudding is that if you add Niu FM and Mai FM together we're an instant frigging 14 per cent, that's 14 per cent. That's 2 per cent more than ZB. That's ridiculous, we're just good at serving our people. Nothing special, nothing too dangerous. And I got told not to let out the family secrets but essentially that's it and I'm thankful that we have a management team that takes risk because we have to. But it is about serving and being relevant to your audience and it's an opportunity. I just see it as a huge opportunity to play. The more that that people are constrained by budgets, the more people are constrained by shareholders' demands, dollars, we're the only, only significant privately New Zealand-owned radio station in a metropolitan city. The only one. We stand alone. We're not even a network. We don't get a network spend. And we just battle on and fight because we have to. And that pressure forces us to participate in a way which is probably perceived as being out of the box. But hey, so far it's working and we ain't going to change it.
I was interested in a statement that Michael Jackson mentioned, he said, when it's done well, it's a real commercial opportunity and that is the bloody truth. It is about doing things well and doing things of quality, at all levels and letting it happen. The way that things get distributed are just going to run you over.
I was at a conference and I looked at digital AM, and if anyone wants to buy anything of real value go and buy an AM frequency - it will just wipe FM. It will do it. It will be a simple footprint and it's off the same tower and it uses the ground. Try and stop it. And if you're worried about the fact that, oh we won't get transmitters and receivers into people's homes, you know they won't do it. Have a look in your bag and see how many of you have got a cellphone that you didn't have five years ago. Or how many of you have got a Sky decoder that you didn't have two years ago. Technology is not the big evil, it just one other way. The real key is content and supporting it.
Okay. The one thing I want to finish is a little analogy that I got told about yesterday which just to me heartened me no end because it's about a little young person that's at the moment in England on her own, she's from Christchurch, she's got long hair, she sings lovely songs. She's not played very much on commercial radio. She's not played very much on National Radio and her name's Hayley Westenra. And she's in the UK, she sold 300,000 records. She's number seven in the charts and she's going off. She gets a phone call and she's asked to go and sit with Mr Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. This is yesterday. And they get ushered into the hallowed halls of Mr Webber and they're taken into this audition room and everybody else is booted out of the room except for Hayley and the Man. Doors shut, 15 minutes, the doors open, she's shoved out the door, she's chucked into a car and they're off in the cab. And the manager says to her, “how did it go?” She says “I don't know. He was crying, he just kept crying. I don't - I don't think it was going very well.” She'll be performing in front of GW, Mr Blair, with Sir Elton John and Andrew Lloyd Webber, doing a private recital probably in the next - probably now, and I don't know if anybody else will know. And I don't know if they want it publicised.
But young people is where it's at. Let them go, let them be that and please help be the people that they should be, thank you.
Janine Morrell: I'm a children's programme maker who spent 15 years working for our public broadcaster TVNZ as a director and a producer. And four years as an independent with Whitebait Productions. We deliver shows to both TVNZ, so to the public broadcaster - preschool shows like Bumble and Jessie.com - and also to the commercial broadcaster - Wanna Bes which is an interactive pop talent quest where 40,000 kids ring in an hour to cast their vote on a favourite music video. We're also currently making Tuhono for the Maori television channel, which is a youth hip hop show. It's dope, phat, and we're all into keeping it real at the moment and it's, it's been wonderful actually to have that experience too.
But I cut my teeth at TVNZ in the ‘80s and thought it would be worthwhile to take a quick look back at public broadcasting from a producer's perspective before looking at today's environment.
There are four things I loved about public broadcasting in those days. The first thing was, it was an excellent training provider. In those days TVNZ offered annual internships and you applied out of the newspaper, 300 or so people would apply, they'd take eighteen in year one and then it got down to nine and five. We moved round the country and we worked in various positions learning how to make telly. It was absolutely invaluable. I got taught how to blow up Selwyn Toogood's cue cards 500 per cent on the photocopier so he could read them on Beauty and the Beast. I rolled auto cue for Angela D'Audney and felt her wrath. I put an entire New Zealander's food intake for one year in the studio when directing Jim Hopkins Christmas links on Fast Forward and incurred the producer's wrath by blowing the entire props budget for the following year with the bill for dripping carcasses, broken eggs and melted butter. I learned how to bulk erase, [?] tapes in the bowels of Shortland Street. I even erased one from Lebanon for Foreign Correspondent before it actually aired and that day I prayed that I wouldn't incur God's wrath and vowed never to tell a soul and I'd go to church every Sunday.
I also learned how, when I missed the sunrise shot at the snow cave in Queenstown, and we'd spent bloody hours building a snow cave for Spot On, then I missed the sunrise shot - I learned how to take set mag film and roll my previous night's sunset backwards to make the perfect sunrise for my 20-minute field story, at the same time demonstrating to my producer my undying commitment and loyalty to the job by getting up so early.
All the training in those days was thoroughly assessed, feedback was given and pay rises were earned on the reports that were written.
Secondly, the commissioning process within public broadcasting in those days was pretty simple. Basically, at the end of the year anyone could put up programme ideas through their head of department to the head of production for consideration. And in my case with Life, which was the first youth magazine programme I produced, you were given the green light.
What this did was ensure that there was a range and diversity across the viewing schedule. So children's was producing the standard magazine and linking shows, preschool and after school entertainment. But also there was a homework programme, a news show, there were job guides, parliamentary specials and lots of drama.
Thirdly, we never worried about money. We had this thing called above the line and below the line budgets. Below the line meant that almost unlimited resource was given to you to produce your show. There were a myriad of designers, set builders, graphic artists, cameras, sound, studios and videotape rooms at your disposal. I didn't know or need to know the cost of a Beta tape, crew rates, wide angle lenses or the price of electricity to fire up a studio for the day. It was great.
And finally the environment we worked in grew great loyalty toward and for TVNZ. People felt cared for and in return were proud of their provider and the public broadcasting they were producing.
Today the environment's very different. Some of those things are missing. Some are new. But I'd have to say in many respects I think it's better. We have a unique model, with New Zealand On Air largely funding all children's production and a public broadcaster with strong commercial imperatives. As a result there isn't the training that TVNZ of old. There are a number of educational providers but most are delivering students with a resounding lack of practical experience. They have high expectations and even higher student loans. Students come very focused on how much they'll get, not on what they'll give. The processes also have been more or less transparent depending on who's driving the bus.
In addition to the broadcasting standards and advertising guidelines for children, TVNZ's put effort into its protocols and currently a lot of work has gone into the commissioning process. They've carried out research into children's programmes and for the first time ever they've tendered out their two biggest children's programmes. There used to be criticism that TVNZ was a closed shop and not so today. Contestability is key to ensuring fresh ideas and innovation on screen and ensuring that taxpayers are getting value for their dollars. I now know the price of a Beta tape, a digi tape a high eight, a bloody super eight, a VHS, because as producers today we spend a lot of time worrying about money. The New Zealand On Air children's budget of $12m, $11m is very small compared with the $US170m for children's BBC and it carries with it a large mandate to deliver a broad range of children's programming.
Like TVNZ, New Zealand On Air have spent time developing a children's strategy but it comes up against the constant barrier of having to deliver a certain number of hours for dollars. The producers therefore need flexibility within the current environment to negotiate with the broadcaster and funder on a case by case basis, the production contracts, the ability to bring in additional funding and sponsorships, manage additional revenue, and look at other forms of making their budgets work. A stable environment in which we can build our businesses, a solid skill base, consistent transparent processes, and contractual flexibility is what's needed to promote initiative and innovation in the current public broadcasting environment, because at the end of the day, as both Ian and Manu have said, content is the key and more than ever producers are aware of the need to deliver appointment viewing to their audience.
As the platforms available to children increase, so must our commitment to produce the television they want to see. The beauty of all this of course is that it is possible to produce programmes for our local audience which reflects our cultural identity, but at the same time will travel. Good ideas will endure and speak to children everywhere, especially if it's funny. Everyone is out there looking for the next big idea and it can come from here. We have the creative expertise and the ability to deliver. Producing more local television for children for our public broadcaster is good business and a win-win for us all, thank you.
JW: Right are our mics on? Yes they are. Yay the content providers! Now we have minutes set aside for questions for our panellists or reflections from the audience.
Daniel Salmon: Daniel Salmon, Screen Directors Guild. Thanks for sharing your experiences with us, that was a good panel. I have more of a comment than a question really. Jane said that it was good to see programme makers speaking here. The programme makers that are conspicuously absent are directors and so I just want to just use this opportunity to announce that the Screen Directors Guild and the University of Auckland is having a broadcasting conference on the 16th April, “Independent Programme-Making and the Future of New Zealand TV”. There's a green sheet at the door if people want to take a copy, thanks.
JW: Thanks, Dan. Perfect target audience.
Bindy Barclay: Bindy Barclay, Children's Television Foundation. Children have actually featured largely since last evening and throughout today, used often as examples. It's been quite staggering. This is a question in some ways for Ian Taylor. I understand that you are one of the guardians of Secondary Futures and also for the Minister who I hope is here also with your Associate Minister of Education hat on. There is a lot of talk about convergence, there's a lot of talk about differentiated platforms and there's a lot of talk about children but there's not a lot of talk about where the Ministry of Education fits into the plan for public broadcasting. I just wonder if you'd like to comment.
Ian Taylor: Where's the Minister? Yeah I mean it's interesting, we've only just started on the Futures of Education and I guess if I had to think about, I mean the reason I didn't talk about money in this context is that if I had to make a choice where limited resources went it would go to education. I think what we have to do is do the best, make the best with what we've got. We have, and I don't want to bore you with this because this isn't what this conference is about, but our children and our education system is facing some incredibly challenging changes, well, over the next few years. I mean some of the stuff that is coming out, the world our kids are growing to even in the next ten years is going to be so removed from what we've got I guess I place my priorities in trying to find out how we do, do better for them there.
I think on the question of, just on the question of funding here, I mean I agree with Janine, we actually have to think about - there is $11m - let me tell you, we've just finished a thing for the BBC. They have $2.7b, I mean they have a train that goes to a railway station that's their own. It's really easy to find their head office, you just get on this train and when everyone gets off you get off. But it ain't any better than what we do here. We've just finished delivering all the graphics for a major six-part series, and I consider that to be New Zealand content because it's a really good story. It just happened to be made in England, it'll come back here.
I think as a public broadcaster we have to actually start viewing, I think of this in the terms of children, but we have to start viewing television on a global basis. On a world basis. There is nothing wrong with what comes in from outside. That, when we look at what we are providing for our New Zealand children, we should look at in the context of all of television. Our kids don't watch things because they're made in New Zealand, they watch them because they are good. And our - not just our public broadcasters, our broadcasters should be looking to bring that stuff back to us as well.
So I think we just have to find cleverer ways of deploying the $11m and we have some ideas on that. But Minister you can talk about the rest.
Steve Maharey: Well I suppose the answer is that if you're talking about connections between MOE and public broadcasting the answer is “not many, if any”. I would like to think, though, that we are going to start building those links and that's because the interest that MOE has through things like the vision of where education is going is clearly going to have to start taking account of where kids are at and what the world is going to be like for them. It's going to be about media and so on.
But the other part of the equation has been missing to a large extent. And that is that the public broadcasting part of policy for a long time really hasn't been about things like education and so on. It's been about getting in advertising revenue and surviving through this period of time. So I'd like to think that people like Jane talking through what she wants to do at BSA, people like NZ On Air, the changes at TVNZ will start to create an environment where we can talk a lot more about the connections between the two and what education might be achieved through it. There are things, though, of course like the media studies curriculum and so on which go on in schools but I think the thing that you mean probably isn't there yet and it's one of the things we should be doing.
JW: Thank you. Robert Boyd Bell.
Robert Boyd-Bell: I'm talking too much as usual but I can't avoid the opportunity to tell you that so far I've not been able to get a response from TVNZ to any discussion of documenting the government's Secondary Futures project in any way on public television in New Zealand. I can get the Ministry, but from Ian Fraser down nobody will actually answer on whether they will actually put any education on television next year.
JW: Any comments on that? Sir, over here?
Paul Reynolds: My name is Paul Reynolds again, and I just want to take up Manu's challenge, you know, he thinks we're not woken up yet, - I don't know if this is the appropriate place to do this, any of this - it's certainly directed at the panel but it's also directed at my peers here. I say that because I don't actually come from a television background. I often look at you guys and think you're all incredibly interesting and talented and creative people and you're all talking about content. My problem with that, as some of you know from the accent, I live and breathe on this new internet thing. And if it's not anything to do with the internet thing I tend to get very bored very quickly. And I'll tell you why, because as far as I'm concerned, this internet thing is probably the biggest cultural revolution that you will ever see and I will ever see in my lifetime and I get profoundly bored, not irritated, just supremely bored, when people tell me that they don't care about the technology. They just want to make it do things.
Well, ladies and gentlemen you can't make it do things, unless you actually take the trouble to understand what it can do and the great thing about this internet thing is it's a two-way street [TAPE TURNED OVER - MISSED A BIT] anyone can publish on the internet thing and anyone has. That's why it's full of garbage.
Now for the future of public broadcasting not to take into account a core part of its deliberations this internet thing seems to be a complete dereliction of any conference of this ilk. So I'm going to do some internet interventions here by saying if we have this challenge of public broadcasting, and part of that challenge is to tell our stories as New Zealanders or to tell New Zealand stories or to create culture or the cultural moments for our children or for our future, then we've got to start asking how this internet thing can help do this and I'm here to tell you if you haven't already figured it out, it can do it in lots of new ways. Now the whole point of the tale is we're staring at a cultural revolution in which the grammar on how we tell these stories is being profoundly changed on a week to month basis. To sit in the ivory towers of normal public broadcasting that I see some of you guys sit in, it's going not so much to pass you by, as just consider you as dinosaurs before you've even got to pension age.
That doesn't mean to say anything really. What I'm trying to say really is this is fun. You can reinvent that whole sense of creativity that used to get you up in the morning by understanding that you're sitting on a pot of gold. That TVNZ and National Radio, and the National Library, New Zealand Archives - note I'm spreading the whole thing much further here - you guys are sitting on all this content that is being digitised and all the rest of it. The industry that I work in and I'm now finding so much fun in has the tools and the technology to give to our children the ability to make their own stories based on this material. To have it locked away in archives whether they're analogue archives in TVNZ or more profoundly worrying in tapes in National Radio which are degrading as we speak, so that in the next five years are facing what can only be described as a digital dark age because we look back and we cannot access this stuff.
I'm saying to you guys two things. To begin to understand how we - as you as one medium on one side of the fence can programme for the new digital and internet infrastructure, we've got to start thinking of new ways of telling our story and it's not about, dare I say and I say it with love in my heart, there's too much complacency in this room that the future of public broadcasting is here just to be quite a step up to another level of where you were before. As far as I'm concerned it's a brand new building, it's not some kind of mezzanine. We've got to get out and go into the next building and the challenge there is to recognise that the new internet technology, because it's a two way street, because it allows our kids and our young people to start making stuff, they will, so it's up to us to help giving them the tools whether it's digital objects, whether it's access to heritage material, whether it's access to archive material or it's just simple access to the skills you guys have about - you know how to write music, you know how to promote music, you know how to write stories, you know how to produce stuff.
My challenge is you've got to open your eyes up to a wee bit more than just saying “we don't, oh the technology doesn't matter, I just want to make content”. Well guys, it does matter what the technology is because the cultural revolution is here for us all to grasp and I just want you all to start to come on board. Thank you.
Ian Taylor: I guess it takes, I guess it will come as no surprise that I'd like to answer that. I guess you were asleep when I said that the changes that are happening in schools, the changes that are happening with new technology, the changes that are happening with the internet, broadband and game machines, game boxes could end up making us totally irrelevant. Our entire business. Yes I might be a little facetious about technology over content. Our entire business is run via the internet.
I think I'm quite qualified to speak on the internet because we also managed to lose about $3.5m on an idea on the internet, but we are still there. The programme we have just finished making for the BBC was all delivered via the internet. It was won on the internet, the internet was - when we started Squirt nine years go, the first thing we built was an internet site because we believe that's where children were going.
So it isn't, it isn't, and I know - and I know I'm speaking for a lot of people in here, that we are not ignoring the internet and when we think about the education, the futures education, one of the things that we are examining really closely is that schools may not exist in the way and shape and form that they exist today, because information, communication, the kids are using the internet to go global. We have to do the same, in fact we probably have to give it to them to do it. But yes the internet is really important. I am just a little reluctant sometimes to sing its praises because I spent a year travelling around the country singing the praises of AOL and how by taking over Time Warner they were going to change the world. They didn't.
JW: And I would also observe that, from a content maker's perspective you have to own sufficient rights to allow yourself to exploit it in the first place, an ongoing debate.
Manu Taylor: The other thing I'd like to mention is it can be a red herring, it can be a place to ignore what you are saying, and that's all I'm saying. We don't ignore the internet, Te Irirangi.net has been set up to support all iwi stations. We have built their websites, we are presently archiving all the stuff that we have on Ruiamai, for access, for open access because it's owned by the government, for anyone to review. That's a work in progress.
The issue for me is a chase one way, and this is outside the internet and I'm talking about methods of terrestrial broadcast, can lead you as equally to a dead end, so it's very difficult. When I've been in conferences like this people have gone up and said “go this way”, six weeks later it's different. There are contingencies in place for [?] and that's all, that's what worries me.
Goff Leyland: I'm going to pass an opinion rather than ask a question. I'm glad we've finally got around to education and I want to thank TVNZ for putting money into this study guide, New Zealand On Air funded documentaries, which are really going to prolong the life of those programmes. That's my praise.
My criticism is of, if we're talking about money well spent, why have we wasted all of that bloody money on that television violence research? There was no debate preceding it to saying do we need this, why are we doing this research? All that money's gone which would much more wisely have been spent on something like media education resources. Thanks.
Manu Taylor: Yeah.
JW: Alright we've got time for one final question.
Clare O'Leary: Clare O'Leary from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. I just wanted to follow up on the games issue. Yesterday games history was made in New Zealand, a Wellington company called Sidhe Interactivejust got final approval for the first game produced in New Zealand for the Play Station II and X Box platform. This is really quite a coup and I think we're working on trying to develop a games industry strategy for government and that includes online and interactive digital content. The other thing is that broadcasting could be a real space to explore things like online documentaries. Channel Four's done that and it's really up to producers and directors to push the envelope there in terms of seeing the internet as a distribution network. So I just wanted to let you know that the next phase of Sidhe Interactive's work is going to include New Zealand music in their game design. So I think the convergence of the creative sectors is a really exciting move as well.
JW: Thank you Clare. Finally Ruth Zanker.
Ruth Zanker: Mine really builds on what Clare was saying and also what you've been saying, Paul. That the convergence that's going on - there's a real sense of it happening at the moment and we have here in front of us some of the pioneers in that and I'd just love both Ian and Janine to talk about how they see television as just one window in terms of the content they're, they're creating for New Zealand kids as well as for overseas. Because I think that you two have done tremendously creative things which are about breaking out from the television window into other, other windows, thank you.
Janine Morrell: Well we, our little Whitebait Productions has very fortuitously, and because we are good, picked up the contract to produce What Now next year. As part of that contract we've been looking at all the myriad of ways in which we can deliver to our audience. So some of the things for us next year will be using every week satellite phones so that we can get out to small towns every week and run world record attempts, games and challenges and things like that. And that means we are using a laptop and we're working with [?] and we're just using small receivers and we're going to be able to get wherever we can see a mountain or a hilltop and get up there and be able to be out there amongst where kids are at. Because one of the things that we're finding is that, you know, two thirds of New Zealand kids don't live in the four main centres which is so often where a lot of our content's come from.
In addition to that we're putting things, strands in the programme like cooking and things now, will actually be online the entire duration of the programme, so that for kids who are hooking into the show if they're interested in what's going on and that's only a three minute slot, for two hours they can watch the chef cook. He'll be connected to them, they can connect directly. He'll have web cam so he's constantly filming and that will be filmed, they will see that online and talk to one another.
We've also I suppose taken the next step of incorporating things like virtual alleys into the set. There are great things out there, new glasses that kids can wear in the Weetbix triathlon, where we're actually wearing headsets, cameras all the time, swimming under water with these little cameras on and a lot of that will be plugged in online.
JW: Are you using, giving kids Imax to do their own filming and things?
RZ: One of the things we're investigating is the Vodafone whatever phone that gives us 20 seconds of video and flicking them out round the country so kids can file in reports constantly online that we just take from our server and then put them up on screen as it happens, yeah. So lots of really neat stuff.
Ian Taylor: Although I appear in a Vodafone ad I'm a technophobe. I've lost the little red card out of here so I'm absolutely knackered, I left it on a taxi somewhere. I just want to get back to this, I guess to this point about the internet. If we'd had more time I wanted to talk about some of the schools we've been to. Some of the places where you see things that are being done. Things that are converging by themselves without us. Now I'm 53 years old and I can't be bothered learning about the internet but what I can be bothered is knowing that it's there to do things that we need to do. And surrounding yourselves with people who do find out about how it works, what it does. My job in what we do is just come up with these ideas that said this is what we need, this is what we need to get out of here, how do we do it, what's the best way to do it. And as I go increasingly around schools you are right. I have seen some, just judging a film and television and internet competition in a school, where the stuff that is being produced is staggering. I mean, we need to be thinking about, we're looking at a weekday show. We actually could make that weekday show by simply going out either to the new film and television schools or to the schools and saying you guys make it. You guys make it, you tell us how it converges and because we get to talk to the politicians, we'll make it happen for you. Thanks.
JW: Thank you. Right thank you. I think that was a challenging and provocative panel. I'd like to paraphrase Ian a little bit by saying that we have probably defined public broadcasting irrespective of its technology and it is bloody good television and radio. Thank you to the panellists.
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