The decision by Television New Zealand to introduce TiVo for paid internet television downloads is unlikely to hurt Sky Network TV, Forsyth Barr broker Peter Young says.

TVNZ has bought a 33% stake in the exclusive Australia and New Zealand TiVo licensee, Hybrid Television Services, before the device's launch in New Zealand later this year.

TiVo allows viewers to record programmes, pause and rewind live TV and watch movies on demand on all free-to-air digital TV channels, and access broadband content, services and games.

Mr Young said Forsyth Barr had reviewed the pricing of TiVo in Australia and the United States and concluded that TiVo was "relatively expensive".

"TiVo is a great product but it is relatively more expensive than Sky TV's Mysky HDi.

"We have also reviewed and compared the pay TV pricing packages for Sky, Foxtel, Austar and BSkyB, and conclude that Sky's customers obtain better value than its global peers."

However, part of that would be indexed to New Zealand's lower household disposable income.

The key point was that despite Sky having a monopoly pay-TV position in New Zealand, its pricing and product offering stacked up well, he said.

The introduction of TiVo to New Zealand was inevitable, as it provided Freeview with a reliable and proven PVR (personal video recorder) for households who did not want to subscribe to Sky.

"While TiVo is a great product, it will have limited appeal in Australasia, because it is relatively expensive compared with the pay TV PVRs offered by Sky, Foxtel and Austar.

"There is very little scope for TiVo to offer integrated programme guides for the pay TV companies in Australasia, and therefore the channel offering will be limited to free-to-air channels."

In Australia, the pricing of TiVo was $A38 ($NZ46) a month for three years.

The clear benefit of TiVo was, for households who did not want to subscribe to pay TV, access to sophisticated programme guides and PVR for free-to-air channels listed.

In Channel Seven's case, in Australia, TiVo offered 12 high-definition channels.

The pay TV companies had an advantage over TiVo because the channel offering was much larger, and the PVRs were offered as part of the pay TV package, and therefore were less expensive.

There was an added feature that the PVRs were effectively a product for life, and when the PVR needed replacing in the future, the cost of replacement rested with the pay TV company.

However, when the TiVo PVR needed replacement outside its warranty, the customer would need to buy a new TiVo.

Mr Young said the Government had indicated it was unlikely to regulate Sky, which he believed was a logical and fair decision.

TVNZ had been operating with a view that regulation would help it preserve its market power and reduce the pace at which it was losing viewership share to Sky and TV3, and its dominant share of advertising spend.

"We believe the current market structures for pay TV and free-to-air broadcasters to co-exist profitably in New Zealand were positive for consumer choice, and regulating Sky to limit content choice would have been negative for the market over the long term," Mr Young said.

The future for free-to-air broadcasters would be to extend broadcasting via the internet, offering alternate channels via Freeview and developing additional revenue beyond core advertising sources, he said.

The introduction of a TiVo-type product would provide opportunities for the free-to-air broadcasters (TVNZ and MediaWorks) to begin offering value-added services.

A semi-subscriber business model would emerge from the core free channel offering.

If the free-to-air broadcasters did that well, greater competitive pressure would be placed on Sky's pay TV model.

Forsyth Barr believed Sky had a good business model and favourable medium-term outlook to continue to grow at modest rates.

Profitability was forecast to resume double-digit earnings per share growth in 2010.

Sky was trading on a gross dividend yield of 5.3% and 30% discount to valuation of $5.42.

"Sky's earnings should prove resilient in the current recessionary conditions and [it] has attractive long-term growth prospects," Mr Young said.

Sky mum on 2011 World Cup

From http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/news/2302262/Sky-mum-on-2011-World-Cup

Sky TV won't confirm or deny whether it has secured the rights to screen the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

The Sunday Star-Times yesterday reported that an announcement on who would be the host broadcaster was imminent. The newspaper said it understood Sky, whose major shareholder is Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, had won the rights and would screen the entire tournament live.

Today spokesman Tony O'Brien would only say, however, that Sky did not comment on media speculation.

Roger Beaumont, spokesman for TV3's parent MediaWorks which broadcast the 2007 World Cup, said his firm believed it was still "a work in progress" as to who would screen the 2011 tournament.

To secure the 2007 broadcasting rights MediaWorks, then owned by Canada's CanWest Global, outbid a Sky-TVNZ combination. It is understood it paid the International Rugby Board about $12 million. MediaWorks, however, is now owned by Australian private equity firm Ironbridge Capital after a $790 million takeover in 2007.

Since dipping out on the 2007 tournament, pay-TV operator Sky has snapped up free-to-air channel Prime for $30.26 million strengthening its hand in bidding for major sporting events. Sky, with Prime, beat off TVNZ to secure the rights to screen the 2010 Winter Olympics and 2012 Summer Olympics.

Peter Thompson: The Demise of the TVNZ Charter

From http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0903/S00356.htm

The Demise of the TVNZ Charter:
The Arguments the Government Wants Us to Ignore

by Peter A. Thompson,
Department of Communication Studies
Unitec Institute of Technology

The Prime Minister recently announced his government’s intention to abolish the TVNZ Charter, claiming that it ‘wasn’t working’, that there had been ‘a number of inquiries’ into it and that there was ‘no discernible difference in the amount of local content that’s been played because of the Charter’. It is fair to assert that the TVNZ Charter set-up has not delivered the full range of public service outcomes envisaged in the Charter document and that there were significant flaws in Labour’s public broadcasting policies. However, National’s ostensible rationale for scrapping the Charter and diverting its funding to NZ On Air is not only disingenuous, but severely deficient in its consideration of the evidence.

For a start, John Key has got his facts wrong on at least three accounts: Firstly, there has been only one ‘inquiry’ into the TVNZ Charter. That was the statutorily required 5-yearly Charter Review which included a revision of the Charter document. The Commerce Select Committee (which was chaired by National’s own Gerry Brownlee) endorsed the new version and the development of new Charter performance measures, and recommended it to Parliament last year. The Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s briefing to the incoming Minister of Broadcasting, Jonathan Coleman, also recommended that the Charter revisions be implemented.

Secondly, the TVNZ Charter’s level of local content increased after the introduction of the Charter, although this level has fluctuated. There has certainly been more local content screened on TVNZ’s channels than any of its commercial rivals. However, this misconception overlooks a even more fundamental point: Local content provision is only one component of public service provision and the Charter function extends well beyond the role of NZ On Air’s contestable fund. Indeed, the $15m of Charter funding that the government intends to redirect to NZ On Air was originally earmarked specifically towards extending the range of programming beyond what would otherwise be commercially viable, and beyond the range of content typically funded by the NZ On Air contestable fund. Essentially then, the Charter was introduced to address the market failures of the commercial television ecology that the NZ On Air fund was unequipped to address. Local content provision alone is just one component of public service broadcasting- it is not an adequate substitute for it.

Thirdly, the claim that the Charter has not worked is a convenient rhetorical myth for opponents of public broadcasting to propagate because coupled with a dichotomous argument (X is wrong so Y is right), it can be deployed to justify any number of policy responses. Even assuming that there is a problem with the Charter, abolishing it altogether is only one of the options, and it is far from clear that diverting the funding to NZ On Air is going to deliver superior public broadcasting outcomes. If your car breaks down, you don’t just tow it to the scrap-yard and buy the first one you can afford in the second-hand yard. You’d open the bonnet, see what the problem is, and try and fix it, and that wasn’t possible you’d then make sure the replacement you bought was at least as good as the one you scrapped.

If one agrees that TVNZ Charter arrangements are flawed, and the Charter outcomes have not been adequately delivered, it is nevertheless incumbent upon any responsible minister to discern the reasons for this failure, if only to ensure that the same errors are avoided and not compounded in any alternative policy development. So to properly understand what went wrong with the Charter, one has to differentiate between the Charter document itself, the financial arrangements, the regulatory/policy arrangements and TVNZ’s own performance.

Although Jonathan Coleman has dismissed the Charter document as some sort of woolly academic exercise, the new version was an improvement on the original and is more explicit in its expectations than the equivalent documents of most other public broadcasters (including the BBC Royal Charter & Agreement and also the Radio New Zealand Charter- to which the Minister curiously seems to have no similar objections). Given TVNZ’s commitment to developing new performance measures, there can be no rational objection to the Charter itself, unless one thinks that goals such as ‘promoting democratic participation by examining the activities of public and private institutions’ or ‘providing programmes that support awareness of business, commercial and financial matters’ are intrinsically undesirable during a period of global economic instability. The various Charter objectives are not an exercise in ivory tower idealism; they took account of 286 public submissions as part of the Charter review and were endorsed by Parliament’s Commerce Committee. One might quibble about the phrasing, but any sensible government in a democratic society should embrace, not eschew the broad cultural and civic aims of the Charter.

In contrast, TVNZ’s performance in delivering the Charter can certainly be questioned. There have undeniably been problems with transparency and accountability in the deployment of the Charter funding. Some of the money was combined with NZ On Air funding to fund programme production, conflating their discrete, complementary functions. Furthermore, some Charter funds went towards the subsidy of programmes which pre-existed the Charter, which could hardly be construed as extending the range of content. These problems led the previous Minister of Broadcasting, Trevor Mallard, to propose that NZ On Air would be given the responsibility of disbursing the Charter money and approving TVNZ’s use of the funding before it could be released. All this might suggest that responsibility for the Charter’s under-performance lies with the broadcaster itself. But that’s too simple an explanation, because it overlooks the fact that TVNZ did at times make an effort to produce content consistent with the Charter that it would never have attempted to do as a commercial state-owned enterprise. Programmes like Face to Face, Agenda, Eye to Eye (and the new Q&A) clearly addressed Charter goals, even if they were tucked away in peripheral slots where they would pose no risk to the commercial schedule. The coverage of the memorial proceedings for Sir Edmund Hillary, the Maori Queen, and the Unknown Warrior would never have been so extensive without the motivation of TVNZ’s Charter.

Meanwhile, the efforts to harden up the focus of news and current affairs and include more regional and international reporting saw the departures of star presenters and shake-ups in the format, that also led to slippage in the ratings. That loss of market share was met with vehement criticism from the political right and media commentators whose only yardstick of performance was audience share and advertising revenue. In the end, even the government joined in the criticism, and TVNZ quickly realised that failing to deliver the Charter attracted far less political flak than failing to maintain ratings and revenue.

So a more fundamental problem with the Charter has always been the financial and regulatory arrangements, notably the dual remit, by which TVNZ had to deliver the Charter outcomes at the same time as maintaining commercial performance and paying a dividend to the Crown. In practice, this resulted in the Ministry for Culture and Heritage giving it money with one hand only for the Treasury to take it back with the other. Between 2003 and 2008, TVNZ received $95 million in Charter funding but returned $142 million in dividends. (Do the math and ask yourself how much Charter content you’d expect from that.) Even with the availability of NZ On Air funds, TVNZ remained 90% dependent on commercial revenue streams for its operations. Although there are other public service broadcaster arrangements which combine public and commercial revenue (e.g. RTE in Ireland), none have such a low ratio of public funding. Consequently, the $15m was never sufficient to offset the opportunity costs and insulate programming and scheduling decisions from commercial pressure and market failure.

On top of this was an unstated third imperative; the implicit expectation of the government that TVNZ, as the centrepiece of Labour’s public broadcasting strategy, would help maintain the public credibility of those policies. Apart from the ‘no surprises’ requirement (which led to tensions between TVNZ’s board and management after the messy scandals over its star presenters’ salary negotiations) this also meant that TVNZ was obliged to play its part in a ridiculous political charade whereby the government pretended to fund the Charter and TVNZ pretended to deliver it. So on top of the dual commercial and public service remit, TVNZ was also juggling a capricious set of political expectations. By the end of 2005, CEO Ian Fraser had resigned with the memorable lamentation that continuing commercial pressures had resulted in a schedule ‘profoundly incompatible with any recognisable model of public broadcasting’. Since then, TVNZ has introduced the two commercial-free digital channels TVNZ 6 and 7, but TV One and TV2 have focused increasingly on recapturing their lost audience share rather than pursuing the Charter.

John Key and Jonathan Coleman are therefore right to point to the dual remit as a key factor in the Charter’s system’s under-performance. But if National wants to deliver public service television outcomes, then surely it would try to correct Labour’s policy errors and address the principal impediments to Charter implementation i.e. the imperative to maintain commercial performance/ pay dividends and the disproportionate dependence on commercial revenue. Getting rid of the Charter doesn’t solve these problems, it compounds them. Unfortunately National’s drive to dismantle the centrepiece of Labour’s public broadcasting initiatives appears to be motivated by ideology, not empirical evidence, and it is currently proceeding with indecent haste in the hope that the Charter will be dead and buried before anyone gets round to generating a rational debate on the issues.

The alternative funding system proposed by Jonathan Coleman, involves NZ On Air distributing the redirected $15m diverted from the Charter on a contestable basis. The intention is that this money will be earmarked to fulfil the public service functions the Charter was intended to address and distributed according to more stringent criteria than the regular contestable fund. This is important because it does recognise that local content provision alone does not constitute a full range of public service functions. But the new funding mechanism will not, as the Minister supposes, be capable of delivering the outcomes he envisages. Rather like Trevor Mallard’s decision last year to make NZ On Air oversee the use of Charter money, Jonathan Coleman’s proposal precedes any informed deliberation about whether the system he is proposing is workable and lumbers the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and NZ On Air with the invidious task of making a half-baked policy deliver.

Although the additional funding will be welcomed by NZ On Air (which had historically regarded the direct Charter funding as a threat to its own institutional function) the removal of the TVNZ Charter will ironically make it more difficult to achieve the public service outcomes desired. It will not be sufficient for NZ On Air to merely develop some additional criteria for funding applications; the broadcasters' programming decisions and scheduling priorities also need to be addressed. The institutional limitation of the contestable fund mechanism is that it cannot oblige broadcasters to accept particular types of programmes or screen them at particular times. Crucially, this means that the contestable funding mechanism fails to offset opportunity costs and incentivise broadcasters to disregard commercial priorities. Just like the Charter funding, it remains vulnerable to the very market failures for which it is intended to compensate.

When NZ On Air has previously tried earmarking funding for particular genres of content that are not commercially attractive (e.g. children’s' drama), it has often found that broadcasters are not interested in the programmes even if a producer is willing to make them and supply them cost-free. The margin costs compared with scheduling imported/ populist commercial are often too high. Although the NZ On Air contestable funding has made possible a range of good quality local programmes, there is a propensity for these to be concentrated on genres/ formats that can be most easily accommodated in a commercial schedule geared to optimising ratings and revenue. Innovative, risky, or minority-appeal programming gets relegated to peripheral slots in the schedule or else rejected by the schedulers. Apart from the fact that the new funding mechanism will not address news and current affairs (one of the key areas of Charter performance most in need of improvement), many other programme types oriented toward the Charter’s civic and cultural objectives are also the most difficult to persuade commercial schedulers to accept (e.g. programmes addressing minority interests). Even if the funding is earmarked for specific types of content, producers can still subvert the programmes within an ostensible public service-type genre so as to serve a commercial function. Thus for example, a documentary all too easily becomes reality TV or infotainment, compromising its public value. Quality and diversity therefore cannot be guaranteed by genre-specific incentives alone.

The Minister of broadcasting has suggested that in an increasingly competitive and commercial digital multimedia environment, the availability of the $15 million in additional contestable funding will incentivise producers and broadcasters to make and screen the sorts of programmes the Charter set up failed to deliver. Of course, the Minister is right that broadcasters will want the money- the issue though is how far they will be motivated to provide a range of public service local content in order to get their hands on it. On that point, the minister is seriously mistaken if he thinks the funding will incentivise public service-type content provision in an increasingly tight commercial environment. The problem is that most local content productions- even those funded by NZ On Air- result in broadcasters losing money. Broadcasters complain that, outside of the most commercial genres, providing any sort of local content is increasingly becoming an civic act of charity. On a purely commercial basis, the margins of profitability simply do not justify the investment in local content relative to the alternative of screening populist commercial content from overseas. The public funding is insufficient to offset all the opportunity costs for high-public value content in prime time. So even with public subsidy, the provision of non-commercial local content will NOT be attractive in an increasingly competitive and uncertain market.

If there were a television broadcaster that had operational imperatives other than maximising commercial returns, then there would be a more reasonable expectation that they would accept the opportunity costs of public service local content provision. However, no private commercial television broadcaster will do that, and on that basis, the Minister seems to be cutting off his nose to spite his face by stripping the Charter obligation from TVNZ. There are indications that TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7 (which will soon be extending their reach on the Sky platform) will remain ineligible for NZ On Air funds, so that leaves MTS (which has a far more specific remit than the TVNZ Charter) and arguably Triangle/ Stratos (which are not-for-profit but operate more on a community-driven ‘access’ basis that complements mainstream television services).

Even if the new contestable funding mechanism can ensure the production of local content with high public value, it is likely to be distributed across a range of providers and platforms. The government assumes that public broadcasting funding can be ‘platform neutral’ and still deliver public service outcomes. The problem is that this may fragment the public value to be gained and render much of the content invisible. There will be no recognised ‘home’ or portal that audiences will be able to access, knowing that quality local content can be sourced there. Without a dedicated public service provider there is also no guarantee that there will be any coherence or balance in the direction of funding towards a full scope of Charter-type functions. Moreover, if the various providers and platforms are all geared to commercial operation, then despite the apparent plurality of services, the broadcasting ecology as a whole will remain collectively prone to market failure and constrain the diversity and quality of programming available.

In that regard, the Charter remains significant because it specifies a set of broadcasting principles and goals in an otherwise normatively rudderless commercial environment in which transitory ratings and revenue are the only operational goals. Even placing a half-hearted public service operator within the ecology can have an ‘anchoring’ influence by making other broadcasters reflect on their own performance and motivating them to uphold some semblance of social responsibility beyond their own commercial self-interest. The other free-to-air television operators seemed to show more interest in local content after the Charter was introduced if only because they were concerned that TVNZ might persuade the government to divert all the public television funds to it unless they demonstrated they could contribute to cultural and democratic functions too. That ‘anchoring’ effect may not have been strong, but it will disappear completely if the Charter is abolished, pushing the television sector back towards the commercial excesses of the 1990s- the very problem that the Charter was intended to redress.

Jonathan Coleman has suggested that concerns about public broadcasting are limited to the ivory tower debates of academia. The minister suggests that the failure of an angry mob to descend upon his electorate office brandishing torches and pitchforks indicates that the public is quite happy with broadcasting as it is and does not want public service television. Such arguments are spurious. The Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s own research found that, as citizens, most New Zealanders value the provision of public broadcasting content (such as high quality news and current affairs and educational programmes) irrespectively of whether they themselves enjoy that content as consumers. But left to a commercial broadcasting market, our individual media choices will, on aggregate, fail to provide sufficient incentive to producers and broadcasters to supply that content. Public broadcasting is therefore a classic instance of market failure, and given the cultural and civic importance of broadcasting, it is incumbent upon any responsible government to ensure it is adequately provided. In regard to radio, Radio NZ and the Iwi and access stations provide a decent overall service despite coping with increasingly restrictive budgets. But in regard to television, the more specialist services (MTS and Triangle/Stratos) operate peripherally without a dedicated mainstream public service broadcaster at the centre of the television ecology.

TVNZ 6 & 7 are for now the only commercial-free public service television channels, but Jonathan Coleman has suggested that they will have to become self-sustaining once their current public funding expires ($79 spread over 2006-2012; which is, in effect, a gradual repayment of a special $70m dividend TVNZ paid to the government in 2006). Recognising that dependency on advertising would largely negate their ability to deliver anything of public value, the Minister has suggested that in the future, they might be subsidised from TVNZ’s mainstream channels, TV One and TV2. This proposal is not entirely without merit, especially considering the recent announcement that TVNZ 6 & 7 are to be carried on Sky’s digital platform as well as Freeview, significantly extending their reach. Unfortunately, the Minister has not recognised that TVNZ already subsidises TVNZ 6 and 7 from its commercial revenue and that without the Charter, it will have no incentive to do so. Moreover, his assumption that a broadcaster could operate public service and commercial channels side-by-side actually contradicts his rationale for dispensing with the Charter; indeed, for a channel-specific version of the dual remit to have any chance of working, then the government would have to forego some of TVNZ’s commercial dividend and the specification of the intended outcomes of the commercial-free channels would become even more important. Consequently, if the Minister is serious about this option, then he should be looking to amend the Charter legislation accordingly, not to dispense with it altogether.

At present then, even with the additional local content provided by NZ On Air, there remain crucial gaps and deficits in the diversity and quality of television programming in New Zealand, and the new funding and institutional arrangements proposed by the government will not be sufficient to address them. But there are no solutions to be found by reshuffling the current problems in the hope that people will temporarily ignore them. The Minister of Broadcasting even points admiringly to the increasing public take-up of Sky’s service (now in roughly 46% of households) as if this means anyone interested in a broader and better range of television content can just subscribe, obviating the need for state provision. Unfortunately “Let them watch Sky” is not a solution to the deficits in public television broadcasting. For a start, many New Zealanders cannot afford Sky, and even those who can will not find much in the way of high quality local content, particularly in-depth news and current affairs.

Consequently, despite its range of channels, Sky does not adequately address the deficits in public service television. Indeed, the fact that its subscriptions are increasing indicates that people are not generally satisfied with free-to-air television provisions and that many are willing to pay for something better (even allowing for the fact that many Sky subscriptions are motivated by the demand for live rugby or less advertising). This is important because it suggests that the government’s assumption that New Zealand cannot afford a dedicated public television broadcaster is flawed. So how much would it really cost to provide a service comparable with Sky to every household in New Zealand?

Of course, with a population of only 4 million people, New Zealand cannot afford to set up a Kiwi version of the BBC and fund it to the tune of $8 billion per year. However, while $15m was never enough to transform a commercial TV schedule into a public service schedule, the amount required to make a substantial and positive difference is not huge. Consider the following figures: If you look at Sky’s annual reports, last year, Sky made around $144m profit ($98m after tax) on $659m operating income. That’s 22% profit (before tax) going to shareholders like Rupert Murdoch, not into programmes (which one reason why public-value-per-dollar is lower when taxpayer funds are distributed to private broadcasters). Sky’s total operating expenses were $470m with $210m of that going into programming. Meanwhile, 88% of Sky’s overall income came from subscriptions which represent roughly 46% of the 1.585 million households in New Zealand. The average subscription is about $66 per month, which over a year is $792 per household. But suppose for a moment that the operating costs of $470m were spread across all those households: That would work out at $297 per year, or roughly $25 per month- just over $6 per week per household. And that’s for a commercial-free service comparable with a full range of Sky’s channels. In fact it works out cheaper than the BBC licence fee in the UK which costs around $350 per household.

Of course, this is not to suggest for a moment that a fully-funded public service broadcaster ought to have all the same channels and content as Sky. In particular, the cost of local production and high quality news and current affairs would be higher than many imported services. But to put that in context, with $470m of revenue per year, one could easily cover TVNZ’s operating costs of around $365m (for 2008), get rid of all the commercials and give it an additional $100m to put into Charter content. This is all for around $6 a week per household, remember. Too much? Okay, if you retain the $339m in annual commercial revenue from TV One and TV2, that leaves around $131m to raise to help fund public service Charter- type programming (whether on TVNZ 6 & 7 or an additional commercial-free public service channel). That works out at $83 per household per year; just $7 per month or less than $2 per week. One can go through other possible models, but the point would be the same: New Zealand could afford public service television.

Now one can debate at length how exactly that revenue might be collected and distributed and there are a dozen funding mechanisms that might be considered (e.g. TVNZ might retain some advertising to lower the net taxpayer contribution but redirect any commercial revenue streams to the Treasury to offset costs and ensure that programming decisions remain insulated from commercial pressure). It would take a much longer discussion to explain all the possibilities, but the point here is that the New Zealand public want and deserve better television broadcasting, and if the quality were to be provided at an affordable cost, the majority of people would probably be willing to pay for it.

Just like the previous Labour administrations, the current government appears to be unwilling to explore the evidence and consider alternative broadcasting models. The ‘too hard basket’ seems to be the default policy response to any new idea, even when the current set of institutional, financial and regulatory arrangements are manifestly inadequate. Indeed, the Minister of Broadcasting’s response to last year’s substantial Review of Regulation on Digital Broadcasting and the Future of Content Regulation initiative appears to assume that the entire process was merely a navel-gazing exercise by Labour. Consequently, he seems to assume there are no pressing matters of import needing government intervention and that industry can be left to sort out any issues on its own. This is a dangerous abrogation of political responsibility.

Many of the broadcasting regulation issues raised in the Ministry for Culture & Heritage’s 2008 review process have arisen because of technical and legislative complexities related to media convergence and the development of digital multimedia services. These involve conflicting/ vested interests and matters concerning legal definitions and regulatory jurisdiction which industry cannot possibly resolve for itself (and even if it could, there is no guarantee that regulatory arrangements amenable to industry would also accommodate the public interest). There are therefore regulatory nettles which would need to be grasped by any government, regardless of ideological disposition. Indeed, making major decisions on the TVNZ Charter and funding mechanisms before resolving the broader regulatory questions seems like putting the cart before the horse. It may be politically expedient for the government to pretend that there is nothing to be debated here, but “move along now, folks- nothing to see here” is not an acceptable approach to media policy.

Jonathan Coleman has suggested there is no need for a review of market competition in the TVNZ sector and indicated that the Ministry of Economic Development’s proposed study will be canned. This completely overlooks the majority of industry submissions to the Review of Regulation. Furthermore, it overlooks the Minister’s own briefing from CCMAU which advised the shareholding ministers that TVNZ’s market position and ability to compete in the market for programming rights was becoming less stable because of media convergence and intensified competition, notably from Sky (which coincidentally will be the principal beneficiary of the cancellation of the inquiry because its own market growth and buying power in the content rights market would have been at the centre of the investigation). It is not possible to discern whether there is or isn’t a risk of market distortion based on the representations of either Sky or its free-to-air rivals. That’s why a review is needed. Given the shareholding minister’s responsibility is to protect the economic and public value of state assets like TVNZ, one can only speculate on the reasons for the peculiar alignment of his policies to the interests of Sky.

The government claims its broadcasting policies are ‘fit for the future’ but so far, it appears reluctant to take on board the evidence generated by Review of Regulation regarding the institutional, regulatory and financial arrangements required to ensure the future provision of quality public television services. The fact that audiences may be able to access content through a variety of new media forms has no bearing whatsoever on the continuing need to ensure that the content includes a diverse and accessible range of quality programming capable of fulfilling key civic and cultural outcomes. Public service television is therefore not an anachronism rendered obsolete in the digital multimedia environment; on the contrary, in an increasingly commercialised and uncertain market environment where margins are being squeezed, its provision becomes even more vital.

Ultimately, then, the shortcomings of the TVNZ Charter arrangements do not constitute an excuse to reject the desirability of the values and outcomes it aspired to. That’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The government may claim a mandate for change, but its mandate is to fix the mistakes of the Labour government’s broadcasting policies, not to abandon public service ideals and revert to the commercial excesses on the 1990s. The cheap and cheerful rhetoric about an exciting hi-tech media environment and policies for the future and the casual dismissal of academic objections as unworldly idealism is intended to stifle open public debate- Because National knows (as did Labour before it) that empirical evidence and reason will demonstrate that its broadcasting policies cannot deliver the public outcomes it claims, and that the real impediment to establishing public service television in New Zealand is the chronic deficit in political vision and will.

Peter Thompson is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at Unitec in Auckland. He has written extensively on the government’s broadcasting policies since 1999, and chaired the working party which reviewed public submissions on the redrafted version of the TVNZ Charter. He has also undertaken policy research projects for the Ministry for Culture and Heritage (on broadcasting funding-setting mechanisms in OECD countries) and NZ On Air (on approaches to measuring broadcasting quality).

VTV ON THE WAY

From http://fijidailypost.com/news.php?section=1&fijidailynews=22838

FIJI will soon have its own television station with broadcasting, programming and advertising entirely in the Fijian language.

This groundbreaking new channel is the brainchild of Fiji-born businessman, Yogesh Gokal, and Sir James Ah Koy, and will be realised thanks to interim Prime Minister, Frank Bainimarama .

Sir James spoke exclusively to the Fiji Daily Post this week about the formation of the channel, which is to be called ‘VTV’.

“I want to thank the Prime Minister for seeing the value of this initiative and for granting a license to Mr Gokal for the new television broadcaster,” Sir James enthused.

Sir James stressed that this new channel will be entirely in Fijian with no programming in any other language.

“This will be a first for the South Pacific,” Sir James declared.

“With 60 per cent of the current population being indigenous Fijian, the indigenous language is still the mother tongue of Fiji,” he stressed, “yet there is no broadcasting to match this.”

Sir James emphasised his “worry” that there is “no political discussion broadcasted on television in the native tongue”.

“The proposed channel will reach out to rural areas where Fijian is spoken en masse”.

Sir James believes that the news that is now presented to the nation daily in English, is “trans-mutilated” (as he puts it).

“This ‘transmutilation’ gives the public an unclear view of the politics of this country.”

“VTV will bring important news coverage to the people of Fiji, unadulterated and un-altered,” he asserts.

“This will aid in bringing transparency to the government and to other political organisations in Fiji,” he said.

Sir James refers to the proposed television project objective of uncensored broadcasting as “organic TV”.

“Its news will not go through the processes of politically censored television – like we now have where everything is biased against the Interim government,” he said.

“The new television broadcaster will let the Fijian-speaking public decide for themselves about who should run the country and what is the best way for it to be run.”

“How can the people of Fiji be expected to make informed decisions on the subject of politics when the information presented to them is in English, is minimal and worse, is twisted?” Sir James asks.

His affirms that the new indigenous language broadcaster is primarily about giving the people the tools their need to make their own decisions about public and political issues of the day.

“This is about genuine and substantive empowerment,” says project developer, Yogesh Gokal.

Gokal, who was schooled at Suva Grammar School before leaving for the United Kingdom and Taiwan, will privately fund and own the television station.

“The fact it is owned and controlled by one man ensures its independence from government or shareholder interest,” he says.

“This will free the station to broadcast all relevant information to the public without interference or censorship from another party,” Sir James adds.

Commenting on the “organic” nature of the project, Sir James said the station will initially broadcast for twelve hours of the day.

“But once a foothold is maintained, and the venture is succeeding, the intention is to broadcast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” he explained.

The new channel was originally to be called ‘Viti TV’, but new legislation prevents companies from using the words ‘Viti‘ or ‘Fiji’ in their title generically, “so it was decided name the station VTV.”

VTV will have 100 per cent coverage over Fiji enabling it to reach out to the entire public.

“It will be a terrestrial, free-to-air channel,” said Gokal, “This will give every Fijian speaker access to important programming and provide them with a clearer knowledge and understanding about current affairs overseas and what is happening here.”

“In Fiji, where international relationships are crucial to the running of the country, it is important to have the right information on what is happening overseas,” Gokal added.

Although there is a political and information sharing motive behind the establishment of the channel, “viewers can expect to see a wide spectrum of shows on the channel,” Gokal affirmed.

Sir James explained that this spectrum will include “entertainment and religious shows”, although “The crux of the channel will come from political and topical talk shows and news, all in the indigenous tongue.”

Sir James enthusiastically sums up his intentions for the channel by saying, “VTV will give local and international news to the listening and watching public, will give them news that has not been tampered with or misquoted, and will give it to them straight from the horse’s mouth.” “Let the public be the judges.”

Sir James stresses that the need for the new channel does not come from a media bias, but rather from the public’s “lack of access to important informative resources relating to politics in this country.”

“Without the resources provided by media such as the new VTV, an informed decision cannot be made,” Gokal notes.

“There seems to be a lack of investigative journalism that VTV will aim to provide. Without this investigative journalism the media often resorts to sensationalism as a way of presenting the news which, in fact, gives a distorted view to the public,” Gokal adds.

While Sir James could not provide an exact timetable between now and when the channel will be on our screens, both he and Gokal assert that it will be six months from when the final license is confirmed and granted.

“So we will not have long to wait before a fully Fijian-talking channel is accessible all across the country,” Sir James says, “and I have every confidence in the success of such an important new initiative.”

Luxe.tv for Asia

From http://www.advanced-television.com/2009/mar30_apr3.htm#m8

Luxe.TV HD has confirmed that it will launch in Hong Kong and Macau. The Luxembourg based channel will commence broadcasting at the start of April on the Hong Kong Broadband IPTV network BBTV and the Macau Cable TV network - the official cable network operator and the main provider for television to Hotels and Casinos in Macau

Boeing Nears Intelsat Satellite Deal

From http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123834962759166831.html

TVNZ has acquired a stake in Hybrid Television Services, paving the way to launch TiVo in New Zealand.

The company has announced the acquisition of the 33% stake in Hybrid Television Services, the exclusive licensee of TiVo in Australia and New Zealand, from Seven Media Group.

Seven Media Group retains the remaining 67%.

Hybrid Television Services launched TiVo in Australia in July 2008. TVNZ's investment will support the launch of the media device in New Zealand, scheduled for later this year.

The TiVo media device allows viewers to receive all free-to-air digital TV channels as well as broadband content, services and games.

Compatible with New Zealand Freeview HD broadcasts, TiVo will enable viewers to record their favourite shows, pause and rewind live TV, watch movies on demand and access services such as pizza ordering, shopping and weather forecasts through their television.

TVNZ's investment has prompted the formation of a Board of Directors at Hybrid Television Services, chaired by James Warburton, Chief Sales and Digital Officer for Seven Media Group. Rick Ellis, CEO of TVNZ, Rodney Parker, CFO of TVNZ and Bruce McWilliam, Commercial Director for Seven Media Group complete the board.

"The TiVo media device is a global leader and our investment in Hybrid Television Services is an investment in the future commercial success of TVNZ. It marks a further step in our transition from a traditional broadcaster to a multi-platform digital media company with diverse income streams, operating in the Australasian market," Ellis says.

TVNZ confirms TiVo deal

From http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/tvnz-confirms-tivo-deal-92585

OTTAWA — Two Canadian satellites are in danger of being damaged or destroyed because they’re passing through massive clouds of space junk caused by a recent collision between a Russian and an American satellite.

The two Canadian satellites, RADARSAT-1 and RADARSAT-2, orbit the Earth 14 times each day, heading east to west. Meanwhile the clusters of space junk travel north to south. Scientists say they could be on a collision course.

“There is a very high risk for the two satellites,” said Robert Saint-Jean, manager of satellites at the Canadian Space Agency.

More than 500 large pieces of debris — many larger than a tennis ball — as well as millions of smaller pieces that can’t be tracked, were created when communications satellites Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2551 smashed into each other on Feb. 10.

Pieces of the destroyed satellites were scattered as low as 500 kilometres and as high as 2,000 kilometres above the Earth’s surface, said Saint-Jean.

“Even very small things produce very large results,” said Ken Tapping, an astronomer with the Canadian Hertzberg Institute of Astrophysics. “At those speeds, a fleck of paint is enough to blast a hole through a windshield.”

However, current technology can only monitor space debris larger than 10 centimetres in diameter, he said, so the untraceable fragments are the most concerning.

Tapping said very little can be done about existing debris. “We’ve been absolutely irresponsible about the way we’ve been using space,” he said. “The best we can hope for is (all the debris) will re-enter the atmosphere in the next 50 to 100 years.”

The RADARSATS — which cost Ottawa almost $1 billion to build — collect data used to monitor ocean, land and ice development and then help agencies manage resources and protect the environment.

According to international law, the country that launched the satellite that created space debris is responsible to pay for any damages the litter causes, said Ram Jakhu, an international law expert at Montreal’s McGill University.

But it’s up to the country with the damaged satellite to prove where the debris came from.

This is problematic because Canada does not collect its own data on space junk. Canada relies mostly on the U.S. for information about when and how to move satellites to avoid debris, so “Canada is at the mercy of other states,” he said, adding, “there should be an international consortium of monitoring.”

Stratcom, a branch of the U.S. air force, monitors space debris.

In case of collisions, it tells North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, which then passes the information on to the Canadian Space Agency.

SES unveils Americom/New Skies team

From http://www.rapidtvnews.com/index.php/200903233432/ses-unveils-americomnew-skies-team.html

SES has still to give us the new name for its ’combined’ SES Americom and SES New Skies operations, and this will likely emerge over the next day or so once the ‘Satellite 2009’ show in Washington gets underway. But meanwhile SES has given us its management team for the new entity.

SES Americom-New Skies is led by Rob Bednarek, President and CEO, who heads a 10 member strong management team of experienced satellite executives consisting of:

Steve Collar, SVP Market Development. Steve is responsible for the growth of the new division’s satellite and service portfolio including the definition of new spacecraft and products. Steve also oversees the long range strategic planning activities in close cooperation with other SES group entities.

Anders Johnson, SVP Strategic Satellite Development. Anders is responsible for the creation, development and execution of custom satellite solutions for large users of satellite bandwidth, as well as for the division’s spectrum development activities. Anders previously headed SES AMERICOM’s business development group.

Robert Kisilywicz, CFO. Rob is responsible for overall financial planning, reporting, procurement and risk management as well as supporting investor relations activities for SES in North America. Rob was the CFO of SES Americom and previously served as Vice President and Controller of GE Americom, and as Senior Manager with KPMG LLP in their auditing and M&A practices.

Bryan McGuirk, SVP Media Services. Bryan is responsible for building and maintaining the division’s leadership in media & entertainment distribution throughout North America and oversees occasional use sales globally. Bryan has held senior management positions in traditional broadcasting and cable networks, as well as being at the forefront of interactive technology developments in television programming.

Tip Osterthaler, President/CEO of Americom Government Services (AGS). Tip, a retired Brigadier General, leverages Americom’s 30-year heritage of experience in the government SATCOM market offering comprehensive satellite-based communications solutions to U.S. federal agencies.

Thai Rubin, SVP/General Counsel. Thai oversees all legal and regulatory responsibilities of the new division. He joined New Skies at its inception in 1998 as Associate General Counsel, with responsibility for commercial contracts related to satellite and launch procurements, strategic transactions and customer contracts. Before joining New Skies, he was Senior Legal Counsel at PanAmSat.

Henk Slettenhaar, VP/Human Resources. Henk leads the Human Resources teams located in The Netherlands and the United States. His responsibilities include staffing, compensation & benefits, training & development, payroll and general HRM for the company’s offices around the world.

Gerson Souto, SVP/Commercial Services. Gerson assumes overall responsibility for the commercial management of existing satellite capacity and service offerings; asset/yield management, product management, business analysis, contingency and transition planning; marketing communications and media relations. Gerson joined SES in 1998 and came to New Skies in 2007. Previously he worked at Intelsat and prior to that at Embratel, a Brazilian telecommunications long distance carrier.

Scott J. Sprague, SVP/Global Sales. Scott leads the global sales team located throughout regional offices around the world. His primary responsibilities include generating revenues across all products and services, providing additional senior level customer interaction, and assessing and developing alternate sales channels.

Worldspace Founder to Buy Assets of Bankrupt Company