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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 39, Number 14, 5 July 1976.
Back to the NZBC
Back to the NZBC
Changes in Broadcasting : The News Fuse
There are many issues at large in broadcasting at present, among them the 'need for overall financial control' and "Parliamentary accountability". They will be the subject of a later article. In this issue Salient reporter John McBride looks narrowly at the news (i.e. the present, separate news gathering sendees). Ron Jarden stresses that the Government is not picking on the news: "Everything will be scrutinized". The news just happens to be first, [phone interview with Jarden, 30/6/76] Nevertheless, the Government claims savings can be made in this specific area, thus the news issue can rightly be studied in isolation.
The Government Policy
Few people realise how brief the Government policy is. It's exhausted in twenty-three lines of a press release of 22 June, stating that the news shall be amalgamated, and that the reason is "financial efficiency". There is nothing on now the amalgamation will proceed - the policy asserts that all the details "will be for the new NZBC to investigate" [press statement NZ Broadcasting, Minister of Broadcasting 22 June 1976]
The Government's admitted lack of knowledge of details binds it in a contradiction. It does not know how news is to be merged, thus it cannot know how much can be saved. Yet it claims to know enough to be sure it is worthwhile to amalgamate the news for financial reasons.
When asked what would happen if, after all the investigations, the NZBC found it cheaper to keep 2 news services Ron Jarden's reply was similar to the Government's "Our enquiries are sufficiently advanced so that we know that won't be"!
What Facts did the Government Possess, on which to Found its Policy
- The findings of a BCNZ committee (although he claimed this was "not the definitive study". The Post 24/6 and 25/6 says it was).
- A number of reports from "qualified administrators" within the corporations.
- Reports of a special sub-committee of the "Minister" (ie the Postmaster-General), which included Treasury officials.
- Advice of Sir Geoffrey Cox, a former head of Britain's Independent Television News (ITN).
These sources indicated "that duplication in news is an expensive area" [Jarden - phone - 30/6]. My own investigations of the same sources, indicates the contrary.
The BCNZ Committee
| (i) | Present, total, annual expenditure by TV I and TV2 on news piess current affairs = $3.2m | ||||||||||||
| (ii) | Projected total cost after elimination of one news team, based on BCNZ figure, consists of:
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| (iii) | Total saving by merging the news = $.442m |
| (a) | All figures were calculated in Governments favour. |
| (b) | With non competitive news, both services would suffer a reduction in advertising reserve: news has, under the two service arrangement, become the corporations' best ad revenue draw card. Jarden says news' ad rate (ie the cost of the ad) above other programs is marginal, but then the projected "saving" is marginal too. Anyway, the point is, revenue must be considered - not just hare cost. |
| (c) | With news downgraded, the corporations will automatically put more resources into current affairs. And Government policy is that the NZBC be in no way inhibited from "making adequate provision for both channels to supplement the news with commentary and interpretation in their current affairs programs" [press statement ibid 22/6/76]. |
The "Qualified Administrators" and Ministers Investigations
So far as can be ascertained, the figures the so-called "administrators" gave Templetons "investigators", were grossly inflated in the 22 June press statement. One such administrator who accompanied Templeton's investigators around Avalon and gave correct figures when asked (it was his duty to answer questions - correctly) gave his estimate of news staff numbers as "about 260-70 but definitely under 300". This appears in Templetons statement as "360". And this TV I administrator's estimate of total new costs (TV I plus 2 plus Radio NZ) was well under the "$6m" claimed in the 22 June press statement. [footnote -indeed, this is obvious. Take the total of TV I and 2 news and current affairs costs, $3.2m. Now, would Radio NZ spend $28 m to make up the $6m claimed
Thus the two figures cited by the Government to demonstrate a build up in news costs and staffing, are much inflated - in comparison with the figures the Government investigators obtained. And I assure you that my source is very reliable.
Sir Geoffrey Cox's Advice
This was based on the former NZer, former ITN boards "knowledge and observation" of the NZ scene Sir Geoffrey takes a great interest in NZ broadcasting, particularly the 1973 structural changes which, according to him were attacting "a lot of attention" among broadcasting experts elsewhere [Post 15/10/75].
Since he has not been involved in the corporations he is unlikely to have given cost figures to dispute BCNZ's. But even if the agreed with the Government figure of "$6m 10 percent of total broadcasting expenditure" he could not have called the news services expensive.
Ten percent is a good average figure - both Cox's ITN plus the BBC devote 10 percent of their total expenditure to the news. By using the adjectival phrase "more than" 10 percent, the government is just employing a well known method of lying with
TV 1's news budget for 1975, all in: salaries, overtime, film, travel, processing, etc - was $1.7 m [source, Doug Ekhoff TV1 current affairs chief]. ITN spent 4.97m Pounds plus 280,000 on loan etc costs attributable to news
Thus TV news in New Zealand is not "expensive" and it is unlikely that Sir Geoffrey Cox, a former head of ITN, said so.
Conclusions
| (1) | The present news services do not cost as much as the Government claims they do. |
| (2) | Even if they do cost $6m and 10 percent of overall broadcasting expenditure, that would not be "expensive" when compared with similar operations in Britain The 10 percent figure is normal, and the $6m actual cost would be cheap, considering the physical areas covered and outputs per week of the NZ TV services. Incidentally, it is unfair to compare the news' percentage cost with its percentage of air time, because news is one hour per night, seven nights per week of peak (i.e. high quality) programming. |
| (3) | The sum that could be saved by amalgamation, is miniscule. According to one source very high in Avalon, it might even cost more. |
| (4) | The Government never had, and still does not have sufficient financial and technical information on which to base a policy decision to amalgamate news for financial reasons. To convince the public, it relies on misleading arguments like "its wasteful to send two helicoptors to film the same event". That sounds sensible, but ignores the extraordinarily high cost of duplicating film, which makes it cheaper to send the two crews. |
| (5) | The Governments statements have been shot through with contradictions. For example Mr Jacob-son of Templeton's office said on 27 May that he couldn't say what the Governments plans for the news were, because "the Minister doesn't have the figures yet". These were to be found in the Corporations' Annual Reports, which would be tabled in Parliament, "which hasn't met yet" [source: phone interview with Jacobson]. Well, the Governments policy was released on 22 June, one day before Parliament met. The Annual Reports still have not been published and Ron Jarden says they don't contain the necessary information anyway. |
A further example. Since the beginning of the Governments talk about news amalgamations, Templeton has given the impression there will be no redundancy - only a staff non-replacement policy. At Avalon last Saturday he stated to broadcasting journalists that there would be no redundancy when the second news team disappears. But under questioning he said journalists should be looking to their redundancy agreement and that there had already been talks to that effect with the PSA. But (again!) PSA president Jim Turner was present and denied that there had been such talks, [source: responsible spokesman for broadcasting journalists - contacted on 29/6].
The decision to merge the news was not really made for financial reasons. The contradiction in the Governments assertion, that it "knows savings can be made" but does not know how or how much (even vaguely) is now becoming too burdensome to maintain. It makes statements like "economising on news costs would enable the Government to speed up expanded coverage of TV2 transmission into country areas" [Post 16/6/76 look very dubious.
So now they appear to be putting a new argument that the separate news services may be ultravires the the Broadcasting Act. This was the first matter Ron Jarden mentioned, in a phone interview on 30 June. He immediately qualified his words, saying "of course that's water under the bridge now, but it does show that the journalists' behaviour has been unnecessarily spontaneous. They should have jumped up and down in 1973.
Details of the argument: S1 1(I) (C) of the 1973 Act makes it the general function of the BCNZ "To gather news and make it available to TV I and TV 2 for their use in the planning, production, and presentation of news bulletins and related programmes..." The argument is, that this means "these shall be one news gatherer, BCNZ". It is true that separate news services were not established immediately upon commencement of the 1973 Act. They developed subsequently upon agreement between the corporations and a liberal BCNZ Board.
However, the suggestion that this agreement is a violation of S1 l(i)(c) is both an insult and serious allegation against the BCNZ Board, and legally untenable.
A proper construction of the Act must look at the commonly accepted meaning of the words "for their use in the.... production of news." "Production" includes filming, that is, includes the news gathering function, "their use" plainly means use by TV1 and TV2, i.e. separately BCNZ can provide stories, or film, but the corporations separately have a clear power to plan, film, as well as present their own footage. And by S 53(h) and S56 the corproations have powers to arrange production of "programmes". News is a program. Thus the attempt to replace the increasingly difficult to maintain "financial efficiency" argument cannot succeed.
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