Guest Post: RNZ National – Trapped?
A guest post by Fish Across Face:
This follows on from my recent post about the NZ media ecosystem and focusses more on the central challenge faced by the state radio broadcaster.
It’s now clear RNZ National has defied the laws of gravity, albeit in reverse. A massive increase in funding courtesy of the last Labour government has somehow transmogrified into serious erosion of fortunes – namely trust, and by extension, bums on seats.
As much as some might like to deny it, the organisation (and its parent company NZ Inc) cannot continue to extract money from the taxpayer whilst exhibiting a clear trend of radio decline. Even with its new, old recruit on board, RNZ can’t wait, Mr McCawber-like, for something to turn up.
Interestingly, the pedigree of RNZ’s refreshed board already seems to herald action – commercial heavyweights like Brent Impey and Andrew Szustermann aren’t there for nothing.
But governance is one thing; a new chief executive is another. There are many educated guesses as to who this might be, but most of them are broadcasting adjacent. In my opinion, this individual needs to be a practitioner – someone who can fly the plane, recalibrate the engines and do a flight attendant’s job too.
Why? For obvious reasons, the tasks at hand can’t be farmed out to the executive, who are either quite happy with issues like the routine stacking on The Panel’s weekly politics slot or they don’t listen to their own product.
A few weeks ago, The Whip featured Phil Goff, Andrea Vance and Tuwhenuaroa Natanahira to discuss this year’s budget cuts. They all agreed they were awful. RNZ can’t continually tolerate this and expect to be taken seriously as an impartial broadcaster.
Certainly, there are many bright spots of radio sunshine, such as that very programme’s fast, funny everyman Panel host Wallace Chapman himself, but there are gaping holes in the schedule too – entire swathes of output don’t seem to have any oversight. It beggars belief some shows such as the Saturday morning offering were commissioned in the first place. Is the radio format anybody’s responsibility, or is set up so that nobody’s neck is ever on the line? If I were a shareholding minister, the letter from outgoing chair Jim Mather would not fill me with confidence. Nothing in it indicates anything other than tinkering.
There’s no way around it. Someone is going to have to get their hands very dirty.
Assuming the company becomes a bit more mainstream and climbs back into the Top 3 – and doesn’t experience outright revolt by staff en route – RNZ radio faces two problems.
1: A shift to the ‘middle’ could mean losing habitual listeners off the ‘other end’ – those discerning people who relish obscure, academic topics, longform discussions and challenging music – putting the station back to square one; declining numbers – the bane of a broadcasting minister’s existence.
2: A publicly funded broadcaster moving into the mainstream can create a distortionary effect. Robbing the commercial sector of consumers is a lose-lose for any responsible government. Money out (taxpayer funding) and money out (a company with guaranteed income competes with those that don’t; the affected companies get less consumers = less advertising = less tax).
My suspicion though, is that this is what will really happen.
1: If RNZ radio starts resonating again, then the five commercial behemoths that have happily taken advantage of its absence will shrug and pull those listeners back with an Instant Cash Prize, or an iLoad. In short, RNZ’s quandary is that if it moves to the middle of the road, the existing, battle-hardened, professional operators who inhabit this part of the ecosystem will simply run it over.
2: Becoming a more mainstream amalgamation of the radio brands on offer, and delivering what people actually want (and unfortunately that will mean ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’ on occasion) equals duplication. This administration, and those of the foreseeable future cannot afford duplication.
The state broadcaster is trapped.
It either stays where it is, diligently sharpening a wooden axe head, or it makes wholesale changes, losing its progressive audience in the process, only to be eaten alive by the commercial operators, and perhaps closed down – because at that point it becomes clear the private sector already provides a similar service with no cost to the taxpayer.
Perhaps there is one way they can pull this off.
Dump the strangling effect of the RNZ charter and replace it with these three words: make great radio. The challenge will be making great radio that no-one else is already delivering (for nothing).