TV Review: Ad infinitum

Going through the Freeview channels I can only count two that don’t carry ads. Two out of 13 (14 with Trackside). Those two are Parliament and Te Reo, the Maori language channel of the Maori TV service, which has no ads but does have station promos (at least I haven’t noticed any ads in the brief time window it does broadcast; logically there could be ads in Te Reo that I’ve simply missed). Even the Christians at Shine TV have got ads – Christian ads for Christian folk, but still ads. This advertising saturated situation is taken for granted – a legacy of timid, reluctant and regulated development of television by the government.

The subsequent creation of the Freeview platform to replace the analogue one has opened opportunities but also limited development as the entry costs are still prohibitive, thus imposing commercial impetus to run ads, and the industry is manipulated by TVNZ and Sky to keep the ad-free channels on the Sky platform.

It would seem quite normal to someone raised with only two channels – both carrying ads – that this pattern would continue, as it did with TV3 in 1989 and Sky a year later. 20 years after that and the thought that there should be a non-commercial station hasn’t gained any traction. The TV Licence Fee never came up with enough funds to abandon advertising on a channel. After the fee – a hated tax – was dropped there wasn’t a mechanism to advance the possibility of funding an ad-free station. There is a surprising lack of appetite for it, or rather a surprisingly high tolerance of ads. Ads have become accepted as necessary and in NZ we don’t have another source of experience to compare this to. This is the perception at least from our insular position.

Radio however is a different story. Different history too. The government stations, the YA and YC stations, the predessessors of the RNZ National and Concert networks, had no ads. They – and the
parliamentary broadcast – still have no ads. And ask any RNZ listener whether they would mind ads or not and they would tell you they’d rather scratch up their best Dylan vinyl than sacrifice one day with ads. Television has no equivalent to die in a ditch over and so the feelings about the two are typically differing.

The inconsistency stems from the historical facts and nothing more. Put as an open proposition to most people they would align TV and Radio together as broadcasters without distinction in whether they supported ad-free stations (whether or not state-owned). However the fact of RNZ’s existence, and near BBC status in NZ, has ensured a higher level of support for a commercial free State broadcaster in radio. Even with Wayne Mowat and his already scratched 78s. But no such support evident for TV. Too expensive, too difficult. Really?

Problem is TVNZ is a commercial entity and Radio NZ is not. TVNZ would rather do commercial deals with Sky over the Licence Fee-funded back catalogue than it would run the heritage channel on Freeview. TVNZ would rather be co-opted into Sky’s defensive Commerce Commission-defeating ‘Igloo’ shitbox sideshow than offer a single channel free of commercials. Without the specific NZ On Air funding to ditch ads they wouldn’t move. Even if they offered a subsidy to do it the content would inevitably be an issue and they would withhold all but the worst stuff if this went to one of the networks who have their other channels to defend. What value would an ad free channel mean if all they showed was Melody Rules and Close to Home episodes?

At this point the reason for a public good interest in the maintenance of a commercial-free channel needs a word. It is a component of a ‘public broadcaster’, but this does not necessarily mean a State broadcaster. Kiwi FM (and the Mediaworks frequency deal with the government) being a similar public-private deal with music quota instead of advertising being the public good identified. Well, maybe not the best example.

The main reason I listen to the National programme on the wireless and not other stations so much is because they don’t have ads. They don’t have screaming people saying that a longer period of indebtedness is the reason for a sale of foreign-made appliances, or tales from crusty old men about their soft penises and how they took drugs to get hard penises, and the same shouty crew belting out another excruciating template jingle and Sir the Right Honourable Mad Butcher ranting about his flaps every 15 flipping minutes. For me that alone is the entire public good – not the rest of Radio Rhodesia National’s Aryan staffing and Europhilic playlist. I don’t care for all of what they do. It’s like Henare Te Ua wasn’t just the first Maori allowed in front of an RNZ mic – he was also the last. And of course there are times, many times – and perhaps it is because they don’t allow any non-Europeans in there – when they tend to disappear up their own bottoms and the wankery gets so much that even your staunch died in a sloppy woolen jersey teacher finds themselves turning to mainstream talkhate radio just to get away from it and towards something that sounds real. There are limits to how much wank someone will put up with and National radio is probably a pretty good test.

The funding issues and the content issues are not the whole of the solution or the problem. The issue is the frequency and length of the break itself. The experience desired – the one I’m ultimately suggesting the taxpayer cough for – is not just the on screen absence of the commercial and the off screen conflicting interests they may bring, but an uninterrupted, continuous viewing with relatively long periods between programmes. Sometimes filled with interesting interstitial content, like a mini-documentary, animation or short film. Not just a cup of tea length break, also enough time for a pee – tres civilised. This was what happened pre-TV3 on Sundays when there were – and I don’t know quite how anyone under the age of 20 would be able to comprehend this – but there were no ads on Sunday, for the whole day. The ban still exists on broadcasts until midday, but people don’t tend to notice because it’s not when most people watch TV and they break up shows with internal promos that mimic the ads. This is the basic problem.

The networks run these internal ad breaks almost – or maybe not almost – as spite for their foregone revenue. Like it was a campaign to get ads put on as well as a psychological reminder to the viewer to keep an anticipation of advertising. It ruins an otherwise enjoyable morning of watching NZ On Air’s dumping ground for ghetto-ised minority programming.

If advertising is such an abomination in the eyes of the Lord that the government bans it on Sunday mornings, if ads are such a heinous wickedness in the churching hours, then why can’t they ban these satanic messages altogether on their own ruddy TV networks the same way they have banned it altogether on their own radio networks? How much longer is the inconsistency, the inequity, the inequality to continue between the audiences of the government’s assets in the two broadcast media? Two options seem clear: either turn a current state TV channel over to non-commercial (Heritage, TV One?) or let it out to someone else who can provide local public broadcasting content sans ads (Face TV, regional stations?).

An incoming government of the left doesn’t usually have any higher concern than the Tories for the broadcasting portfolio if present and recent history is any indication. It is time they did.These anomalies we have normalised ought to be addressed by a new government in a rational fashion and with a fresh perspective, prepared to reform, not just protect the status quo ad infinitum.