The Broadcasting Act 1931, which established a National Broadcasting Service under the New Zealand Broadcasting Board, records that in 1925 the Minister of Telegraphs signed a deal with the Radio Broadcasting Company of New Zealand Limited allowing the Minister to acquire their assets – seemingly in anticipation of such a nationalisation to create a public service broadcasting network. Radio New Zealand’s origin therefore begins 98 years ago.
I have listened to RNZ for fully half of that near century. I am old enough to recall reading the YA (National) and YC (Concert) radio programme schedules which were equally weighted in pages with the two television channels in a newspaper-size NZ Listener. A NZ Listener owned by the public broadcaster, of course – everything like that was owned by the state, why wouldn’t it be? I remember tuning in on Sunday afternoons to the Goon Show (repeats) on my transistor. The game shows with familiar British voices were timeless – only betrayed in their vintage by a scratch on the record. The mode was collar, tie and jacket required, the tempo was glacial, the excitement level set to beige. That was the ‘80s, it might as well have been the first time around in the ‘50s. As a Goon might remark: state radio was in black and white.
The editor of The Daily Blog brought to my attention that RNZ has evaded for some time any serious criticism or review. Are they getting a free pass in part because their own Media Watch programme has been presumed to be the last word in reviews (when they never seem to find fault with themselves)? Is it kid gloves for those wrapped in the public good? Wisely, the editor has insisted my opinions on RNZ today are essential and should be covered on a weekly basis in the run up to this year’s general election. This is the first of those reviews – a brief overview.
As I write this I had RNZ National on in the background and had to snap the radio off because the songs on this show, the Saturday request show, are so bad they are literally unlistenable. Horrendous. All the worst versions of all the worst songs by all the worst musicians. This gawdawful, pathetic shite! Why play requests that are this bad? What’s the point in that – where is the quality control, where is the exercise in editorial judgment? However this is, incredibly, depressingly, maddingly exactly what their own audience want – that is the nature of a request show and look at what that is telling us. This is essentially the problem: their legacy audience and their expectations. The RNZ Charter, last time I looked, baked in the legacy audience as the determinant of what RNZ can do and this has justified atrophy at every level. Tokenism/wokenism on-air is a superficial distraction to a Pakeha cultural pillar that is still in stultifying black and white.
A useful gauge I have found for understanding any radio station is what it sounds like in the second or two when you randomly go past on the tuner. It is everything you need to know. If an ad is playing it is most likely ZB – that’s what they do, ad whores. If it is dead silence it is highly likely to be Concert – no hurry at all, smug. If it’s American, and they will usually be saying Ezekiel or Josiah etc it is Christian. And if it is the shittest song in all the pathetic pantheon of shit songs it will be RNZ National. It’s what they do, you can’t get away from it – or at least I can’t for the next harrowing few months.
I stopped being a regular listener when I noticed every new bulletin started with “The National Party thinks…” – not balance but actively undermining the government. Their Covid coverage was all whining spokespeople for business and Chris Bishop
You didn’t define ‘the shittiest songs’…..were they homegrown NZ band/group or overseas bands/groups singing these shitty songs.
Being RNZ I would assume the former? (I know never assume, but I never listen to RNZ)
RNZ is a woke infested arm of the leftie luvvies, why it still survives on the taxpayers tit is a mystery!
like auntie beeb it’s job is to support the GOVT OF THE DAY whoever that may be….it’s not so much the bias as the low quality.
“I never listen to RNZ”
Great! That leaves more for ME!
They have a website too, you could take ten minutes to check out factual inaccuracies and pointed ommissions amounting to propaganda, no need to listen to them on air.
Aw, c’mon Tim, you know they’re not programming for you – they desperately want to target the younger-than-you listeners so NatRad give them the ‘music’ they think the youngies wanna hear. They know that if they don’t, RNZ will become irrelevant within the decade – or sooner.
Only the Concert Programme will survive with its reverent silences, oh-so-knowledgeable and try-hard announcers and 24/7 hits-of-yester-century.
But with RNZ – and others in radio and TV – whatever ‘era’ they survive to, they will still mispronounce it as ‘error’.
Maybe the answer is to make requests and get the music one wants.
They list the music they play. I guess the offending stuff is on here.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturdaynight
I grew up listening to the National Program & as a child enjoyed listening to the Goons & various other BBC productions when I was supposed to be sleeping. I still enjoy listening to RNZ today, for news & information, though I don’t find it quite as good as the ABC National Radio in Australia for that, if you could stomach Australian politics. When I want music, I generally listen to RDU the student radio station in Christchurch, for a more interesting mix of genres, otherwise I go for YouTube where I can get a lot of interesting European based music that you wouldn’t hear anywhere in New Zealand.
Radio NZ a version of The Project.
RNZ is the only thing worth listening to. Everything else is bland and beige lowest denominator advertorial mush and inane commercial nonsense. Sell Sell Sell Buy Buy Buy. No thanks.