BPM welcomes the Media Reform proposals by the Ministry for Culture & Heritage but is concerned by the discussion paper’s narrow scope and glaring gaps.
Better Public Media welcomes the Ministry for Culture & Heritage’s Media Reform discussion paper. The document sets out a range of proposals intended to address some of the pressing regulatory and structural issues in the media sector, and canvasses a significant overhaul of the regulatory and funding framework established by the 1989 Broadcasting Act.
The proposals include merging the screen funding agencies, NZ On Air and the NZ Film Commission into a single entity, and a restructuring of the Broadcasting Standards Authority’s regulatory functions and standards to cover all ‘professional media’ regardless of its distribution platform.
The possibility is also raised of imposing both local content investment and discoverability obligations on New Zealand and international broadcasters and streaming services.
Other positive measures under consideration include ‘must carry’ and prominence requirements for ‘regulated TV devices’ and greater captioning and audio-description requirements for audiences with visual or hearing disabilities.
While BPM particularly welcomes proposals to increase the levels and prominence of local content, to grow audience accessibility, and to apply consistent content standards across platforms, the Trust is concerned that the scope of the discussion paper is too narrow. It fails to address some of the more fundamental structural problems facing the media sector and it says little about the role of public media and how it might be better funded.
Despite the role of public media in supporting a free and fair society, a creative economy and an inclusive democracy, New Zealand’s per capital expenditure on public media lags behind other comparable countries.
Although sustaining the production and prominence of local content is important, maintaining the diversity and quality of local content requires public media platforms that are not principally focused on the need to maximise ratings or online traffic to align with the demographic objectives of their advertisers. Commercial platforms are understandably less willing to invest in niche, regional or minority interest content, or indeed any content that carries an opportunity cost counter to their business models.
Significantly, the proposals do not consider the future role of TVNZ, which is in commercial decline and has been dropping programmes like Sunday and Fair Go, and cutting back on staples like Shortland Street, in favour of cheaper options with better margins. Meanwhile, the government’s bill to permit advertising on Sunday mornings will close the last space in the schedule insulated from commercial priorities where special interest content can find a home.
Even if public funding were available, such market failures are not going to be addressed by any new obligation on streaming platforms. And if the streaming platforms were obliged to invest ten percent of their revenues in local content, this would only see around $50m being reinvested, which is roughly the level of the year-on-year decline in local content investment that the sector experienced in 2024.
Another glaring gap in the Media Reform discussion paper is the absence of any obligation on the global tech platforms that have exerted a significant influence on news content discovery while diverting a huge proportion of digital advertising from the domestic media sector without any commensurate reinvestment.
Although the discussion paper mentions the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill as an option for increasing investment in news content, any measures that single out the global tech platforms for special regulatory treatment are more likely to be resisted by the platforms themselves or challenged by the US government as discriminatory, leading to retaliation via tariffs on New Zealand goods and services.
BPM has long argued for a more effective and equitable mechanism, requiring companies that profit the most from the media sector to help compensate for market failures: a broad-based independently-regulated levy including on all digital advertising of significant scale.
The discussion paper’s proposed investment obligations on streaming operators would certainly help but they would really be no more than a band-aid on the media sector’s severed arteries. The regulatory reforms are important, but it is equally vital that more substantial funding is provided for local content, news and public media.
A 5% levy on the roughly $2 billion digital advertising sector alone would raise $100m per year. An extended levy on telecommunications services and audiovisual retail goods would easily double or even treble that. Public media in New Zealand could at last be properly funded and independently regulated on a scale comparable with other countries, which would help to foster social inclusion, stimulate innovation and creative enterprise, and strengthen democracy.