MEDIAWATCH: Dear Paul Goldsmith – tell TVNZ, Three/Warner Bros Discovery, Sky TV, Great Southern Television, South Pacific Pictures, Greenstone and SPADA they’re dreamin’
Oh come on…
Local versions of popular global reality TV shows – such as Masterchef New Zealand, Married at First Sight NZ, The Block NZ and Dancing with the Stars –should be eligible for the Government’s 40% screen production rebate, say the country’s major broadcasters, screen producers and production companies.
And TVNZ has gone one step further, suggesting existing restrictions could be further lifted by allowing the rebate to also apply to the production of live sport.
As the local screen industry battles an estimated loss of $50 million in annual production investment from TVNZ and Three, it is turning to the Government for support to get hit shows back in production and on air.
Most of the shows draw relatively big audiences and therefore also have commercial appeal. There have been nine seasons of Dancing with the Stars, the last of which was in 2020, while The Block NZ was canned last year, at the last minute, after 10 seasons.
TVNZ, Three/Warner Bros Discovery, Sky TV and a range of major production companies, including Great Southern Television, South Pacific Pictures and Greenstone, have appealed to the Ministry for Culture and Heritage to broaden the eligibility criteria for the screen production rebate (SPR).
“We are at a critical juncture which will decide whether New Zealand content will continue to push above its weight or instead collapse,” say the organisations in a joint submission on the Government’s media reforms package.
They have called on the Government to simplify, change and/or remove processes that inhibit investment, including “allowing domestic versions of international formats to access the SPR if made by a local company”.
…Dear Paul Goldsmith.
Mate.
Buddy.
Comrade.
We don’t like each other much because I’m a post-Marxist socialist with violent environmental tendencies where as you are a classical music playing pianist who believes colonialism was ok for Māori.
We have nothing in common except that you are the Broadcasting Minister and I am a podcaster, but what we both despise is giving away taxpayer money.
I am loath to give it away as corporate welfare and you are just loath.
I know deep down behind the calm facade you are an ideological freak who hates giving away any money, and it its to these deeply destructive side of you that I now appeal – tell TVNZ, Three/Warner Bros Discovery, Sky TV, Great Southern Television, South Pacific Pictures, Greenstone and SPADA they’re dreamin!
You can not seriously pretend that ‘Dancing with the Stars NZ’ or ‘Masterchef NZ’ or ‘NZs Got Talent’ or whatever bullshit franchise is being pimped here from America is NZ culture!
The rebate is supposed to help foster unique NZ voices and perspectives and sell the country as a great place to make movies.
It is not so desperate local production companies making pre-manufactured cultural shit from NMZ in a. local wrapper is NZ culture!
Make those bastards worker the rebate!
Create unique content and rebate until your hearts content, but what is being proposed here is subsidising McDonalds while they host a local Ronald.
Look Paul, I know you can never do the right thing for the right reasons in Broadcasting, but surely a man as pious as you when it comes to culture can have his intense elitism played to – this isn’t culture, it’s imported Walmart shit pretending to be Shakespeare.
If TVNZ, Three/Warner Bros Discovery, Sky TV, Great Southern Television, South Pacific Pictures, Greenstone and SPADA want the rebate they have to actually do something far more creative than rehashed overseas franchises with a local clown fronting it.
The irony is NZ is where these shows all started and were exported from!
Make new content, get the rebate.
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+–I agree —–+
So if these shows all started here and we’re exported from here are the producers rolling in worldwide format royalties?
“MasterChef New Zealand, The Block NZ, Dancing with the Stars [and] Married at First Sight New Zealand feature New Zealanders, and are loved by New Zealanders.”
ha ha ha ha ha
What a lot of shit.
Yes agree, not that I’ve ever brought myself to watch them
Bob the first. If you cared to visit elderly people sat in front of television sets in rest homes, then you’d get to see these trashy abominations, albeit disadvantaged by being awake, or not as demented as they are.
Being an appreciator of classical music is a plus in my book.
Yes. I never liked Goldsmith, but if the man likes classical music, and is a classical piano player, there’s good in there…
Reality TV is shite with sugar on. The government should not waste taxpayers‘ money on low value entertainment.
Completely, completely agree.
And oh, I’m another seeing a love of classical music as a plus (go Johann Sebastian)
I dont watch those shows as they are not reality at all and breed bad manners and show young people that watch then how to behave like arseholes .
NO GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR REALITY TV. NOT NOW, NOT EVER.
Money to go to NZ productions written, made here by NZers. Our own culture still exists despite the kneejerk reactions of overseas stuff and wealth which must produce greater than our cultural cringe could hope for!!!
No they would not imagine it because the best schools where the go-fo-it kids go probably worship sporting attainments, STEM subjects, and consider anything overseas more important than ours
As Ruud Kleinpaste says in a book of anecdotes from Kiwi men, we don’t show respect for each other and for our ecology and surroundings. And those who scramble up to become leaders are so puffed up with their own prowess that they don’t learn anything beyond about age 19 at which time Einstein said, that common-sense forms. And that is the laziest form of thought.
Or the funding could be used to import quality Brit comedies and docs like we used to, rather than be dragged down to the level of Spada and co. Spada can watch the minor parties in Parliament if they are most comfortable watching morons, or they could get real jobs.
There is one series from USA I think called Parks and Recreation. It’s about trying to run a Council and there is a mixture of suspense, romance, humour, farce, social ambition, sexism, grumpy old men, affronted beautiful women and young adults in it. I think Kiwiland is ready for it.
Here is a small sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_HSJym0ts4
One of the town officials of Pawnee 20.06
Alternatively or in addition what about Dylan Moran in Black Books about book stores and mad book lovers.