experience

The Media

Television

The Niue experience

By Belinda Meares

THIS month marks the first anniversary of Television New Zealand’s experimental televi sion service to Niue. On the strength of its Niuean venture, the corporation is confident of signing up other island states to the service. Also making or planning incursions into the region are Australian and American TV companies.

TVNZ’s Australian counterpart, the ABC, is probably its strongest competitor in this arena.

However, once the era of direct broad cast satellite television reaches the Pacific in the next few years, there will be little scope for conventional broadcasters to tie up rights to specific island markets.

This factor lends a sense of urgency to negotiations, not just from the television suppliers’ point of view. Island adminis trations, forewarned by the inroads of video viewing and alarmed at the pros pect of DBS TV, are now inclined to embrace the concept of a national televi sion service as a kind of lesser evil. Since television in one form or other is inevit able, its control is perceived as desirable to protect cultural values and to educate as well as entertain viewers.

TVNZ claims to offer the most com

prehensive, culturally sensitive and

affordable television option available to the islands. Although not confirmed by the corporation, it is understood that the Cook Islands, Western Samoa, Solomon Islands and Fiji have studied TVNZ ser vices similar to Niue’s. Other island states have also expressed interest.

The Cook Islands is signing a deal with TVNZ, with talk of the service being operational by Christmas. Fiji, on the other hand, has decided to go out to

tender after having investigated proposi

tions from over a dozen suppliers, in cluding TVNZ. Fiji’s service is to be sub stantially government-owned and will be

subject to strict censorship.

The Fiji government is taking the tele vision issue with caution, mainly because it would have “a profound and conse quential effect on the views, social life and culture of our country,” said a spokesman in Suva. “It is important for citizens to have a vested interest in prog rammes which reflect Fiji’s culture. This will only happen if full control of input, programming, monitoring and cen sorship was vested in the government.

The planned service would offer educa tional programmes to support rural de

velopment.

Originally the Fiji government had a 12-year exclusive television contract with

Publishing and Broadcasting Limited

(PBL), first of the Australian Packer group and later sold to Bond media.

That deal fell through when PBL with drew after the military of 1987.

TVNZ was not the first foreign oper ator to captivate Niuean audiences, Cab levision, the American cable company, already had the island’s homes cabled to receive CNN news clips and old movies.

The Niuean government considered this fare inappropriate and bought out the service to make way for the Niue Broad casting Corporation, which owns and operates the service supplied by TVNZ.

In its trial phase TVNZ has largely sup ported the cost of service, though this arrangement is expected to change next year. As it is, Niuean viewers now pay a fee of $5 a week to receive about 30 hours of programmes, which include news, current affairs, documentaries, sports, and general entertainment.

The working manager of Niuean tele vision, (“I can’t afford to sit behind a desk all day”) is Hima Douglas, formerly broadcasting consultant to the South Pacific Commission. Douglas says that the pilot service has been successful and hopes that by the time it is put on a permanent footing, other islands will also have contracts with TVNZ so that costs can be shared. Rather than having to raise the local licence fee, he would like to see TVNZ extend its advertising into the Pacific to generate revenue to pay for the service.

A very small operation, Niuean televi sion employs four programming staff and one trainee. TVNZ had personnel on the island only during the first weeks of the station’s existence, to help set it up. Training has mostly been on the job,

Douglas says, though people have been

sent to New Zealand or Fiji for technical

training.

About a third of the TVNZ program mes are time-sensitive (such as news), so are transmitted via satellite. The rest is sent on tape. A small amount of local material is also being screened. The programmes go to air between five and ten o’clock in the evenings, Monday to Saturday. This timing is designed to dis rupt as little as possible the island way of life, Douglas says.

He remarks that Niuean households, which own a total of about 250 television sets, have not been altogether weaned from their diet of B-grade video movies just because “top-notch” TVNZ prog rammes have arrived as an alternative: “There are still people watching videos, particularly during the weekends. They hire not just one tape, but a stack of a dozen each weekend.”

Douglas identifies the video “jugger

naut” that has swept the islands in the past three or four years as the prime justification for governments to jump onto the television bandwagon. At the time, he says, “there was an under estimation by all island governments of just how powerful this video revolution

was going to be. Consequently, they’ve

now woken up to the fact that it is a very powerful medium and what is worse, we are watching other people’s television, instead of doing something locally.”

Ironically, the issue of local television is subject to heated debate on TVNZ’s home turf. But while the demand in New Zealand is for more locally pro duced drama and minority programmes, Kiwi viewers are at least treated to many hours of local news, current affairs and light entertainment shows. In Niue, by contrast, the challenge is to get just to square one and produce items that cover basic local news and events.

To complement the live feed of TVNZ’s nightly Network News, Niue’s television has two English news spots during the week and a bilingual news show on Saturdays. The language ques tion is one Douglas is very aware of; “You have always got to remember that we are a bilingual station. Though we’ll

start off with English programmes, even tually we’ll incorporate Niuean for every news and current affairs programme,” he says.

TVNZ’s executives say the corporation is very attentive to the needs of Niue and other potential Pacific clients. Jon Blomfield, general manager of TVNZ’s operations development division, ex plains that the Niue service is a pro totype that can be tailored to suit any particular situation. In the case of Niue, he says, TVNZ compiles draft program me schedules according to the client’s re quests and delivery of tapes and satellite feeds is timed to meet those schedules.

“The Niue Broadcasting Corporation is then totally free to remix, reformat, choose or not choose any of that mate rial it wishes,” he says.

In this way, the station controls the content and timing of the programmes it airs. Local input into those programming decisions is encouraged. For example, Niue’s broadcasters are advised by a committee of community representatives.

TVNZ conducts its own viewing research on the island and that information goes back to Christchurch, from where the Pacific services programmes are pack aged.

TVNZ also plays a consulting role, offering as much or as little hand holding as the fledgling island broadcas ters want, from advising on the legisla tive steps that might be needed to estab lish a television station, through to struc ture, organisation, staffing, skills de

velopment, revenue generation, equip

ment and technical services required to get a fully-fledged service on the air.

Keeping costs within the scope of li mited budgets is an obligation that TVNZ feels it is able to meet, Blomfield says. Before the advent of cheap video technology, television was not really a vi able prospect for the small and scattered Pacific island populations. “Indeed, it is still not easy,” he admits, “but one of the advantages of modern technology is that it is now possible to produce near pro fessional quality output with equipment that costs a fraction of what the profes sional organisations use. The formats we are suggesting for the Pacific Island na tions enables them to do a lot of local production at very modest cost.”

However it may appear at first glance, TVNZ’s motivation for initiating its Paci fic neighbours to the thrill of television is strategic rather than altruistic. As a com mercially-oriented state-owned enter

prise, the corporation is expected by the New Zealand government to turn a profit.

While the Niuean venture has not been a money-spinner for TVNZ to date, Blomfield is optimistic, saying: “If we get to the position of having several customers, we’ll have a service that is both economically viable for TVNZ and, at the same time an extremely cost effective source of programming mate rial for the Pacific nations.”

It is no secret that the determination of TVNZ’s Pacific push is influenced by a long-term goal. That is to break into the far more populous, and lucrative, Asian markets with English-language ser vices distributed by direct broadcast satellite. The logic behind this move is attributed to the recent deregulation of New Zealand’s broadcasting services which threatens to fragment TVNZ’s loc al commercial revenues by introducing competition. According to its director general, Julian Mounter, TVNZ’s foreign ventures are therefore designed to top up the corporation’s dwindling coffers so that it can continue to fulfil its local pro duction and public service objectives.

Against this background of intense re gional and global competition for televi sion audience share, a conference on the future of television in the Pacific is to be held in Suva in the end of November.

The meeting is organised by the Asia- Pacific Broadcasting Union and the South Pacific Commission, with support from the Fiji Broadcasting Commission, the Japanese Hoso Bunka Foundation, UNESCO and the French government.

Expected to attend are heads of the

region’s broadcasting organisations and

governmental broadcasting policy plan

ners, who will debate such vital issues as government control versus privately owned television and whether to attempt nationwide coverage or limit transmis sions to main population centres. They will discuss how to negotiate deals with

foreign suppliers, how to produce local

programmes and how to train personnel.

The economic and social implications of the advent of television will also be on the agenda. This debate presupposes that the conference’s key issue, The main decision; should we introduce tele vision?, is answered affirmatively.

From the field, Himo Douglas re sponds in light of the Niuean experi ence: “We have set the ball rolling and I guess it’s now a question of improving and consolidating the service and trying to produce more local input. We want to paint an island face on our television.

We want to enjoy what the international

programme suppliers are offering

TVNZ but, at the same time, we want a fairly substantial hibiscus displayed on the screen as well.” □