TV makes

Cook Islands

TV makes its debut

By Angela McCarthy

AN electronic age Christmas pre sent came on air to all residents of Rarotonga on December 25 with the debut of broadcast television on the island. A deal signed between Televi sion New Zealand (TVNZ) and Cook Is land Prime Minister Geoffrey Henry on September 7 brought national television to the Cook Islands in the form of satel lite news broadcasts, air freighted videos and local programming.

TV will broadcast from spm to 11pm nightly. Initially, the Cook Islands

Broadcasting Corporation (CIBC) will

provide 10 hours a week of local content and look after advertising.

Every night a half hourly bi-lingual

news programme will be broadcast simultaneously. There will also be a

nightly cultural programme featuring

traditional dancing, contemporary enter tainment, and a variety of artistic pro jects. The rest of the schedule will be chosen from TVNZ programmes avail able to the Pacific. The general tapes will be airfreighted to Rarotonga weekly.

The six o’clock news will come via satel lite along with other live events like

sports.

“The basic principle we work on,” says TVNZ Satellite Operations Manager Lewis Woodburn, “is to offer the islands an economical option with guidelines for suggested programmes and schedules.

Stations choose what is to be transmitted from the material available nothing is compulsory.”

The TVNZ package is designed to make television viable for smaller island nations in the Pacific. TVNZ buy the rights to show overseas programmes in the Pacific region which means that the Pacific nations don’t have to individually face the full brunt of costs.

Niue is the only other Pacific island at present that uses TVNZ services. They have been broadcasting for a little more than a year, and according to Wood burn, they do two local newscasts a week and various documentaries.

The contract between the Cook Is lands government and TVNZ has changed considerably since talks first started. Some TVNZ negotiators felt that the proposed 10 hours a week of local programming was too ambitious. But the government and the Cook Islands Broadcasting Board argued that service must kick off with a strong local content.

This was particularly important to Hen ry, who said: “That the station is seen as of the Cook Islands and not just pumping out

foreign programmes is extremely impor

tant. We want Cook Islanders to see themselves on TV, and we want prog rammes produced that are relevant to their everyday needs as well as everyday entertainment.” Local input has been re negotiated and staff numbers have risen accordingly along with costs.

One of the biggest problems with set ting up television is finding and training people to run it. CIBC was fortunate.

American Richard Wachter, CIBC’s tech nical advisor, worked in Los Angeles on the technical side of movie and television productions like Mork and Mindy and the Bob Newhart Show. In 1989, while he was in the Cook Islands, the govern ment signed the TVNZ deal. Wachter ended up with a six-month contract with

Cibc.

Wachter is training people and has 20 staff members doing on-the-job training.

He also helped design the studio and organise the programming setup. He has been involved in videoing Maori lan guage classes, developing archival library tapes and building up profiles on Cook Islander entertainers.

The other key person with CIBC is Chief Executive Freddie Keil, an experi enced radio broadcaster. He and Wach ter were planning to set up a private television station. Keil is confident the Cook Islands will benefit from television: “It is progress but it’s up to the com munity to accept it as another way of communicating and entertaining and not abuse it. It will only affect us if we let it.

If the machine controls life, you’re lost.”

“That is why although TVNZ felt it ambitious of us to take on so much local production immediately we felt we had to. We want to record our life and cul ture so we don’t look back in five years time and say we used to do this and that, but now it’s gone. We will preserve it as it is still there the old with the new.”

The Cook Islands Broadcasting Cor poration as directed by the 1989 Broad casting Bill, which is before parliament, has to be self-funding. Funding has come from loans from the Cook Islands Post Office and an Australian telecom munications company. The budgetted expenditure for the corporation’s first year of operation is NZ$l million.

The network does not see enough advertising potential to pay all the bills.

The corporation’s accountants forecast that some measure of assistance will be needed in the first two or three years.

Broadcasting fees and advertising will be the major sources of funds. And the Broadcasting Bill will allow parliament to “appropriate funds for the purpose of

the corporation”.

“If we are going to survive we need all the advertising we can get. If it is in Chinese, we’ll take it but we want as much local advertising as possible,” says Keil. □