31st March 2008

With loud trumpeting and an opening program consisting of a political debate between the leaders of the minor parties (minus Winston Peters), Television New Zealand launched the new Public Broadcast, no advertising channels 6 & 7 on the weekend.

Missed it? Not surprising as it is only available to people that have installed the Freeview satellite receiver which is an estimated 7000 households at this stage. The Government make noises that these channels are important to the whole populace as a informational source and yet over 330000 households are immediately excluded by virtue of the fact that they receive their television signal through a sky decoder. TVNZ is owned by the government so they should be directed to do a deal with SKY for these channels to be available in the start-up package.

No doubt the stance taken by TVNZ has something to do with the fact that SKY will not release the existing free to air Prime channel to Freeview. SKY is not blameless in trying to ring fence its' territory and also needs to understand that "free to air" means exactly that. They have a duty to their subscriber base to make available all the channels available through their set-top box and in return make available to other competing boxes those channels they have opted to purchase in the free to air arena. It's then up to SKY to ensure that the program quality and variety on their pay channels are of a sufficient standard to keep their customers. Perhaps our legislation happy politicians might like to pass some regulations to make this happen. They pass laws with abandon these day which impact on our lives, maybe they could do something useful for a change.

TC