Maori Television

Been watching the new Maori Television channel on Sky 33 most of the day. Congratulations are due to those who have worked so hard to make it a reality. It was quite moving to see the passion of many of the staff, and the importance this can have to a lot of people.

So far it looks to be pretty well done. I am glad that it make use of English sub-titles and have some programmes in English, as it used to annoy me a lot that I could not understand Te Karere despite wanting to view it.

MTV has had a nightmare establishment phase with two years of delays, fraud, sexual harrassment, cost over-runs etc. Whether or not they survive will depend I suspect on whether they continue to produce a quality product, and avoid the extravagence of Aotearoa TV.

On a related note I am surprised that a TV channel whose purpose is promoting local culture would use maoritelevision.com as its domain name instead of say television.maori.nz or tv.maori.nz. Incidentially the website isn’t responding at the moment, but that may be a problem at my end.