The good and bad of the media reform proposals

The Ministry of Culture and Heritage has five draft proposals for media reform. A couple are okay and a couple are terrible. My initial take on them.

Ensuring accessibility of local media platforms

The proposal is to introduce ‘must carry’ requirements to ensure ‘local TV services’ are pre-installed and receive a basic level of prominence in terms of positioning on the home screen on ‘regulated TV devices’ at no cost to the local service. Regulated TV devices would also be required to ensure ease of access to local free-to-air linear channels.

This could be okay, as it is merely requiring smart TVs to preinstall local TV apps. However this may have unintended consequences around price. It could mean that all smart TVs sold in NZ have to be specially configured for NZ, which could increase manufacturing and hence retail costs.

Increasing investment into and discoverability of local content

The proposal is that all professional audio-visual media providers including New Zealand TV broadcasters, New Zealand streaming platforms and global streaming platforms would have:

• Local content investment obligations:to invest a proportion of annual revenue in the creation or acquisition of local content.
• Discoverability requirements for local content:to put in place measures to promote and clearly display local content and enable users to find new local content.

This is a terrible idea. Basically it would force global streaming services you subscribe to, to fund NZ produced shows. It’s an indirect tax to prop up local content providers who already get a huge amount of taxpayer funding.

This will mean that Disney+ and Netflix etc will have to fund local woke TV productions that no one actually wants to watch.

Streaming services will provide content that their customers want. If NZ customers want to watch more Guy Williams comedy, then they’l have a commercial incentive to provide it. But having the Government force them to fund local content is wrong. Worse it could lead to trade reprisals from the US.

Increasing captioning and audio description (CAD)

The proposal is to create legislative obligations on TV broadcasters and streaming platforms operating in New Zealand to provide equitable access to their content.

The media are already struggle to survive, and MCH wants to impose further costs on them by mandating quotas for captions and audio descriptions!

Modernising professional media regulation

The proposal is to modernise the broadcasting standards regime to cover all professional media operating in New Zealand, not just broadcasters. The role of the regulator (currently performed by the BSA) would be revised, with more of a focus on ensuring positive system-level outcomes and less of a role in resolving audience complaints about media content.

This could be a good thing, if done well. It is silly to have some media regulated by the Government appointed BSA and others by the industry Media Council, based on whether their content is broadcast, or video on demand etc. The status quo is broken.

But what we should have is industry self-regulation as the sole regulator. Instead MCH is proposing a government regulatory body that would control all media. This is a very bad idea as the Government of the Day could appoint board members that would be more likely to rule against media critical of the Government.

Streamlining Crown content funders

The proposal is to establish a content funding entity that consolidates the Film Commission and NZ On Air. 

This is a good idea, and should happen.

However the combined entity should have a board that isn’t simply appointed by the Government of the Day. The legislation should require any appointments to have the agreement of political parties representing at least 75% of MPs.