The great thing about economic recessions is that they remind us how irrational we become when they are not around.So it is that most households have reviewed expenditure these past 18 months and amended the war-time admonition to read: "Is this purchase really necessary?"
Despite most of us retaining both our job and our income, we have become gripped by commonsense. Overseas trips, luxury items, dubious art and the bigger car have all been kicked to the kerb. We don't dine out quite as often and so have rediscovered the delight of the Edmonds Cookbook.
We have also reordered our financial priorities. The discharge of debt has become something of a mission for middle New Zealand.
A similar stringency is starting to affect both central and local government. As they draft their budgets for the coming financial year, the pressure has gone on departments to justify their existing spending, before even contemplating any increase. You wonder why such frugality is not applied every year – not just in the down times.
So it is that Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman has looked around his various portfolios – none of them extensive in terms of public expenditure – and applied the same logic. And finally alighted upon the nonsense that is public broadcasting. Especially the overstuffed shibboleth that is Radio New Zealand.
The state broadcaster robs taxpayers of $38 million a year to, essentially, provide two radio options. The ironically named National Programme (when its politics is ostensibly liberal Labour) and the leech-like Concert Programme.
At a time when your radio dial is replete with choice – from Radio Rhema to The Rock – public policy has decided that two types of listeners require direct subsidy. Actually, three – but that is another scandal.
The National Programme is defended as some sort of bulwark against the decline of western civilisation. Without it, news and current affairs in this country would collapse.
Which is, of course, nonsense. Sure, National Radio offers news and, golly gosh, people in the news talking to news presenters. But so too do the commercial networks in this country – Newstalk ZB and Radio Live being but two. And they lose nothing by comparison.
Then there are the leisurely lifestyle shows that made household names of Maggie Barry (ironically, now hosting for Live), Kim Hill, Jim Mora and the like. And all of them excellent broadcasters. Injecting commercial sponsors, or ensuring that some advertising surrounds their news' hours, is hardly going to reduce their impact, or intelligence. Because RNZ has a good story to sell to the kind of advertisers who might be interested in the kind of audience that they attract. Although – and it is a big although – RNZ refuses to publicly release its ratings information. Despite being a 100% subsidised operation.
Why this information is not available is another scandal. If it is not directly competing against commercial interests, then where's the harm? And how does the public judge whether its monies are being best spent? It is one thing to produce a programme; it is entirely another figuring out whether people are actually listening to it.
But the Concert Programme is the greatest leech. This is direct public subsidy of private interests. Those who like to listen to classical music. It is the same steal perpetrated by other classical interests, including the NZ Symphony Orchestra. Not enough people want to listen to this maudlin muck so let's rob the rest of us to satisfy the minority interest. It should be properly portrayed for what it is. Theft. Which brings us to the third great scandal of publicly funded broadcasting. The dreadful purchase that is Maori television and radio. None of these outlets draws sufficient viewers or listeners to make a commercial go of their operations. In fact, the entire financial dividend of Television New Zealand is required to prop up the otherwise unsustainable Maori TV channel.
And that sum is also roughly equivalent to the entire annual funding of Radio NZ.
All these loss-makers teach us a lesson. That their stations, programmers and broadcasters cannot hack it in a commercial environment. They are protected like some flightless, endangered species, requiring an interventionist breeding programme to propagate their species.
Which is where we muggins taxpayers come to the party. Our role is to pay for the listening and viewing choices of an elite – be it white or brown. These people are too precious to pay for their own pleasure – and too selfish.
Needless to say, the defenders of "public radio" will attack Coleman and his advisers as cultural philistines for imposing the most minor of rigours upon the bloated state beast. But, in fact, the minister is not going far enough.
Because this lot don't need weaning so much as exposure to real life. And the imperative that drives all life on this planet. Adapt, or die.
Sunday Star Times, February 21, 2010