I would love to see what Television New Zealand is spending $79 million of taxpayer money on to make and broadcast programmes for TVNZ 6, TVNZ 7 and TVNZ Sports Extra.

These are the three digital channels that TVNZ has been given $79 million of taxpayer money over five years to build up and broadcast. I’ve even appeared on one of these programmes (the excellent Media7 with Russell Brown), but I’ve never actually seen them on television (apart from one programme on the Internet…).  Particularly right now, I would love to see all that Olympics coverage which our state broadcaster can’t squeeze between the ads and more ads on TV One, but are broadcasting on TVNZ Sports Extra without as much advertising.

I can’t see these channels because I don’t have a Freeview box. These channels are available only on the Freeview digital service, for which you need to either buy a tuner box or have one of the latest ginormous flat-screen TVs with an inbuilt tuner. Freeview has about 140,000 tuner boxes in New Zealand homes now. 

However I do have SkyTV, as do 720,000-plus other New Zealand homes.

So why doesn’t TVNZ, which is spending my money to build these new channels, put them on as many platforms as possible so as many taxpayers as possible can see them? It could put them on SkyTV, which now has extra space since it moved to another satellite.

I’m not the only one who says this. The former head of news at TVNZ, Paul Norris, also wants to see the fruits of this public spending available to as many as possible.

This is simply not good enough. Public broadcasting, and publicly-funded programmes should be available to as wide an audience as possible. You might argue that TVNZ is in breach of its Charter by not ensuring that these channels are available to Sky viewers. How can TVNZ possibly be serious about its mission to “inspire New Zealanders on every screen” when its programming is denied to the 45% of householders who have Sky?

For its part the Government has been notably silent. How can it tolerate spending all this public money for a mere handful of viewers? Why has it not threatened to impose “must carry” rules requiring Sky to carry the new channels? It should use its power to bring Sky and TVNZ to the negotiating table. That would be acting in the public interest.

So why won’t TVNZ allow its channels to go on Sky? TVNZ is playing hardball with SkyTV. Its current agreement with the Rupert Murdoch-controlled digital pay television network to allow One and 2 to be rebroadcast on Sky ends in 2011. TVNZ would like to squeeze a few extra dollars out of Sky to rebroadcast TVNZ’s channels when that deal is renegotiated.

Essentially TVNZ is using $79 million of taxpayer money to try to earn a few million dollars more in a few years’ time and in the process is preventing at least a million taxpayers from seeing what that $79 million buys.

This example simply highlights what a mess TVNZ is in right now with its dual aim of providing a commercial return and providing a public service. These two aims often conflict and it’s a political toss-up as to which one wins. Whichever the case, it breeds a politicised, bloated and unaccountable culture.

Whenever someone at TVNZ is asked to account for why they didn’t hit the commercial target, they simply say they had to achieve the public service target, and vice versa.

I’m told there’s now 1000 employees (both contractors and staffers) working in this overloaded bureaucracy. What do we get for it? Keith Quinn hyperventilating his way through the Olympics opening ceremony without actually telling anybody anything useful. Public service programming in unwatchable slots. Tony Veitch reading the sports news on the evening after the Dominion Post and Stuff reported at least 12 hours earlier that he beat his partner so hard he broke her back.  

Unlike Radio New Zealand National and Radio New Zealand Concert (which has some excellent programmes), I can’t think of a single good reason why a publicly subsidised TVNZ should exist in its current form.

TVNZ is an unaccountable organisation that is spending tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money a year.

Any new or returning government should unravel this mess. The commercial arm of TVNZ (Channel 2 perhaps) should be sold to the highest bidder and, if the government is that way inclined, a completely state-funded broadcaster (One perhaps) should be run commercial free. It should be much leaner and focused on quality rather than the current tiptoe through the commercial tulips.

But before going down the state-funded route, it’s worth having a debate about the need for a public service broadcaster in the first place. Why have one? Britain and Canada have state-funded broadcasters. The BBC is an extraordinary organisation that produces immensely useful and watchable programmes, but I love it because I don’t have to pay for it now. I was a British taxpayer once and I didn’t like that one bit when I had to pay for it. I also used to have to try to compete against its news service online. Bloody hard.

We have the state-funded National and Concert radio channels in New Zealand. Both produce really useful stuff and I feel we get reasonable value for money there, in part because they are relatively cheap to run.

But we don’t have state-funded newspapers or internet news or entertainment services. Are we any the poorer for it? I don’t think so.

It’s time for a debate. I just don’t think TVNZ deserves to be left squirming on the hook of its twin mandate for any longer.   

Last 5 posts by Bernard Hickey

• Dear John: Please tell us the truth about the economy - we can handle it - February 23rd, 2009
• Kill the glass white elephant in Dunedin with a rates revolt - February 9th, 2009
• A ‘rolling maul’ budget is better than an ‘up the jumper’ miracle - February 8th, 2009
• Why we should give thanks when Telecom ‘exports’ 250 jobs to Manila - February 4th, 2009
• Freeze public-sector wages and lift the minimum wage - February 2nd, 2009