New Zealand Public Television, Public Service and Everything in Between: The Success and Struggles of New Zealand on Air and Public Television

摘要

This thesis explores the contemporary situation of 'public television' in New Zealand. As this country’s longest-standing, most significant facilitator of the diverse range of locally-produced programmes that pursue the 'cultural identity' objectives that are regarded as centrally important to 'public television', the focus of this thesis will be on the role and contributions of public broadcast funding agency, New Zealand on Air. This focus has three main functions in this thesis, allowing it to: first, investigate the necessity of facilitating and producing 'public television'; second, to explore the successful ways in which this element of television has been delivered to viewers; and third, to examine the limitations posed by a highly commercial broadcast television environment on the pursuit of 'public television' objectives.This undertaking is important because 'public television' faces a number of significant challenges in New Zealand, the most significant of which is inadequate public investment. Other challenges can be sourced to the intense competition and inadequate regulation of New Zealand television, which is a consequence of the deregulation and restructuring that it was subjected to in 1988-89. In the decades since, the broader environmental conditions encouraged by these changes have never been redressed. Presently, despite 'public television' fulfilling vital cultural functions, its situation has reached a crisis point, emphatically in regard to provisions for 'mainstream' broadcast audiences. For this reason, there needs to be an in-depth exploration of the issues and potentials in 'public television', to which this thesis aims to contribute.The exploration that this thesis offers is structured in three chapters. The first examines the establishment and role of New Zealand on Air. The second addresses the ways in which 'public television' programmes are successfully facilitated through the considerations and funding allocations of NZoA. The third considers the limitations of New Zealand’s television environment on the pursuit of 'public television' and argues the necessity for enhanced resources to be provided in order to improve the current situation.