For many years public broadcasting, following the BBC pattern, took pride in its goal of informing, entertaining and educating listeners and viewers.   Broadcasting in New Zealand set a course away from that nearly 20 years ago when it opted to become commercial and competitive.While not wrong in itself, opening doors to commerce can have disastrous consequences.Today, the emphasis in broadcasting is almost exclusively on entertainment.  Little else matters – unless it sells.  Even our “News” programmes have to be entertaining – according to the gospel of commercial broadcasting.  Information and education are, per se, hard to sell. The arrival of TV3 and the opening up of  the radio waves to all comers in the late 80s, put paid to virtually all non-commercial programming, particularly in television.  Cultural, community, religious and other “special” groups found themselves in the media wilderness virtually overnight.  Only the sensational or “commercially viable” programme ideas stood any chance of getting to air.All this tells me that the Broadcasting Minister, Jonathan Coleman, is not doing a new thing when he proposes scrapping the TVNZ Charter.  It was well intentioned but has proved unworkable.  Only a change in the “culture” of broadcasting, enabling programmers to truly reflect New Zealanders and New Zealand life without regard to commercial interests, will restore the balance. Some programmes will never attract the dollars a sponsor brings to the studio, simply because they will not draw huge audiences.  Yet many of these programmes contain the stories of who we are and what it’s like to be us.  By not telling them, parts of our identity will never be revealed.  The mosaic will remain incomplete and we will all be the poorer for that – regardless of profits made elsewhere.

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