TVNZ- a suitable case for derision

The Weekend edition of the Dominion Post has what the Americans would call an Op-Ed piece by Simon Botherway on TVNZ’s call for the Government to break up Sky.

It begins:-

Television New Zealand’s bleating for Sky TV to be broken up reflects the inadequacy of TVNZ’s own performance and, ironically, makes a compelling case for TVNZ itself to be broken up.

TVNZ’s submission to the Culture and Heritage Ministry, which is reviewing broadcasting regulation, contains numerous inaccuracies such as its claims as to the cost of the Sky Sports package. TVNZ is an organisation that has proven itself a failure in a governance, management and financial sense.

It’s now running to the skirts of its Wellington matriarch and pleading for intervention. Amongst a host of blunders, it disposed of a strategic stake in Sky in 1999 whilst representing that they had struck an agreement on preferential treatment on content sharing, which it had not.

The article discusses various aspects of the issue and concludes:-

TVNZ has become emboldened by the Government’s interventions in telecommunications and airports. Its call for the split of Sky is nothing more than a desperate attempt from a losing organisation to change the rules in a competitive game.

If the Government were to intervene in the television market, it would send a clear message to entrepreneurs that the sort of vision and hard work required to develop a successful business model will be welcomed by the Government by way of expropriation of the value they’ve created.

We would then finally have to resign ourselves to New Zealand’s role as a market gardener to the region and an exporter of entrepreneurial talent to the world. TVNZ’s self-interested submission should be treated with the derision it deserves.

This article is timely and echoes, albeit more eloquently and at greater length and with more depth, a post Adam made earlier in the week.

TVNZ’s submission should be consigned to the waste bin. Trevor Mallard as Minister should give the TVNZ board a ‘rark up’ and ensure they get on with turning this SOE into an effective organisation.

Botherway’s article has prompted Adam to think yet again what this Government’s actions over Telecom and Auckland Airport have done. Apart from destroying value, they have caused organisations such as TVNZ which cannot foot it with competition to go crying to the Government with calls for preferential treatment cloaked with a veneer of concern for the consumer.