TV1 not too hard up to tour France

Press, 30 August 1977, Page 1

TV1 not too hard up to tour France

By

KEN COATES

Television One plans to send a film crew of five to France for more than three weeks to cover five All Black games, other than two tests. On the face of it, it is a luxurv we could do without.

This will be additional to expensive satellite coverage provided by French television for the tests on November 11 and 19, to be received at 3 a.m. New Zealand time.

The channel plans to send Keith Quinn, commentator, Keith McEwen, producer, Russell Hay, sound man, Barry Lissette, cameraman and Margaret Marriott, production secretary, on the French tour. They will leave on October 18 and return on November 20.

French television was apparently not interested in covering the less important matches, and TVI decided to send its own crew to provide film to air freight back to New Zealand.

French sides will play the All Blacks on October 26 at Brive, October 29 at Lyons, November 1 at Perpignon, November 5 at Agen, and November 8 again at Lyons. The plan is for the TVI team to send film back to screen on “The Big Match” and “Sport on One” programmes, with coverage of the Agen and second Lyons matches to be used together as a preview to the first test.

A match on November 15 will not be covered because film would arrive too late. The TVI film crew’ has a brief to keep it from becoming completely sub-

verted by the delights of French cuisine and champagne when it is not covering rugby games. It is to produce coverage of “All Black activities on and off the field,” — or at least those that are deemed to be suitable for home-viewing by rugby fans —as well as a documentary on horse-rac-ing.

There is also talk in the TV] sports department of producing a film on pelota — a Basque game played with a ball and a wicker racquet.

The film crew will not be involved in the satellite coverage of the tests, except for commentary by Keith Quinn. The coverage will come at a time when overseas coverage of events outside New Zealand by documentary and current affairs teams has been curtailed, and local production cut. It comes hard on ths heels of comments from the chairman of the Broadcasting Corporation (Mr lan Cross) that unless the public is prepared to pay more for broadcasting, the corporation must consider adopting these alternatives: reducing standard and quality, cutting TV’ hours, or -increasing commercial content.

The controller of programmes for TVI (Mr Des Monaghan) said yesterday that sending the crew to France would "not be that

expensive,” and was within the sports department’s budget. He was not specific on cost, but added: "Without giving away trade secrets we will be avoiding some of the major costs.” This presumably means "contra-deals,” such as TVI agreeing to publicise airlines in return for free air transport, and possibly commercial return by way of sponsorship. (Lion Breweries, for examnle, has signed a 12-month contract giving it total sponsorship of all horse-racing broadcasts on network radio for an undisclosed sum).

Mr Monaghan said there was no complete ban on overseas filming, and in fact TVI had recently done a programme in Asia, a co-production with World Vision. It would also screen coverage of the election in Fiji soon.

There was enormous interest in the French tour by the All Blacks, and while obviously TVI could not do all it wanted to at present it had decided to give the rugby priority. Presumably TVI has the funds to spare to send the team of five to France. Two questions arise from this: is broadcasting as hard up financially as we have been told; and are there not events of greater importance to New Zealand, in the Pacific and Asia, which should receive priority?