Warrant sought for S.I. television

Press, 4 August 1983, Page 1

Warrant sought for S.I. television

A consortium of five newspaper companies, including the Christchurch Press Company, has announced its intention to apply for a television transmitting warrant in the South Island.

The consortium, which will be known as Southern Television, Ltd, wants to broadcast first to the Canterbury area and then extend its service to Otago and Southland.

Mr Roger Barker, general manager of the Press Company and spokesman for Southern Television, said yesterday that the company would seek to transmit from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week.

Mr Barker said that if the warrant application was granted by the end of the year, the station could be transmitting in Christchurch by the end of next year. The proposed station would employ 70 or 80 people and the programmes would have a heavy local content.

“Obviously programming would be regionally based. There would be a high content of regional activities and local news,” said Mr Barker.

“At some stage we would probably establish a network link with Northern Television for some programmes — dramas and that sort of thing — and obviously we would buy overseas programmes jointly with Northern Television.” Southern Television would rent premises, probably in a Christchurch suburb, for a studio, and hoped to negotiate with the Broadcasting Corporation about transmission facilities at Sugarloaf. As well as the Christchurch Press Company, Southern TV consists of Otago Press and Produce, Ltd (publisher of the “Otago Daily Times”), the Ashburton Guardian Company, Ltd, the Southland. Times, Ltd, and Wilson and Horton, Ltd (publisher of the “New Zealand Herald”). If the warrant application was successful, the consortium would open the enterprise to public participation, said Mr Barker. Public shareholding would be sought to provide much of the expected $4 million capital requirements.

Southern TV’s announcement of its intentions was made after Northern Tele-

vision said earlier this week that it intended to apply for a warrant to broadcast in the Auckland region. Mr Graeme Douglas, Northern TV’s manager, said yesterday that the application would be made within a month.

Mr Douglas said that a third consortium, Central Television, involving newspapers in the Wellington region, would probably announce its intentions today or tomorrow. The announcements come after both Northern TV and another company, City TV, formally withdrew their applications to lease time from the Broadcasting Corporation to begin a breakfast service. The two companies said that the corporation’s proposal to charge $3 million entry fee and $l4OO an hour was too expensive.

The plan to set up a regionally-based television system was the goal when Northern TV was established more than two years ago, according to a brochure prepared by Northern to publicise regional television.

It follows the structure recommended more than 10 years ago in an official report on extending television services in New Zealand. The report saw a northern, central, and southern structure as the most economic way of introducing private television in New Zealand, the brochure says.

Southern TV, Ltd, was registered in 1981 with three newspaper company shareholders — Wilson and Horton (33 per cent), Otago Press and Produce (33 per cent), and the Christchurch Press Company (34 per cent).

It formed part of the original company structure set up to promote private regional television in New Zealand by a consortium of 15 newspaper companies, publishing 18 daily newspapers.

The shareholding of Southern TV, Ltd, will now be restructured to include the Southland Times and the Ashburton Guardian companies. Wilson and Horton’s holding will reduce to about 15 per cent. Mr Tony Petre, chief reporter of “The Press,” has been seconded to Southern Television to begin preparing the warrant application. Northern report, page 6.