Foreign TV an ‘intolerable cultural cost’

Press, 14 October 1985, Page 29

Foreign TV an ‘intolerable cultural cost’

PA Auckland The number of foreign programmes being telecast in New Zealand was causing an “intolerable cultural cost,” the Broadcasting Tribunal has been told.

Giving evidence in support of submissions by the Independent Producers and Directors’ Guild at the third channel warrant application hearing in Auckland, the chairman of the Independent Programme Producers’ Association in Britain, Mr John Gau, said he feared that the cultural cost would increase with the advent of a competitive commercial channel unless there were some positive regulation of all television channels.

The guild, with the New Zealand Film Commission, has urged the tribunal a quota on New Zewnd

content for the successful third channel contender and the two state channels.

Mr Gau said that, without regulation, overseas experience showed that there would be a drive by existing and new channels to maximise audiences with a consequent deterioration in programme standards. Mr Gau’s own company makes programmes for Channel Four in England as well as for 8.8. C. Television.

He said a major criticism in New Zealand against independents had been that there would be a lack of available talent. Mr Gau said this was exactly the cry heard in Britain before Channel Four was established by the British Parliament in the early 1980 s.