Tendering system prompts radio call

Press, 1 September 1989, Page 2

Tendering system prompts radio call

By

NIGEL MALTHUS

Radio New Zealand is calling for a seven-year moratorium for existing radio stations under a planned new tendering system for radio broadcast frequencies.

Independent broadcasters have also branded the proposal as unworkable and intolerable. Under the Radio Communications Bill now before Parliament existing and new broadcasters will have to buy their frequencies on a competitive tender system. It will replace the old system of warrants awarded after ghearings by the Broadcasting Tribunal. But the new system may force existing stations to reduce programme content to stay in business, Radio new Zealand’s chief executive, Ms Beverley Wakem, said. .

"There simply isn’t any spare cash floating around in the radio industry to spend on purchasing frequencies at possibly exorbitant cost, and the listening public may well be the loser,” she said. The proliferation of commercial radio stations

over the last 20 years — from 26 to 55 — had given New Zealand more radio stations per capita than any other country, and the advertising dollar had been fragmented by general proliferation of the media, she said. “It’s not hard to work out that the radio industry is in a very fragile position,” she said. Radio New Zealand was prepared to accept an open tendering system, but it would lead to significant turbulence as new entrants found their feet in a highly-competitive industry, while the public should not have the exist-

ing range and choice of services put at risk in the first round, Ms Wakem said. “In effect, we’re asking for a non-molestation order so that New Zealand doesn’t lose the range, depth, quality, and choice which audience ratings show are valued

by the community,” she said.

The Independent Broadcasters’ Association, representing private radio, has also attacked the bill and plans to make joint submissions, with R.N.Z., to the select committee considering it.

The 1.8. A. executive director, Mr Brent Impey, said tendering by warrant holders for their own frequencies was ludicrous, unworkable and an intolerable situation for broadcasters and the public.

“The specific consequences of this bill will be reduced staff levels, reduced local programming, reduced support for New Zealand talent, reduced community service activity, fewer resources for news and fewer special programmes,” he said. Mr Impey said that broadcasters had invested millions of dollars in securing warrants and

equipment and developing viable businesses and quality programming. The listening public would be the losers from the Government’s “money-grabbing” policy, he said.

Ms Wakem said there was not even a stipulation that the highest bidders use the frequencies for broadcasting, so financial speculators could take over and use them for data transmission or other services.

“The simplistic tendering system ignores the social value and immediacy of radio as a highly effective and committed communication medium — something that we tent to take for granted in a geographically isolated nation,” she said. There was a point at which deregulation for its own sake became coun-ter-productive and downright risky, she said. That point had been well and truly reached.