A Sigh of Relief for Domestic and International

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With the Youth-focused funding announced yesterday by NZ On Air, and the joint announcement of Scripted funding by NZ On Air and Te Māngai Pāho to a combined total of over $15 million dollars, there was an audible sigh of relief heard on the bleak New Zealand media landscape.

This is an injection of revenue into our domestic production base that will deliver more work to New Zealand businesses and screen workers, amidst a lowering in production funding from two of our three main funding bodies being NZ On Air and NZFC, while TMP’s funding for the moment remains unchanged.

I wanted to focus in on the Youth-focused funding announcement as it’s a telling signal for a number of reasons.

NZ On Air in its press release said: “The Within My Reach call for proposals was a response to the 2022 Where Are the Youth Audiences research which showed a social media-first approach would be needed to reach 15-24 year old audiences.”

More simply and bluntly put, 15 – 24 year old audiences don’t watch NZ free to air broadcast any more. Every parent knows this.

I thought, however, that its more revealing to look at the funding slightly differently:

 Int’l PlatformsInt’l + NZ Platforms Funding
Scripted   
First Place, 5 x 12′YouTube, Facebook, InstagramThe Coconet TV, TVNZ+ $  970,000.00
Literally Dead, 8 x 8′YouTube $  526,990.00
Bloke Of The Apocalypse, 6 x 6′YouTube $  472,368.00
The Sender, 17 x 2′Instagram Reel, TikTok, YouTube $  375,000.00
Non-Fiction
The Regions, 5 x 7’YouTube, Instagram, Facebook,Re:, TVNZ+ $  505,115.00
Beyond The Beat, 5 x 8 – 12′, and 50 x 15 – 60”, 1 x music videoYouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook $  500,000.00
Pā Life, 5 x 10’YouTube, Facebook, InstagramTVNZ+ $  463,788.00
Kaputī With The Cuzzies, 10 x 20′YouTube $  194,311.00
Sight Unseen, 5 x 5-10’YouTube, TikTok, InstagramAble.co.nz $  186,767.00
What Sex Ed Didn’t Teach You, 15 x 90”YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTokRe: $  178,550.00
The Gender AgendaYouTube$  395,115.00
d8talk, 230 x 1’Instagram Reels, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube $  149,386.00
 $2,613,170.00  $2,304,220.00

 

What this tells us is that International Platforms get $2.6 million in funded content from NZ On Air with no contribution to the funding as far as I can tell. In other words, free funded programming with NZ content hooks to wrap advertising around, to take advertising dollars away from NZ businesses like TVNZ. Not only that, they also get a bite of the pie going to the local platforms, too. More importantly for the international platforms, though, they still are not required to contribute to local NZ production via mechanisms like the previous government’s proposed Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, a streamer levy, quota or such like, to make them ante up. At least a small sigh of relief from them, I’d think.

The other clear indicator here is that half the funding went to projects with no broadcast commitment. Free to air, yes, but via digital platforms.

Now you can’t blame NZ On Air for enabling the international platforms. They have a requirement to serve local eyeballs. With 18 – 24 year-old Kiwis not watching linear and getting most of their screen content from the international platforms, they have to go there—this in the hope that young Kiwis will discover and watch that NZ content amongst the global offerings. And that NZ content might find international eyeballs in sufficient numbers to stimulate a positive response.

Example: one of our member directors, Victoria Boult, created TikTok series Noob funded by a NZ On Air, Screen Australia AND TikTok initiative that she turned into a half-hour TV series, which she wrote and directed on. It’s in post now and will play out on Warner Bros. Discovery here.

From a $53,000 TikTok series to a $1.5 million local TV show is definitely a positive for all concerned.

We all know the game has changed in our business. Forever. There’s a new reality.

Global media entities now exert far greater influence on us than ever before. Significant government action is required NOW if we are to have even a small chance of surviving the onslaught. Should that happen, there would be a collective sigh of relief from us all… for awhile.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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Come Together! Right Now!

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The current fight to protect employee jobs going on at TVNZ by union E tū highlights the importance of unions in the New Zealand screen industry, and the importance of the Screen Industry Workers Act (SIWA) for screen contractors, who until SIWA came along in December 2023 had essentially no protections.

TVNZ is one of the few screen businesses to have a significant number of employees. Those employees have the protections of the Employment Relations Act. Screen contractors now have the protections of SIWA.

The employees at TVNZ who are journalists and media workers and members of E tū have a collective agreement.

We at DEGANZ together with the Writers Guild of New Zealand, Equity New Zealand and some other guilds, are currently seeking to put a collective agreement in place with the Screen Production and Development Association (SPADA).

With collective agreements in place, we will have negotiated minimum pay rates and terms and conditions for screen contractors that will provide some certainty for us all.

And with collective agreements, we will be able to fight much more effectively for our members when those negotiated agreements aren’t adhered to.

If you have been following the developments at TVNZ you are most likely aware that E tū is going to file a claim with the Employment Relations Authority against TVNZ. It’s the union’s view that the company did not follow its consultation requirements, as guaranteed for workers in their collective agreement.

The Employment Relations Authority is a Tribunal established under the Employment Relations Act. Members of the Authority help to resolve employment relationship problems.

Under SIWA, the Employment Relations Authority will also help to resolve contractor relationship problems, should a screen guild seek to file a claim against a producer or production company on behalf of one or more contractors who are members.

The employees at TVNZ have for decades helped create the news, current affairs shows, and other programmes much loved by New Zealand audiences. Following the news of yesterday, Sunday, and the Midday and Tonight Bulletins are gone, and Fair Go significantly reduced, with about 70 job losses.  Over at Warner Bros. Discovery, Newshub staff found out that just under 300 jobs will go there.

We all know that it’s not just news and current affairs programmes that will be affected.

SPADA in a press release yesterday that you can read here, estimates that up to $50 million is coming out of our sector and that there is uncertainty around big popular shows like Shortland Street, Celebrity Treasure Island, The Traitors NZ, Married at First Sight NZ, food shows, home shows, and more.

If ever there was a time for every screen worker in New Zealand to come together as members of their guilds and for us to negotiate collective agreements, it’s right now.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

 

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Editor Cushla Dillon: How I Got Started in the Industry

When I started back in 1986 (my first official job was as Director’s assistant on ‘Starlight Hotel’) the only ‘filmmaking’ courses in NZ were a Masters in Broadcasting at the University of Auckland and a newly established Broadcasting school in Christchurch. So my only option was writing letters to film producers asking for jobs on productions. Even though I’d trained at Radio NZ as a studio operator, none of the producers or production managers were interested in my ‘sound engineering’ skills. But when I said I could type, they couldn’t hire me quickly enough.

I was obsessed with films – filmmakers, arthouse films, foreign films, the history of films etc. I went to the Film Society, and the festival was my yearly indulgence. I read the local industry trades so I knew the names of crew members and what they had all worked on. I look back now and realise I was a bit of a ‘trainspotter’, but knowing all this information meant I stood out as someone who really wanted to be in the industry. I continued to work in production for the next decade as a Producer’s Assistant, Director’s Assistant, Production Coordinator, Production Manager, 1st AD, and 2nd AD. But I also made short films of my own and was happiest when editing them. This was where the magic happened, where films were truly made. It was time to switch roles in the industry and learn how to edit.

At the time, TV3 allowed people to train for free in their newsroom (I don’t think it was official, it was a word-of-mouth thing – it would never fly today!!). You could cut news stories during the very quiet times of the day, and then when you felt confident or they felt confident in you, they could offer you a job. All this time, I was working as a waitress at night, and continued this for many years as I got my freelance career on track.

Cushla cutting ‘The Justice of Bunny King’ in Kauaeranga Valley, Thames.

I look back now and realise I was instinctively obsessed with story: how we told stories, why we told stories, how other cultures told stories, why some films moved me, and why others didn’t. I loved going to the movies and I LOVED being moved to tears, to joy. And that’s why editing is the best place for someone like me, as the editor is the conduit between the audience and the material the director brings to the edit room.

All these obsessions and developing skills came together one day when director/actor Harry Sinclair approached me to edit a TV series idea he had called Topless Women Talk About Their Lives. I’d never edited drama before (except my own short films) but we clicked. My instinct for storytelling made up for my lack of technical experience, and this TV series morphed into a feature film. Two years later I received an editing award for my work on that film, and this stroke of luck meant people saw me as an editor. 

My advice to anyone wanting to break into the NZ film industry is to use the tools at your fingertips to learn who is who, what they have done before, and be really clear about what kind of films you love and why. For editors, the key is to understand storytelling and the huge scope of how we can tell stories. For me, screen stories are constantly pushing the boundaries of how stories are told, and I include documentary when I talk about storytelling.

But also, I believe working in our industry is a privilege we have to earn, as all artists do. So it requires the right balance of ego and humility, madness and caution. There is nothing wrong with being passionate about what one does, but at the end of the day, we are just storytellers and part of a team, so we must prove we are team players as well.

About Cushla Dillon

Cushla Dillon has played key roles in the NZ film industry for several decades, most notably as an award-winning feature film editor of drama and documentary (The Justice of Bunny King 2020, The Price of Peace 2014, Pictures of Susan 2012), but also as a production manager, development manager, screenwriter, script editor and most recently as co-director and editor of the 2023 NZIFF festival sellout King Loser. She has been awarded Best NZ Film Editor on four occasions (Snakeskin 2001, Topless Women Talk About Their Lives 1991, Beautiful Machine 2012, Orphans & Kingdoms 2014) and nominated four times.

How I Got Started in the Industry is a guest blog series from the Directors and Editors Guild of Aotearoa New Zealand (DEGANZ). Our members reflect on how they made their way into assistant editing, editing, and directing—with no two stories the same. They offer advice for those starting out. Get in touch with admin@deganz.co.nz if you’re a member and would like to share your story.

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News Blues

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Television is the bread and butter of the screen industry.

More; What we see on our screens reflects who we are as a nation and its peoples.

News and current affairs play a vital role in this, telling us what’s going on in our little corner of the world, as well as elsewhere. It informs, educates and sometimes entertains us.

I have to admit to being a news junkie.

At one point, I worked for a short time at the global video news agency Visnews before getting a job at the global news and financial information provider Reuters. I have over the years counted a number of journalists as my friends, and have worked with many former journalists in television, corporate communications and PR. Journalists are driven by what they do and fervently believe in providing balanced coverage as well as in-depth analysis to help us all learn about and or understand issues. I believe they and their work are vital to any society.

The devastating loss of Warner Bros. Discovery’s Newshub has been compounded by the proposals at TVNZ to reduce news programmes and eliminate both SUNDAY and FAIR GO.

I was confounded when I heard that the TVNZ board had rejected Warner Bros. Discovery’s proposal to establish a NZPA-like shared news-gathering service before either of them announced their cuts. It seemed somewhat like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

While Radio New Zealand provides an excellent source for news, current affairs and other factual and entertainment programming, it’s not really screen content even though they throw cameras in the studios and on location—it’s still radio, and as such still has a very important place. We need New Zealand news and current affairs beaming into our living rooms, otherwise we face the cultural domination that has for decades taken over our entertainment programming.

While I personally had issues with the proposed merger between TVNZ and Radio NZ—mainly with the outlined implementation and not the strategic intention—it could have helped ensure a strong and vigorous news and current affairs approach for screen, done properly.

Colin Peacock with his Mediawatch column of 10 March here, gives an excellent perspective on the situation, including a very salient interview with Tracey Martin, the chair of the board charged with getting the merged entity up and running.

Is there hope for news and current affairs in New Zealand? Tracey Martin thinks the bureaucrats need to go back to all the work that was done by her and that board as there are potentially a lot of answers there, which this government doesn’t seem to have at this point

What surprises me however in all the kerfuffle going on, is that scant attention is being given to Whakaata Māori, which has a strong news gathering service of its own and commitment to news and current affairs programming.

Maybe they have some of the answers everybody’s looking for.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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A Dismal Failure By All Concerned

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The proposal by Warner Bros. Discovery to shut Newshub highlights the dismal failure past and present by successive New Zealand governments, bureaucracy and those in the screen sector to grasp the seismic changes that have flowed through our wider industry across the last twenty years, exacerbated in large measure by the global tech giants and streamers, particularly in the last ten.

A large part of the responsibility, in my view, lies with the neoliberal economic reforms brought about by the Rogernomics Labour Government of the 1980s.

New Zealand’s commitment to free trade from both sides of the political spectrum was firmly cemented in the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement of Trade and Tariffs (GATT). We were so determined to open up markets for our agricultural produce and flush with success when the Round concluded in 1994, that we paid scant attention to the potential impact of free trade on our audio-visual and media sectors when we signed up to the General Agreement of Trade and Services (GATS) in 1995. New Zealand was one of only 13 countries that made market-opening commitments in the audio-visual sector, which includes ‘multimedia’ services. Australia negotiated a specific exception. Other countries like Canada and those of the European Union have exceptions like domestic content requirements, screen quotas, divestiture requirements, foreign ownership restrictions and other protectionist measures to ensure their cultures, their stories, and their screen sector and media businesses have an opportunity to adapt and survive in the face of intensifying global competition.

But no, not us.

We have for decades continued down the free market path. Even worse, when the writing was clearly on the wall for our screen and media businesses years ago, we had become so inculcated with a free market mentality that we did practically nothing. And still haven’t.

Our broadcasters and media companies have been screaming till they’re blue in the face that the global tech companies are sucking up all our domestic advertising revenue, making it increasingly unsustainable for them to operate. And the streamers are all getting in on the act now. Meanwhile, the streamers have so dramatically altered the landscape for film and television content that we are struggling to have our cultural voices heard.

While the global entities point to GATT, GATS  and the World Trade Organisation as justification for their right to dominate, we could still have changed our approach and it would have been accepted. But we didn’t. The former Labour Government’s proposed Fair Digital News Media Bargaining Bill and other protectionist measures are ten years too late. And the Bill is looking rather like a deceased feathered thing right now. The current government from the majority of their responses to the Newshub debacle seems relatively unconcerned, believing companies need to innovate to survive and that there are more than enough media voices about.

Meanwhile, international serviced production, the lack of financial support for domestic content creation and the blinkered approach by our screen sector including our funding bodies to identify, truly understand and rapidly adapt to the global shifts in our business, has those of us dependent on domestic production facing a future of dire uncertainty.

Leave it to Winnie to deliver that unexpected twist in the Newshub story: “A critical part of any democracy and free society is the fourth estate and an independent fourth state, and I am concerned about where we are going now,” he said.

I remember the excitement and energy that flowed through the industry when TV3 got going in Flower Street all those years ago. A lot of the people bubbling about the place were journalists but also included all those in the independent sector thrilled that somebody other than just TVNZ would be controlling their future.

It’s a sad day to see the likely demise of Newshub and the loss of the hundreds of jobs that will accompany it, and what it will mean for our democracy and our journalism.

It’s going to be even sadder when the impact of the Warner Bros. Discovery decision and others to come directly shake up our own little corner of the screen universe forever.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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