15 April 2011

The Screen Directors Guild of New Zealand supports the opinions expressed by New Zealand academics in an open letter to the government on the 14th of April 2011.

The group said that the government’s decision to force the closure of TVNZ 7 by ending its funding should be seen as, "one more in a series of steps by the government to dismantle the little that is left of public broadcasting in our country".

SDGNZ has expressed concerns over this issue in the past months and years, as have many other organisations. Public broadcasting is a key ingredient for a healthy democracy and an informed society.

The Screen Directors Guild fully endorses the request by New Zealand academics that:

"As one immediate step, we urge the government to put its current broadcast policy on hold, including the move to discontinue the funding of TVNZ 7, and instead to implement a new review of the funding and regulatory needs for New Zealand television. This review needs to give particular consideration to four key areas:

1. how to fund public service television provisions in a way that insulates them from commercial pressures;
2. what regulatory arrangements need to be introduced for pay television;
3. how to sustain the current range of free-to-air channels on which half of our population continues to rely; and
4. how to ensure that an appropriate range of television content, and local programmes especially, continues to be provided on free to air channels."

ENDS

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