A community-based television group has been offered licences for UHF frequencies reserved for non-commercial television broadcasting in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty regions, Minister of Communications Maurice Williamson and Minister for Culture and Heritage Marie Hasler announced today.

The licences have been offered to Unicom Television, which proposes to establish a channel providing a wide range of programming produced by the community for an audience as extensive as possible.

"This is an exciting opportunity for the development of new television services in these regions that should provide a diverse range of educational and community-based programming," the Ministers said.

"Unicom Television's proposal has a strong focus on access for local programme makers and includes a range of other non-commercial programming not being provided at a national level."

A number of UHF frequencies have been reserved throughout the country for use by non-commercial broadcasters. This is part of a range of measures adopted to ensure that public broadcasting objectives that are not provided by commercial broadcasters, are still met.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>