Napier Public Meeting: Monday 23 November 2004

TVNZ took a panel of four to Napier - Chief Executive Ian Fraser, Head of News and Current Affairs Bill Ralston, Head of Content Stephen Smith, and General Manager of Programming Annemarie Duff.   The MC was Simon Dallow.

The questions asked covered a wide range - from the very big picture to the smallest detail.

The following is a summary of some of the questions asked by the Hawkes Bay audience, and the answers given:

Q. Why aren't there more pleasant programmes on Saturday and Sunday evenings, such as BBC comedies for older viewers?

A. We have bought Green Wing, the BBC's biggest comedy for next year, which will be playing on a Friday night on TV ONE.  But the BBC makes so few comedies these days.   This year we've gone out to purchase a much more entertaining lineup for Friday and Saturday nights. It's been difficult to schedule Friday and Saturday nights because sport has been so dominant. Clearly our male audience are dominating the remote! But we will have some really strong drama and some fantastic 90 minute dramas out of the UK on Friday nights.

Q. What sort of quality control do you have in News?  You once showed a map which put Gallipoli in the boot of Italy.

A.There are a series of controls so these things shouldn't occur, but occasionally they do. When a reporter comes in with a story they check the facts. It's first of all their bureau chief, who acts as the subeditor, and then there are at least two other programme producers who go through it.

Q. Can you please get some language people in to your office so that pronunciation of foreign words is done properly?

A. We have a database of foreign words that we encourage reporters and presenters to refer to if in doubt and we try to run as many courses as we can on voice work and pronunciation.

Q. I have four small children and first of all, congratulations on upholding the standards where you have AO, PGR and G. As a parent I find that very informative.   On the downside, the family movies on Saturday night, a lot of those are PGR which in my opinion is not appropriate for small children. Can we get more general movies for the young ones?

A.Yes, in fact we're going to be running  a series of Disney animated movies  over the summer period when the children are on holiday. From all the Charter research we've had, children have been the most important viewing concern of New Zealanders. We have consciously scheduled programming specifically for younger children between 6pm and 8pm on Saturday nights, and from 8pm onwards it will be more the PGR movies.

On weekday afternoons from 12 to 3 it is actually an AO slot in terms of the things you can play. But in school holidays we take those off.

The other thing is that we are introducing children's programming onto TV ONE for the new season.  You may have heard about the dividend, and TVNZ receiving some money back from the Government.  That is allowing us to create our new educational strand to run on TV ONE in the afternoons, along with children's local and international drama, which will be, hopefully, a much more suitable environment that you'll be happy with.

Q. First of all congratulations for giving us another half hour of Coronation Street, that's great!

I believe that adult programmes start at 8.30 at night, but what about the promos, because I believe that they are on earlier, and should they be?

A. There has been a review of that which Ian (Fraser) was in fact involved with. Out of that we have changed our whole promo strategy to regulate the promos we run prior to 8.30pm. We are very conscious of children being available to view.

Q. Te Karere is excellent. But last time I looked there were no English subtitles and my Maori is just not up to it. Is there any way to get subtitles for the main items so that you understand it? I think it reflects a valuable part of New Zealand, who we are.

A. You've been listening in to our office!  That's one of the discussions we've been having, about how we can do live, real-time captioning. There's a commitment to do it but very difficult to find people who have the ability to translate really quickly.

It takes nearly 6 hours to caption Te Karere for the following morning replay. We're looking at investing in new technology that will enable us to speed up that process.

Q. Why do our newsreaders use the word kids for children?

A. We are trained to write in conversational English, it is not formal English. It is designed not to sound stilted.  Kids has become part of the vernacular .  One of Auckland's two children's hospitals is called KidzFirst. That's seen as a name that reflects children's interests. They seem to identify themselves as kids now.

Q. I'm very pleased to hear you're going to increase Arts content in the coming months. Is there any possibility of having live broadcasts of symphony concerts, opera or ballet?

A. There will be ballet coverage. There will be  symphony orchestra coverage in the next year's Art strands. There are two documentaries around those two areas and opera as well.  If you're asking whether we're going to bring you live opera, and I speak as an opera lover, in some ways there is nothing I would like more. The problem is, there aren't that many people who want that stuff live. That is why most broadcasters around the world don't do it.

Q. If you're not home between 6pm and 7pm you've got a fairly long wait to find out about news. What are the chances of occasional headlines, and what is the move with technology to be able to access news at various times during the day?

A. Clearly with technology we will be rapidly moving into a digital environment, and News would be a priority within that environment. That would allow us much greater access to that sort of product all the time. That's the way the world is going. And of course there are regular news updates on Teletext and TVNZ.co.nz

Q. I think TVNZ should have its own documentary programme that is aimed to run long term. Like Panorama, or World in Action. Those programmes are quality.

A. The World in Action is no more. It doesn't exist.  And Panorama is at 11.15 on Sunday night because the BBC felt it wasn't cutting the mustard. The point is that these programme formats go for a while. When they run out of energy you've got to do something about them.  We looked closely at Assignment and decided it had run out of energy and we had to think of fresher more energetic ways to deal with current events.  You've got to do it, because otherwise the programmes become moribund and fewer and fewer people watch them.

We try and remain really flexible, so that if News and Current Affairs has something very topical that would make a good documentary, we will make a space for it. The Ahmed Zaoui programme was a good one probably closest to Panorama and done for a fraction of the cost.