Nicholas
Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to
literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree
or disagree with him.
PUBLIC RADIO
If
you’re not a New Zealander, you will probably not have heard of the recent and
ongoing controversy about the possible
downsizing – or even extinction – of a publicly-funded radio network.
Here
in New Zealand we have a plethora of commercial radio stations, funded mainly
by advertising revenue, and broadcasting what is the standard diet of
commercial stations in most parts of the world – pop or rock music, talkback,
sports commentaries, news (often supplemented by news commentaries from popular
– or populist – pundits), and, of course, plenty of commercial breaks.
But
we also have the two publicly-funded Radio New Zealand (RNZ) networks, neither
of which carries advertisements.
RNZ
National – still known to many listeners as the National Programme – is the
broad interest network. Much to the annoyance of commercial rivals, it still
attracts a larger listenership than any other station in the country, and it
serves a very broad diet. Its weekday “Morning Report” is the most detailed
reporting and real analysis of national and international news (as opposed to
opinionated commentary) currently available on air in New Zealand. It is noted
for the incisive and insistent style of its journalists when they interview
politicians. Its Saturday morning programme consists largely of interviews with
noted national or international figures in the arts or science or sociology –
as well as interviews with local musicians in popular fields. It frequently
broadcasts serialised readings from notable or acclaimed New Zealand novels. Its
afternoon and evening sessions are rather more laid-back and almost populist -
panel discussions, “light” music (quite a bit of pop now) and news bulletins,
although the evening shows regularly have science programmes and philosophical
discussions – I mean with real philosophers who know they are talking to a mass
audience. You could say RNZ National is the mainstream broadcaster for the
intelligent listener who doesn’t want to listen to advertisements.
The
other RNZ network is RNZ Concert - still known to many listeners as the Concert
Programme. It is, by design and intention, more high-brow. Most of its air-time
consists of classical music. It has regular jazz programmes, and even
programmes analysing pop or rock music. Certainly it carries recorded concerts
from overseas – including operas from the Met – but it also broadcasts live
concerts by New Zealand orchestras and ensembles and is, in effect, the network
that lets us hear more New Zealand musicians than any other. Its interviews
tend to be with people in the arts. RNZ
Concert is an easy target for populists – especially those who are affiliated
to commercial stations – who like to label it as “elitist”; but although its
audience share is modest compared with the audience share of RNZ National, it is not negligible and it is
larger than some of the smaller commercial stations. RNZ Concert broadcasts on
FM.
The
recent threat to RNZ Concert consisted of an ill-conceived proposal, publicly announced by a top RNZ administrator (who later claimed that it was all "miscommunication"), to strip the network of its FM frequency and reduce it to an AM
station without announcers, without live broadcasts, but broadcasting only a
playlist of pre-recorded (imported) classical music as dictated by a robot. In
other words, it would become the mere shadow of a “classical music” station,
with all its live broadcasts and spoken intellectual content gone. The FM
frequency which RNZ Concert occupied was going to be handed over to a
publicly-funded “Youth” channel. Some weeks later the disingenuous claim of "miscommunication" was publicly debunked by the exposure of documents which showed in full what this destructive plan was in its original and full form.
As
it has played out so far – because the game is not over yet – this proposal has
been met with a loud outcry from most of New Zealand’s intellectual community.
It was pointed out that (a.) “youth” was already well served in terms of pop
and rock music by all the commercial stations; (b.) as evidence swiftly showed,
there is no such thing as one homogenous “youth culture” anyway, and many
teenagers and young people belong to the country’s hundreds of school
orchestras which train them in classical music. Some even spoke up to protest
that Concert FM was and is essential to their musical education. Most telling
of all, however, was (c.) the fact that in the main, non-classical-music-listening
“youth” now tend to bypass any form of radio and listen to their preferred
music on podcasts, down-loads, Spotify and their ilk. The campaign to save
Concert FM is now well underway and very vocal. It appears to have been boosted
by the intervention of a former Prime Minister, a great advocate of Concert
FM, who seems to have influenced our
present Prime Minister to intervene when she had previously been sitting on the
fence.
There
have, of course, been the standard grumblings from commercial radio pundits
about the “elitism” of RNZ Concert, often with the characterisation of the
network’s listeners as “cardigan-wearing” old fogeys. But in an election year,
when politicians now understand what a strong lobby supports RNZ Concert, the campaign
to save the network in its present form is going to have much influence.
I
should make it clear where I stand in all this. You will see what
my tastes are if you look up a posting I wrote four years back called Elitist and Proud of It. I am all in
favour of commercial-free, publicly-funded radio networks. True, I lsten to
much of my preferred music on CDs (a form that is now being superseded), and
when I go for walks, I’m usually listening to jazz on Spotify via hearing
plugs. But where radio is concerned, my car radio is permanently tuned to RNZ
Concert to accompany me in long or short car journeys, and the radio in my study is likewise always tuned to Concert FM. And the radios in my
bedroom and kitchen are permanently tuned to RNZ National, so that I can listen
while shaving or making breakfast or dinner.
To
many neo-liberals, and certainly to those who personally profit from commercial
radio, the very concept of publicly-funded radio is abhorrent. They are always
ready to equate publicly-funded radio with the state-controlled systems of
totalitarian states. Indeed some populist pundits mischievously refer to RNZ as
“state” radio. This ignores the fact that RNZ operates as a corporation separate
from the government of the day. It also ignores the fact that between them, RNZ
National and RNZ Concert are now the only networks where intellectual content of
any worth can be heard.
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