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New Zealand: A Deregulated Broadcasting Model?

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Abstract

In the late 1980s New Zealand moved from a regulated to a deregulated media environment and created the conditions to enable a free market to operate. The orthodoxy was that the government would lessen its involvement as a provider and regulator of broadcasting services in the pursuit of greater economic efficiency and consumer benefits. It is argued that the history of New Zealand broadcasting is marked by a failure of government to introduce broadcasting policies that clearly identified the issues and guided the response, that recognized the distinctiveness of the sector, that were broadly supported by the public, that were formed as the result of extensive public consultation or that gained a measure of public approval and attachment after their implementation. The result is a broadcasting history that has seen four major policy changes of direction and innumerable twists and turns within each of these policy approaches.

I think we have been world leaders in the way we have been able to come to grips with the new economic philosophies and have related these to broadcasting.

Jonathan Hunt,

New Zealand’s Minister of Broadcasting, 1989.

Quoted in Smith (1989, p. 46).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Although the Treasury thinkers thought this would be an interim measure and eventually a‘free market’ in broadcasting would satisfy all consumer needs.

  2. 2.

    The same writer, Ian Cross, was also reported as saying that broadcasting‘has suffered as no other public institution has in our history at the hands of confused and sometimes punitive legislators’ (in Day 2000 et al. 325).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

    Alan Cocker

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  1. Alan Cocker
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Correspondence to Alan Cocker .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Erasmus Sch of History, Culture & Comm, University of Rotterdam, ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands

    Christian Herzog

  2. Dresden, Germany

    Heiko Hilker

  3. Berlin, Germany

    Leonard Novy

  4. Köln, Germany

    Orkan Torun

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Cocker, A. (2018). New Zealand: A Deregulated Broadcasting Model?. In: Herzog, C., Hilker, H., Novy, L., Torun, O. (eds) Transparency and Funding of Public Service Media – Die deutsche Debatte im internationalen Kontext. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-17997-7_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-17997-7_12

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