Pacific Channel.

The Labour party has announced that if reelected they will fund a pacific channel to cater to the large population of Pacific peoples in NZ (many of whom make up their support base). Labour says they will launch a channel on the Freeview platform, which is all well and good, except that TVNZ and MediaWorks have both registered an interest in hosting such a channel. This gives the impression that the channel will be commercially viable, which it just might be.

So, if it would be commercially viable then should the government really be directing resources into it when it could be directing those funds into TVNZ6 and TVNZ7 or subsidising set top boxes?

On another slightly related note, there’s a new channel on SKY now for farmers. If this channel can survive in the competitive market of niche television surely a FTA pacific channel could hold its own as well.

And while I’m ranting about niche television would a politcian please decide that MTS deserves state, rather than government funding. At the moment a change of government could extinguish MTS. However, if it were to to have its funding locked up in a state budget then its employees would not be so on edge!

 

Thoughts?

~ by ThreeDice on October 29, 2008.