I’ve been a little distracted by Paul Henry recently, which may be why I found myself reading the first weekend newspaper I’ve read in a year or so, and all excited about an article about how Paul Henry’s suspension/resignation proved that we need to look into the role of a State Broadcaster.

The argument is that TVNZ is doing a bad job as a State Broadcaster because they make a profit (actually this is only the argument of those who KNEW they make a profit, the rest of NZ is still up in arms that they funded Paul Henry with their taxpayer dollars – which we don’t). The profit being bad because their drive to GET the profit means that they are broadcasting people and topics that aren’t in the ‘interests of us as a society’ – that they are behaving like any other corporate TV channel that’s all about ratings and advertising revenue and not about ‘Quality Programming’.

It strikes me that TV is one of the very few things that Government is involved in that actually does follow the same path as it would in an open market and the fact that there is a SOE that MAKES money is a GOOD thing and not a reason to get rid of it ASAP.

I don’t buy the argument that TVNZ is failing because it’s popular. I think there is room for programming that interests very few of us (which is why no one who is concerned about profit would bother to make it), but lets be honest, the need for that programming is inherently limited. You can’t hold TVNZ responsible for the fact the rest of us would rather watch Paul Henry wax lyrical about anything offensive (and this is very much proven by the fact his biggest haters seems to always know exactly what he said, when) than drink our cups of tea in front of hideously boring yet apparently quality programs. If anything it’s OUR responsibility for not being the kind of people who would watch programs that are educational and informative than Survivor, NZ’s Next Top Model etc etc.

Given my new philosophy on life post Commonwealth Games, I’m all about winners and have a major sensitivity to anything that looks, sounds and smells like New Zealanders trying to pull down those who succeed and make excuses for those who don’t. How often do we have SOEs that perform better than private companies? I think it’s awesome.

We’ve got a limited amount of public funds – if TVNZ is a method of getting more, so that we can fund healthcare, schools and a bunch of other things that make us such a brilliant country to live in, then GOOD ON THEM. I’d much prefer that than they deliberately aim to lose money and waste whatever funding they get on programs that no one will watch.

Paul Henry aside (because he’s managed to become one person who has completely divided us as a nation), we should be shouting our State Broadcaster’s success from the rooftops.