Goodbye Kiwi?

This viral video is part of a campaign to save TVNZ 7, a public broadcasting channel run by TVNZ with government funding. The National-led government has announced that they’ll cut-off that funding next year, and further, has declared that TVNZ is not a public broadcaster.

What that means is that New Zealand, unlike most western democracies, will have no public broadcasting service (especially now that Broadcasting Minister Jonathan Coleman has named a National Party hack to head Radio New Zealand). Coleman and National want the government-owned broadcasters to be run with an eye toward making a profit—serving the needs of advertisers, not the public.

As an aside, the live action part of this video was filmed outside Coleman’s office in Birkenhead. I’m frequently in that area since many of the local shops I patronise are all nearby (and the new library is directly across the street). The first part of the video is part of the "Goodnight Kiwi" video that TVNZ used to play at that nightly closedown of TV2, back before it went 24 hours.