New Zealand on Air, Public Service Television and TV Drama

This chapter focuses on television, exploring the ‘public service’ contribution of New Zealand on Air (NZoA), this country’s public broadcasting agency. Originally called the New Zealand Broadcasting Commission, NZoA was created as part of the neoliberal-styled restructuring and deregulation of New Zealand broadcasting in 1988–9. Its statutory mission was to disburse public funding to broadcasting projects deemed able to ‘reflect and develop New Zealand identity and culture’ (New Zealand Broadcasting Act, 1989: 17). Designed to operate in a deregulated broadcasting system in which the public network had been stripped of its PSB remit and related funding, NZoA represented a new approach to PSB, a radical alternative to the tradition of a single PSB network. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.