The dark shadow over the NZ TV Awards

How will the new government look at our television?

This week I’ve written about the NZ TV Awards, which I attended on Tuesday. They celebrated an industry that has done a lot of great work which deserved celebrating — but also has an even darker cloud than usual hanging over it. It’s another Rec Room more devoted to the conditions which make our pop culture possible, than the work itself. But this is a period which requires we pay attention to that — otherwise there might not be nearly so much local content made in future.

Paddy Gower celebrates (Image: Eruera Walker)

The TV Awards took place in downtown Auckland on Tuesday, which coincided with Te Pāti Māori’s National Māori Action Day. The increasingly fractious relationship between the fresh coalition and many Māori gave a sharp hook to the awards. After the ceremony was opened by Ngāti Whātua, MC Kura Forrester asked the crowd, “All the National voters in the house, are you alright – anyone need a translation?”

That sentiment was echoed in multiple speeches and asides. Rena Owen noted sadly that “people died for Te Tiriti o Waitangi.” Mihi Forbes said, “Today the Crown is promising to replace the treaty principles”. Julian Wilcox joked darkly that he would “try and get as much reo in before the coalition government bans it”. The fact that there was so much reo spoken and so many Māori on stage collecting awards shows how passionate much of this industry is about our indigenous language and culture — it’s hard to imagine any legislation impacting that energy here.

Still, it’s an uncomfortable truth that of the 500 or so people in the room and the 37 awards presented, the bulk owe their existence to some strand of government funding, whether through New Zealand on Air, the Film Commission or Te Māngai Pāho. Even more broadly, the screen production sector relies on favourable tax treatment through screen production rebates.

Former broadcasting minister Willie Jackson was in the room, but he was the only MP there. It felt telling that there were no representatives from the new government in the room — no Melissa Lee, our new media minister, nor Paul Goldsmith, minister for culture. Parliamentary under-secretary Jenny Marcroft was also absent — though told me it was due to the opening of parliament. A valid excuse, but not one that prevented Jackson from attending. Perhaps that’s for the best, as the reception would likely have been frosty. 

The tensions within the industry were heavy in the air on Tuesday. Forrester made some pretty cold jokes about the end of The Project, which had apparently been cleared with Jesse Mulligan but still felt raw. That show’s ending feels like it’s the most glaring symptom yet of an industry that is struggling mightily financially. Currently, that impact is felt most acutely at places that screen the shows — the production houses that make them are somewhat shielded through NZ on Air’s role in funding shows. That has been the case for some years now — but as those powerful comments rang out from the stage, I wondered how they might land with the new government and what it might do (or not do) in response.

Parts of this coalition are already suspicious of the media sector, as evidenced by Winston Peters’ extraordinary comments last week. There has been much made of the terrible state of the government’s books by finance minister Nicola Willis. There’s a pre-Christmas mini budget on December 20, and then the big show in May. It’s not hard to imagine that some of the savings might be found by cutting the budgets of those funding agencies — or even the hammer blow of reassessing the screen industry’s tax rebates. The gaming industry’s incentive win in last May’s budget is already strongly rumoured to be in the gun. 

All of which is to say that while the night was fun and fierce in all the right places, it is also true that the comments risk poking a bear. The screen industry can feel hostile not just to any of the parties now in government but, as Forrester’s comment implied, to anyone who voted for them. That’s more than half the country, who are likely to resent paying taxes to fund culture which appears to disdain them. It’s freedom of speech and truth to power, but it’s also a very challenging time for the industry and a government that is looking for an excuse.

Along with the subtext, there was also an awards show. It was again a banner night for TVNZ, which collected 25 awards, leaving a very subdued set of tables from Warner Brothers Discovery, home of Three, which collected just five. The vibe was typified in TVNZ head of news Phil O’Sullivan’s comment that Newshub is a great opponent, which was well-intentioned but came off a little patronising. At times, TVNZ’s dominance was so overwhelming that it felt like the awards were wholly geared around venerating its magnificence, with the balance of the industry there to make up numbers.

The big winners were The Gone, which took five awards, including best drama, and Princess of Chaos, which took three. Stuff’s Fire and Fury won two major awards. It felt pointed out that Toby Longbottom twice thanked NZ on Air in his speeches but didn’t mention Stuff once. The Stuff Circuit team has yet to release any work this year and was notably absent from the new slate of NZ on Air funding for factual series. Of the smaller players, Whakaata Māori picked up three awards, while RNZ and Sky had one apiece. Perhaps the most impressive showing came from the Coconet, which picked up a pair, including Best Supporting Actress for Inky Pinky Ponky.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting old, but the TV Legend award gets me every time. This year, it went to Oscar Kightley, whose career is so luminously broad it almost doesn’t make sense that a single person could have done it all. From Pacific Underground to Harry to Bro’Town to Skitz (described by Teuila Blakely as “Unapologetically politically incorrect”, which does not describe much contemporary television), his has been a career that has spanned five governments and contained multitudes. 

He made an endearingly digressive speech in which he announced a run for mayor, maybe in jest, maybe not, and ended on a final note that felt important. “If we don’t get together to get pissed and talk about it, did our work really happen?” he asked. Given the bad financial energy and strained government relations, just having this night felt precious. Whether there will be many more to come has to be an open question.

RNZ has the full list of winners 

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Quick pop culture hits

• Neon is following Netflix by introducing advertising. This is absolutely the right strategic play for Sky — though I do think bringing pause ads in on the premium tier is cheeky.

• I wrote about the end of The Project – a bigger deal than people are making it out to be, in my opinion. More fun: Jacquie Brown’s Life in TV

• Mad Chapman and Maddie Holden make the case of After the Party – sure to clean up at next year’s TV awards – as our best drama ever

• Shanti Mathias with a typically thoughtful review of The Clay Cart – a play with roots more than two millennia deep

• Tara Ward has a fascinating story explaining why the iconic show for kids, What Now, is getting rid of its studio audience

• What’s new to streaming with Sam Brooks making a strong case for Nashville (all seasons landing soon on ThreeNow) as “one of the best dramas on TV during its run”. 

• Sam also profiles Michael Galvin, aka Chris Warner, as a playwright. This is not as strange as it sounds: Shortland Street has incubated many great writers, and this year, it unexpectedly won Best Script: Drama in a stacked category at the TV Awards.

• One final note from the TV awards: my very personal highlight was Aesha Scott winning Personality of the Year and making a tearful speech to a roomful of people who did not know who she was. Scott is an underappreciated legend of one of the best reality formats going – Below Deck, streaming now on the new reality TV streaming service Hayu.

• Here’s a link to our daily one question quiz, in partnership with Skinny – please kindly get amongst.

Ryan Bridge is coming to 7pm

Speculation was rampant that Paddy Gower would host the 7pm show to replace The Project in 2024 – but Shayne ‘Media Insider’ Currie scooped this morning that it will, in fact, be Ryan Bridge. That’s a fascinating move from Three. With Mark Richardson less prominent, Bridge is probably the most outwardly right wing presenter on either of the main networks. TVNZ has built a brand out of progressive centrism but also has John Campbell, a champion of the left, as its chief correspondent — hired not long after Labour came to power in 2017.

Bridge is a strong interviewer, and it’s great to think we’ll have hard current affairs interviews back at 7pm for the first time since Campbell Live left our screens. But it’s also an interesting chess move, one which might help the whole industry (see above) by staunching perceptions from some in the coalition that the news media as a whole has a left-wing tilt.

A motherlode of music writing resurfaces

Simon Grigg, a key figure in the story of How Bizarre, among many, many other things, is also becoming a key archivist of our musical past. He emailed this week with news that RipItUp, the quintessential New Zealand music magazine, has just sharply increased its availability on Papers Past, that matchless repository of our media history. It covers the whole glorious period with Murray Cammick as editor, including the mid-late ‘90s, when I devoured every issue as a teen. Revisiting writers like Kerry Buchanan and John Russell, each of whom I learned so much from at Real Groove, recalled just what a vibrant music writing scene we had in that era.

As Grigg said in an email, “We had a confidence in ourselves at last”. That seems a long way off now, and it’s hard to know what might revive it. Unavoidable side note: it is becoming increasingly poignant to have Audioculture and NZ on Screen richly chronicling our past while the present withers away..

Home Brew break a decade between drinks

The cult around Home Brew continues to rise, with their live shows attracting a level of fevered devotion, which is exceedingly rare in a New Zealand culture that still tends to lean toward polite approval in many cases. They’ve never really gone away but have concentrated on building up a kind of Home Brew cinematic universe and, therefore have gone a decade without an album under that name. That changed this morning with the surprise release of ‘Run it Back’.

A release says it “contains shocking moments as well as points of anguish, regret and pain from struggles with long standing substance abuse and income instability – reflecting a brutal realism of life in Aotearoa.” Not many other artists are operating in that realm. It’s out on all platforms right now, and they’ve also just been announced as joining what is shaping as a really excellent Laneway in February 2024.