Branding documentary: New Zealand's minimalist solution to cultural subsidy

During widespread neoliberal economic reform in the 1980s, New Zealand's public television broadcaster, TVNZ, was restructured as a 'cash cow'. A new agency, New Zealand on Air, was established to address public service goals, subsidizing local production on TVNZ and the new privately-owned TV3. The result was two high-rating strands of local documentary in prime time. A decade later populist programming had begun to pall with the revival of public television emerging as an election issue. Helen Clark's Labour government recently restructured TVNZ as a Crown-owned corporation and approved a new Public TV Charter but, with financial objectives intact, the changes appear more makeover than reform. Exploring the impact of funding changes on social documentary production, this article draws on interviews with key industry players in the context of documentary outcomes for 1998. At stake in this discussion is the relationship between social agency and cultural subsidy in the global era.