The Big Four of the Broadcasting Corporation

Tu Tangata, Issue 33, 1 December 1986, Page 6

The Big Four of the Broadcasting Corporation

Warren Mayne, news media commentator for the National Business Review and the Listener, introduces the people who are in a position to ring the changes in New Zealand broadcasting. He comments:

Maori broadcasting is on the way in the wind if not yet actually on the air. The scene has been set, the awareness is there, the motivating people are good-intentioned. The key decision-makers are Pakeha, without any conspicuous Maori background. But they are willing both to provide, and one suspects, atone. All especially, Hugh Rennie, have acknowledged that Maori broadcasting is a matter strictly for Maori to control and consume. That in itself may not be that bad a starting point.

Hugh Rennie is a top lawyer, from a legal background, the epitome of middle class success with a longtime interest in the media. A lucid thinker and a carefully attentive listener, he is imbued with a sense of his public duty and a sensitivity that leads him into consultation, the tapping of the views and expertise of others, recognition of cultural values and the cultivation of consensus wherever possible.

Radio New Zealand director-general Beverley Wakem came up through the ranks of state radio, through talks and current affairs, and made it to the top as first woman appointed to top job in any major state activity. She is aware of the difficulties facing women, is widely respected for her sensitivity to the needs of Maori, ethnic and social minorities in a world long dominated by middle-class Pakeha male values and an advocate of radio’s role in catering for specialist needs.

Mounter is English, old school tie, journalist turned BBC, then commercial television executive, Cornish-bred (and somewhat sensitive to regional differences in Britain). He is firmly and unshakeably resolved to make the Maori component an integral part of an identifiably New Zealand/Aotearoa television service. However, many other of Mounter’s decisions have shown him to be still out of touch with New Zealand attitudes and his cultural sensitivity has yet to match his sincerity.

Nigel Dick is unashamedly a veteran of commercial television big business in Australia, a worldly, hard-nosed Australian brought in to make the BCNZ function on a businesslike basis. He is also, however, a man of independent means, in the last decade of his career, who took up the top BCNZ job for the challenge of doing something worthwhile in a public broadcasting system. No sentimentalist, he recognises the priorities for Maori broadcasting. He invariably means what he says, blunt as it might be.