Three times in the past year, New Zealand’s largest free-to-air broadcaster Television New Zealand (TVNZ) has hit the highest ratings it has seen in decades.

Through two national disasters and a royal wedding, New Zealand’s oldest channel TV One assumed television’s original purpose: to help spread the word.

Government-owned TVNZ and its two main free-to-air channels; TV One and TV2 still take about 50 per cent of the viewing market.

But the company’s success does not lie solely in the news reporting team’s ability to respond to national disasters, says the head of TV One and TV2, Jeff Latch. The channels are adapting to viewer demands for local, event-based television series and managing to grow audiences and revenue despite stiff competition from internet downloads and social media.

Local fl avour
In July, TV One launched new local drama series Nothing Trivial, written by the creators of the hugely successful local series Go Girls, which has enjoyed three high-rating seasons on TV2. While the latter fi ts the fun, youthful market of TV2’s 18 – 39 year-old demographic, Nothing Trivial is pitched to TV One’s slightly older, more discerning audience of 25 – 54 year olds. It follows fi ve middle-aged, middle class New Zealanders and their middle-of-the-road problems – laden with the sort of moral, feel-good themes that tend to pull viewers during times national tragedies and global crises. The show became the biggest launch of a one-hour drama series TVNZ has seen in 15 years. The highest viewership of a new New Zealand show to date has been local series Jackson’s Wharf, which debuted on TV2 in June 1999 with an average audience of 602, 600 people.

Understandably, New Zealanders are seeking feel-good programmes after such a fraught year with two Christchurch earthquakes, the Pike River Mining disaster, and hangover from the global fi nancial crisis, but Latch says also there’s no denying local drama has come of age in the past fi ve or six years, and support for it has swelled.

Both Go Girls and Nothing Trivial were launched by South Pacifi c Pictures, the production house behind New Zealand’s most successful drama series Outrageous Fortune, which aired on TVNZ’s rival channel TV3 from 2005 until 2010. Outrageous Fortune won more than 50 national awards, went on to be adapted for British and American audiences and more importantly, paved the way for a swag of new gritty, locally produced series.

This year TV3 replaced Outrageous Fortune with The Almighty Johnsons, a daring comedy drama by the same writers, about a family of brothers who learn they are Norse Gods. The show also launched to strong ratings.

Kelly Martin, who heads the television programming department at Mediaworks, which owns TV3 and more youthful channel Four, says that it is hugely important for the company to invest in high quality, locally-produced content.

Not only does it prove that the TV3 brand can come up with programmes viewers like, but it gives the channel some exclusivity in an age when that is increasingly diffi cult, she says.

“The license fees for locally produced content are exorbitant when compared to shows that can be bought from America or Britain, but New Zealand audiences are increasingly sourcing that international content from downloads or box sets”, says Martin.

“The only way to keep a strong brand in this market is to show something unique,” she adds. Newspapers continue to report Mediaworks’ drastic profi t losses, and speculate potential buyouts – though recent murmurings about a purchase by pay television’s Sky TV have been quashed – so it is doubly important for the company to prove it is part of the New Zealand cultural makeup.

This year the network rebranded its youth, music-orientated channel C4 as FOUR, pitched at a broader, 18 – 39 age group, and shows mostly international content, such as animated comedies Family Guy and reality shows like America’s Next Top Model.

This has freed up TV3 for current affairs and local content. The channel’s comedy panel show 7 Days has drawn high ratings during its Friday night line-up but Martin acknowledges that fi nding the right shows involved “kissing a lot of ugly frogs before we got a prince”.

Back on TV One and TV2, Latch also talks about the appeal of comedy in today’s market, and notes that TV2’s Wednesday night comedy line-up of American shows like Two and A Half Men, $#*t My Dad Says, Cougar Town and recently, Happy Endings, continues to do very well for the broadcaster.

Yes, being a small country, most of what New Zealand audiences see on television is British, American, or Australian, but Latch points out that the top rating shows for TV One and TV2 are still generally local: news and current affairs, and then the local reality shows that follow in the early evening schedule; like fl y-onthe- wall crime series Police Ten 7, and Motorway Cops.

Producing these to local markets is relatively cost-effective. Latch has also found that reality competitions, such as cooking shows My Kitchen Rules and MasterChef allow channels to tap into a new pattern of viewership that favours what he calls “event television” – running reality competitions on several nights of the week.

Meanwhile, the local version of Tyra Banks’ Top Model reality series has been a great success for TV3’s brand.

“We went with the show because it was a known quality, the American version had done well, and we were likely to be able to sell it,” Martin says.

Now in its third season, the Mediaworks is reaping the rewards with a long list of advertising partners taking up the show’s product placement opportunities. The local show now pulls more viewers than the American version and is particularly successful via TV3’s video on demand platform.

Buoyed by the success of shows like Top Model and the high rating Australian version of Simon Cowell’s talent quest The X Factor, Mediaworks has spent “many millions” on securing the rights for a New Zealand version, scheduled for next year. Martin expects it to be “a sure fi re hit” for the company.

Charting new waters
There’s no doubt that viewers want to be entertained, especially by their own countrymen, but channels must also show programmes deemed “educational” in order to win funding to make the fun shows.

In 2003, the government initiated a charter that forced TVNZ to feature programming that would educate New Zealanders and promote a sense of identity. In July this year parliament passed a bill to abolish the guidelines when it became clear that adhering to the charter’s strict criteria was at odds with the State broadcaster’s commercial responsibilities.

The decision met much outcry, particularly from left-wing commentators who touted the demise of quality programming, but others suggest it is likely to allow smaller channels like TV3 and the Sky TV-owned Prime to screen a greater number of public service shows.

Martin says it might give TV3 more access to funding for local content, and indeed this year the government’s contestable funding scheme allowed the channel to make a New Zealand series of Underbelly, which tells the story of some of the countries most notorious drug rings, and a one-off drama Stolen about a high profi le abduction of a child known as “baby Kahu”. But both Prime TV’s head of general entertainment Karen Bieleski and TV3’s Martin say the bulk of their documentaries and factual series that fall under the public service umbrella have and always will be funded by New Zealand On Air (NZOA), the body that funds the country’s radio, music, new media, and television. Just because TVNZ now has less of an obligation to screen shows that promote a sense of national identity, it doesn’t mean the competing channels will move in to replace them.

Noting a demand – and need – for more quality programming, NZOA launched a platinum fund in 2009, in support of locally produced one-off dramas and documentaries. TV One has already screened several in its Sunday night slot this year, drawing strong ratings.

Latch says TV One hosts many of what he calls “minority interest programmes,” but they are generally scheduled outside prime-viewing hours. Over the past three years, TVNZ has been fortunate that the confl ict over what viewers say they want to watch (documentaries) and what rates (not documentaries), has been partly resolved by the establishment of a not-for-profi t free to air channels TVNZ6 and 7 on the new digital Freeview network.

Originally formed to help encourage the uptake of Freeview ahead of television’s digital switchover beginning September 2012, TVNZ7 in particular, carved out a small but loyal following. Fans of the political and scientifi c shows have voiced their concerns over losing the station’s quality programming when funding runs out midway through next year.

But Eric Kearley, who heads the digital channels at TVNZ, says the public service shows on TVNZ7 were government funded, so can still be made through NZ On Air’s contestable funding scheme if the body remains convinced they are of value and a channel – most likely TV One – is happy to host them.

Kearley says TVNZ7 and sister digital channel TVNZ6 achieved their aims of prompting digital uptake and was never intended to be an ongoing venture anyway.

“I think I am on my 21st TV channel launch and no matter how much you try to future-proof them, within two or three years, they will need to shift, sometimes quite dramatically.” In this case it meant folding TVNZ6, and passing the channel’s children’s shows to a 24 hour TV paid-TV channel Kidzone, which is now run by SKY.

The rest of TVNZ6 was wiped, rebranded and relaunched as cuttingedge youth-branded Channel U in March, blending television with social media in a way New Zealand has never seen before.

Social benefits
Launched just after Mediaworks closed its youth music-focused channel C4 and opened FOUR, and MTV closed its New Zealand offi ce for a second time, Channel U has shocked the television world by tapping into that impossible-to-reach youth audience at a very low cost.

Channel U’s custom-built Facebook application (app) has been selected for a global case study for Facebook advertising campaigns, and the channel has been nominated for television innovation awards in Amsterdam, the Asian Television Awards in Singapore in December and New Zealand this year.

But Kearley insists that rather than breaking new ground, what the channel is doing is simply a case of falling in line with consumer behaviours.

Realising that young people were tapping into Facebook while watching television, Channel U launched a custom-made Facebook app which allows the viewers to interact with broadcasts.

The U Live music show encourages viewers to help programme the content, and even to become guest hosts on the music shows every Sunday night for a month.

“We don’t see it as a TV channel, we see it as a brand that sits across media and has a TV component,” Kearley says.

Launched without a fancy marketing campaign, the channel makes no secret of the fact that it is made on a budget – the young hosts have been trained as presenters, producers and technicians, and the afternoon show is broadcast from the casual setting of TVNZ’s atrium, rather than a studio.

It has proven more of a commercial success than Kearley expected, and he has taken several calls from television executives asking him how the channel did it.

“We don’t know of anyone doing this in this way. It solves a number of issues, and is very inexpensive, yet innovative way to use airtime.”

Kearley has worked on similar projects for youth television channels around the world for 15 years, but says what makes U work where the others didn’t, is that social media now exists.

Whether or not Facebook grows or crumples as a social medium does not matter, says Kearley. It has spawned behaviour that will not change, and Channel U sits comfortably alongside it.

“People in TV get extremely excited about U Live, but consumers just see it as “Yeah of course”. That’s the difference,” he says.