The future isn’t coming; the future is here: The New Zealand Children’s Screen Trust’s engagement with media policy for children

Abstract

This article draws on contributions by the New Zealand Children’s Screen Trust to a strategic review of children’s media provision and delivery in 2015–2016. The Trustees’ understanding of local media policy settings, their research into international best practice and their local production expertise enable them to address the challenges facing local public service provision for children in Aotearoa/New Zealand. How can one effect change to meet children’s evolving media requirements in a radically deregulated broadcasting and media economy with static funding? This article tracks the Trust’s engagement with children’s media policy in New Zealand from the perspective of one of the trustees.

Children’s television in transition: policies, platforms and production

“…The ABC has had its own children’s channel, ABC ME (formerly ABC3), since 2009, but in 2015 the channel’s programme budget was virtually halved, with local content targets reduced from 50% to 25% of the schedule (Potter, 2015b). In New Zealand, children’s television producers compete for limited funding from state body NZ on Air alongside other ‘genres’ perceived to be at risk of market failure, meaning that most local children’s content is inexpensive, magazine style programming with a short shelf life (see Zanker, in this issue).…”