Digital encounters with Pacific Island Radio and Television Archives (original) (raw)

Radio New Zealand International: Reporting the Pacific in tight times

Radio New Zealand International (RNZI) broadcasts from New Zealand into the South Pacific and is relayed to South Pacific listeners by their various national news services. In 2006, American academic Andrew M. Clark characterised the role of RNZI as 'providing a service for the people of the South Pacific' that also provided 'an important public diplomacy tool for the New Zealand government' (Clark, 2006). A decade on, this article evaluates the ongoing use and utility of RNZI as a taxpayer-funded voice of and from New Zealand, as a service for the diverse peoples of the South Pacific and as a tool of New Zealand's transnational diplomatic efforts. RNZI is still a key source of local and regional information and connection for the distinct cultures and nations of the vast South Pacific area, whose peoples have strong links to New Zealand through historical ties and contemporary diasporae living in the country. But, RNZI now faces mounting financial pressure, a government swinging between indifference and hostility to public broadcasting and questions of legitimacy and reach in the 'digital age'. With RNZI under pressure in 2016, key questions arise about its present and future. What is RNZI doing well and not so well? What role should New Zealand's domestic and international politics play in the organisation and its outputs? And how might its importance and impact be measured and understood in such a culturally and geographically diverse region as the South Pacific? Using a variety of sources, including documents released to the author under the New Zealand Official Information Act, this article explores the role of RNZI in the contemporary New Zealand and South Pacific media environments.

Ch 9.Niua FM Tonga and Pacific public-service broadcasting

Talanoa Radio: Exploring the Interface of Development, Culture and Community Radio in the South Pacific, 2014

Niua FM on the outlying Tongan island of Niuatoputapu proves a case study through which to discuss Pacific public-service broadcasting and the challenges it faces.

Cultural sites of the spectrumscape: negotiating global flows in nz radio broadcasting

… .humanities.curtin.edu.au

The infrastructure of broadcast media and many communications systems is determined by the way the radio spectrum is managed, and frequencies on which to transmit are allocated. Radio spectrum is controlled by layers of national and international legislation and agreements, so that the borderless flow of radio waves can be managed efficiently between States. In New Zealand access to spectrum is gained mostly through pseudo-property rights sold at auction, following an argument that spectrum is most efficiently used if treated as private property. The removal of restrictions on foreign ownership of spectrum rights in 1991 means that New Zealand's frequency bands are now part of an international spectrum market, figuring our radio waves as expensive iterations of international financescapes and mediascapes. However exposure to this market has been found to limit the range of media content, and a variety of other allocation processes have been adopted to augment auctions. This paper argues that radio waves form a 'spectrumscape' that is a fluid site of tension between local cultural interests and global flows. It outlines the role of radio spectrum in shaping New Zealand's media and communications environment, and relationships between local and global spectrumscapes. It will focus on some ways in which local cultural concerns have manifest in the radio spectrum, through the examples of the Maori claims to spectrum through the Waitangi Tribunal, the reserving of spectrum bands for non-commercial use, and the controversial reframing of Kiwi FM.