Some folks are getting terribly upset that Television New Zealand, the state-owned company that runs the two leading network channels in this country, saw fit to bump Prime Minister John Key from their primetime current affairs show, Close Up, in favour of a former rugby player who was involved in what can only be described as a rather trivial sexual harassment matter involving a 15 year old girl. Prime Minister Key had just announced his Government's major economic and taxation policies for the next few years but TVNZ decided that this wasn't nearly as important as the former rugby player's peccadillos.
I'm actually blase quite about this. That's because I have long since given up watching TVNZ's news and current affairs, having decided that their coverage of news events is comparable to that of the joke publications News of the World in the UK and National Enquirer in the USA. The only thing that disappoints me is that the viewing public of this country still expects anything better from TVNZ.
It is high time the Government split up and sold TVNZ. Why the taxpayer needs to own and fund a commercial television company, I do not know. But to own an enterprise with as poor standards as this one, well, that is just ridiculous. It's like the British Government owning the News of the World or the US Government owning the National Enquirer.
Let's get rid of these crappy television channels and, while we're at it, sell Radio New Zealand as well. The latter specialises in talkback for the so-called liberal intelligentsia and runs a Soviet-style station that plays wall-to-wall strident orchestral music. The NZ taxpayers shouldn't own this rubbish either.
