Green Shoots in NZ?

The CMF is committed to active participation in international efforts to improve children's content provision.

CMF Chair, Anna Home, met members of the board of The New Zealand Children’s Screen Trust Kids on Screen in Auckland in January.

Anna writes:
"The Trust wanted to meet as their aims and concerns are similar to ours.  Although at present they are focusing on the severe lack of local New Zealand children's content, especially drama - on all platforms.

"The situation in New Zealand is pretty grim. TVNZ the national broadcaster no longer has any real public service obligations to children, although it runs kids' content on some of it’s channels, primarily on a pay channel on Sky. These programmes are mainly acquisitions. The only local content is in a small number of magazine shows. There is no local kid’s drama, despite the fact that TVNZ had a good track record in this genre not that long ago.  The only local kid’s drama recently was an adaptation of a novel by the well known and much missed New Zealand writer Margaret Mahy which was transmitted on the Maori channel.

"The commercial channels (Nickelodeon and Disney) have no obligation to run local content.

"The Trust has members from the industry and academia, plus interested teachers, parents and volunteers. They are about to launch publicly and will try to build a sustainable fighting fund, possibly through crowd sourcing.
Despite the fact that they have considerable public support it is going to be an uphill struggle.

"We offer them our support and wish them the best of luck."

You can read more about the Trust at www.kidsonscreen.co.nz