November 08, 2016
Reo TV failing to entertain
The new head of Te Mangai Paho would like to see more money going into te reo Maori television programmes to lift the quality and audience appeal.
Larry Parr takes over as chief executive at a time the sector is moving into uncharted waters with the creation of Te Matawai, the body that will advocate for the language on behalf of Maori.
He says the Maori broadcast funding agency remains a crown agency, so this represents a crown response to the issue.
He told Radio Waatea host and Te Matawai member Willie Jackson 60 percent of the content it funds for television is for fluent speakers, but it’s not getting 60 percent of the money.
As a result there is not the creativity audiences want.
"You and I will go and see Crouching Tiger in Chinese or Mandarin becuase it is good entertainment. I think we need to take that approach with our Maori language content. We need to provide more challenging, more interesting, more engaging, more entertaining Maori language content rather than saying 'we are losing audiences because there is too much reo in the content.' Well it is too much reo and it is boring," Mr Parr says.
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