British media studies researcher Richard Turner is keen to find out why Mäori Television has such growing appeal to a non-Mäori audience. Just six years after it went to air, the station is already a world leader among indigenous broadcasters and potentially an inspiration to others, Mr Turner says.
He is at Massey University’s Albany campus on a Commonwealth Scholarship to conduct research for a master’s degree into the reasons for Mäori Television’s popularity and why so many non-Mäori viewers are tuning in. He says he was a fan of the station when he lived in London, viewing it online like growing numbers worldwide. Mäori Television’s latest ratings poll, released last week, indicate that three-quarters of its two million-plus New Zealand viewers are non-Mäori.
Mr Turner says the appeal to non-Mäori audiences appears to be a distinctive aspect of its success. “My research will explore, through qualitative study, why such a high volume of Päkehä are tuning into the channel. I am interested to discover what shows non-Mäori are watching, and whether Päkehä are embracing te reo me ngä tikanga Mäori [Mäori language and culture]. I want to find out if Mäori Television is offering Päkehä an alternative to New Zealand’s mainstream channels.”
He says part of it may be about what Mäori Television is doing right – but part also may relate to what mainstream stations are doing wrong in viewers’ eyes. “Is it because they want to learn about Mäori culture, language and views? Do they identity more strongly with a Mäori perspective? Or, is it because they are fed up with mainstream television’s menu of mostly imported American and British soaps, dramas and reality shows?”
Preliminary research indicates viewers are attracted to what he calls a more “thoughtful” style of reporting and debate on news and current affairs programmes such as Native Affairs and Te Käea, where different viewpoints are expressed and viewers see Mäori communicating with each other rather than responding to what he considers an often aggressive, negative mode of questioning on mainstream television.
Mr Turner believes the quality and range of its programming, the scope of its Mäori language broadcasting, and rating success may make it an inspiration to other indigenous television stations – even those that are older but have not gained the same degree of popularity beyond their target audience, such as Welsh language channel SC4. Mäori Television hosted the World Indigenous Television Broadcasting Conference in 2008, which led to the establishment of the World Indigenous Television Broadcasters’ Network.
A statement on the station’s website says it has growing numbers of online viewers in 188 countries, with New Zealand first, followed by Australia, the United States, Britain and Canada. Mr Turner is conducting interviews as well as focus groups with Päkeh? who watch Mäori Television regularly or sporadically.
(Source: Massey University)
on Jun 26th, 2010 at 03:51
We were just discussing in DX Listening Digest finding macrons to put over the a of Maori. I see you have avoided that by using an umlaut instead. At least that is what I see, contrary to the station website. Or do you see something else?
on Jun 26th, 2010 at 10:42
The original press release from Massey University used two dots over the ‘a’ in some places, but not in others. For consistency, I changed them so they were all the same. I would prefer to use Unicode, but the blog is not set up for that. If I use the correct character (U+101) in editing mode, it displays as a question mark when I publish it. So I have to improvise. Obviously even a New Zealand university can’t overcome this sort of problem.
You will have a lot of problems if you try to put all these non-western accents in DXLD, because, unless you use a style sheet, how they display will depend on the user’s browser settings - and in emails it gets even more complicated