July 2023 Newsletter

Our July newsletter is packed with news from Round Tahi, the first under our new investment strategy, and the first of the new financial year.

A note from the CE

Island Of Mystery - Te Wā o Matariki, Adrenalin. Hiwa-I-Te-Rangi is the ninth star in the Matariki constellation. It is known as the wishing star and represents the promise of prosperity.

Tēnā koutou.

As we prepare to celebrate Matariki, it’s a great time to take stock – reflect on the past, celebrate the present and look forward to the future.

When I think about the past year, since we last celebrated Matariki, I think about the incredible quality and quantity of content New Zealand creatives have been able to make, and audiences enjoy, with our funding support. The live broadcast tomorrow Mānawatia a Matariki will be a truly special event that has been supported by all our major national broadcast partners, ensuring people across Aotearoa New Zealand can participate. It’s an example of the strength of a funding system that enables public media content to be everywhere.

Where we are today as an agency compared to a year ago is in a position of much greater clarity about the future. We are privileged to not only have funding restored so that we can serve audiences on the platforms they use, but also to have new funding streams, that will help to build and support a thriving screen and games sector, and continue to enable great NZ music and a range of important public media platforms.

So, looking ahead, I feel filled with optimism for the sectors we are here to support. I am also really excited about what audiences will get to experience. Supporting the creation of content that reflects our identity and culture is equal parts a privilege, an opportunity and a challenge.

In this newsletter you’ll see that we have had a huge first funding round under our new investment strategy. And we now roll straight into the Special Scripted funding round, bolstered by the new opportunity for productions to use the NZ Screen Production Rebate alongside NZ On Air funding. We are also now working closely alongside officials on development of the Game Development Sector Rebate.

We also provide some more detail below of the year ahead, via our just published Statement of Performance Expectations, and some further detail on how we intend to use the additional one-off $10m in funding for this year.

Our team has a number of celebratory events planned for Matariki and is looking forward to a day off to spend with whānau and friends, and I hope that you too will have an opportunity to stop and reflect.

Ngā mihi maioha

Cam

The year ahead

We've recently published our Statement of Performance Expectations for 2023/24. This a key document required by Government to outline how we will allocate taxpayer funds, where our work priorities lie, and how we will measure our performance. Due to timing, it doesn't include detail on how we will utilise the $10m one-off additional funding, or the work programme around the establishment of the Game Development Sector rebate.

However we have recently confirmed the below outline of how we will put the $10m to the best use for the benefit of audiences in Aotearoa New Zealand this year. We have deliberately kept this high-level to allow flexibility and responsiveness. We also need to bear in mind the limitations of one-off funding, in so far as it can be disappointing to start something that might not be able to be continued if further additional funds aren't secured in future years.

$10m additional

The objective of this one-off funding is to provide support for... “innovative content to reach new audiences… to deliver trusted public media news, information, and entertainment through cross-sector collaboration. Its aim will be to reach groups who are currently under-represented across the media system (such as Māori, Pacific, Asian, rangatahi and children) including new initiatives for tamariki that parents, caregivers and educators can trust.”

We’ll be focused on a significant $5m investment in Youth and Children with a key focus on rangatahi and tamariki content (including bi-lingual content). There will also be other key delivery areas across Pacific and Asian audiences, direct music funding, and large scale capability and development initiatives.

We are intending to work with partners to both leverage the $10m wherever possible, and to ensure we have strong delivery partners and distribution pathways to audiences.

You can expect our usual transparency around allocation of funds - any funds allocated from the $10m will be identified as such.

Latest funding round

Round Tahi was the first round of the new financial year, and the first under our new investment strategy, which welcomes all types of applications into every round.

In this round we were focused on Tier 2 and 3 Scripted projects, Non-Fiction projects, games for 10-14 year-olds, children's content, development applications supported by a platform, capability funding, and annual funding for important public media platforms.

Across these categories, we received a total of 168 funding applications, from 127 entities, seeking $81m. We had allocated a minimum of $7m funding for Scripted projects and $12m for Non-Fiction, $300k for games and $100k for development.

We ended up committing $9.1m for Scripted production projects and $16.9m for Factual. We decided to upweight the funding in this first funding round of the financial year because after a long period of instability in the sector, we want to ensure that there are as many productions underway as possible.

We have supported content across 12 platforms in this round.

Not Even, Miss Conceptions Films

Scripted

Local screens will soon be graced with a dynamic line-up of drama series, including two brand new shows and three highly anticipated returns. These series will delve into various themes, offering a diverse blend of musical comedy, inspiring drama, cultural exploration, and a platform for emerging storytellers to showcase their talent.

They include a new musical comedy series Happiness, and a feature film Tīna, both for Three and ThreeNow, and the return for a second season of Not Even, for Prime and Neon. Read more about funded Scripted projects in this round.

Toi Time!, Rogue Productions

Children's

Aotearoa New Zealand’s youngest audiences will continue to be engaged, entertained, and educated with a $7m boost to content and games made for them by talented Kiwi creators.

For pre-schoolers, the popular Toi Time will be back for a third season, to educate and entertain through singing and dancing. Also returning is The Kids Of Kōrero Lane a series that embraces Deaf children as lead actors and introduces tamariki to New Zealand Sign Language in the most natural setting - at play. Comedian Josh Thomson will also be back with a second season of the fun and slightly irreverent educational show My Favourite Dead Person.

Alice Snedden's Bad News, Hex Work Productions

Non-Fiction

New content to engage and inform local audiences will be lifting the lid on a range of topics including historic abuse in care, family mysteries and the lives of young medical professionals in our hospital system.

Heading up the list is a docudrama to screen on TVNZ 1, The Lost Boys Of Dilworth. The survivors of abuse at one of the wealthiest and well-respected boys’ schools, Dilworth College in Auckland, are ready to tell their story. Written by one of those survivors, the story will explore the issue from a deeply personal viewpoint.

The inimitable Patrick Gower will return with a further investigation of a pressing New Zealand issue continuing the very popular Patrick Gower On: series on Three, and comedian Alice Snedden takes on another tough assignment in Alice Snedden's Bad News Saves The World.

In this round we also confirmed funding for another year for 12 Access Radio stations and podcast hub accessmedia.nz, five student radio stations, Pacific Media Network, Samoan Capital Radio, NZ On Screen and AudioCulture, and Able.

And we agreed funding for a number of intiatives that support the discoverability of content or upskilling of creatives, under our new investment strategy (and previously known as Industry Development funding.) Full details are in the list at the end of this newsletter.

However, of note, we have supported Story Maker, which is an intensive year-long development programme that will take six visionary writers through a development process, providing the conditions and support to create distinctive work. This project is the first to come out of the $10m additional one-off funding for this year.

Special Scripted round

This round is now open for applications. We welcome projects intended for both hard-to-reach and general audiences with our usual priority emphasis on hard-to-reach audiences. Only Scripted drama and comedy production applications will be considered. We are not considering children’s or feature film projects in this round.

Application deadline - Tuesday 1 August, 4pm Late applications will not be considered. In very exceptional circumstances, for time-sensitive projects agreed prior by the Head of Funding, we may consider an out-of-time application.
Applicants notified - Friday 22 September This date may be extended at NZ On Air's sole discretion.

For more essential information please read the Information for funding applicants Special Scripted Round 2023.

Music update

Reshma - funded in the inaugural New Music Pan-Asian funding round

This round was our fifth and final New Music project round for 2022/23 - and it was the second biggest New Music Project round ever! We received 21 applications and were able to fund 12.

We've also completed the final New Music Pasifika round for the financial year (61 applications for 15 grants) and a whopping 115 applications for 15 grants in our inaugural New Music Pan-Asian round. We also had 255 applications for 35 grants in the final New Music Single round of the year. To say demand is high is a big understatement.

The full funding details are at the end of this newsletter but here are a few highlights.

New Music Pan-Asian

Fifteen artists were selected as the very first recipients of funding via a NZ On Air New Music Pan-Asian focus round, the first funding initiative of its kind to support the Pan-Asian music community in Aotearoa New Zealand. The new focus funding round was designed to support artists to connect with Pan-Asian and mainstream audiences and increase the amount of quality Pan-Asian content across Aotearoa. It was created due to the lack of equitable representation of Pan-Asian artists in the music sector identified in the NZ On Air Music Diversity Report.

We received applications from artists who identify as Chinese, Indian and Filipino, as well as South Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Malaysian, Thai and Iraqi.

Of the 15 funded songs, seven are from first time-funded recipients and six are for bilingual songs featuring Pan-Asian languages, including Cantonese, Korean, Japanese, Malay and Punjabi.

Pacific Music Awards 2023 finalists

Celebrating Pacific Music

We're stoked for the finalists in the 2023 Pacific Music Awards. Across 13 awards categories, this year’s 24 finalists encompass a wide range of new artists and established musicians. There are 10 first time finalists, alongside 13 previous award winners.

This year’s lead finalists including MELODOWNZ, Olivia Foa’i and Sam V who are each nominated for four award categories at this year’s awards.Find out more about the finalists here. You can also enjoy their music on the finalist Spotify playlist here. And you can have your say in the Sunpix People's Choice Award by voting in the poll here.

2023 Silver Scroll Awards

The Top 20 finalists for the 2023 APRA Silver Scroll award have been announced, along with the Top 5 for the APRA Maioha Award. As always, it is so exciting to see NZ On Air funded song and artists up for these prestigious awards. Music is created to be appreciated by audiences, but its also important to acknowledge excellence through awards such as these. We salute all the finalists. You can read the full list here.

Tamariki showcase

Have you checked out the new tamariki showcase on our website? We're pulling together a directory of all the funded content available online for children in one place, to make it easier for whānau to find and enjoy the screen and radio content, songs and games. If you have content we don't know about please get in touch with us at communications@nzonair.govt.nz.

Compliance with industry standards

A friendly reminder to producers that it is our expectation funded productions will adhere to relevant employment legislation and agreed industry work standards when contracting crew and cast and managing their projects. This applies to development and production projects and includes but is not limited to:

Screen Industry Workers Act 2022 - Spada guide/NZWG guide
Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, particularly the ScreenSafe guidelines for the screen sector
SPADA/Equity Individual Performance Agreement
The Blue Book

The following are also helpful guides and references for setting up and running your production:

Meet the team

Casey Yeoh, Music promoter - Content

Casey is part of our Music Team, primarily focused on promoting the amazing music coming from Aotearoa. She's all across our Music social media channels, and puts together the NewTracks monthly compilations. She's a big fan of music and film, so it's not hard to get her to come to work each day! read more about Casey in our Meet the Team section.