May 2021 Newsletter

Read all the funding details from our latest funding round, catch up with what's been happening in our Music sector and meet our Head Of Communications.

A note from the CE

CE, Cameron Harland

Tēnā koutou.

Our agency has been a hive of activity lately – more so than usual!

Yesterday we closed the first funding round for Public Interest Journalism, and it is clear there is massive demand out there for support. This round we have $9.6m to allocate, but for those who miss out, don’t worry, there’s a new financial year just around the corner, with $25m available from July 1.

We are very much looking forward to our newly appointed Head of Journalism, Raewyn Rasch, joining us in a couple of weeks. Raewyn brings a wealth of knowledge, experience and industry connections to our team and will immediately begin building a small team to support the mahi. No doubt she will also jump straight into engaging with the broader sector and learning the ropes around administering funding to ensure we achieve the next milestone of funding decisions by the end of June.

Another new team member we are really excited to have joining us is Cat Goodwin, most recently from media agency OMD, who joins us next week as our new Audience and Media Strategist. Cat has years of media strategy behind her and is coming into a role we created to address a deficit in audience data metrics. She will assist the funding team in both monitoring performance of funded content across the various linear and digital platforms we support and driving future strategy to ensure content is found by our diverse audiences.

On that note, we have taken an innovative approach to funding content for younger New Zealanders in the recently announced Youth RFP decisions. It was innovative in several ways, not least of which was that we utilised the street smarts of young content creators (think TikTokers!) to help us understand what this audience will respond to, and where to reach them. We will be monitoring the success of this initiative closely and learning from it.

It was another significant milestone to announce along with NZ Film Commission and Te Māngai Pāho last week the first production funding through Te Puna Kairangi – the $50m Premium Productions Fund. The spread of successful projects will see high end factual, drama series, feature films and a popular returning children’s series produced for content-hungry international and local audiences. You can read more about the projects here.

We continue to be delighted with the level of local music being played on local radio. The 20% local content target for commercial radio continues to be achieved (and more) after a record-smashing year in 2020. Thank you to the radio programmers who are helping to ensure local songs and artists are being heard and appreciated.

Special mention also to the Student Radio network. We have recently increased their operational funding partly as recognition of the difficult times they have and continue to experience financially, but also to acknowledge that they are a strong bastion for local music and culture. Without them many great alternative artists would struggle to find their audience.

And finally, the Community Access Media Alliance is celebrating 40 years of community access radio. If you haven’t had the joy of finding your local station yet, or the plethora of podcasts on their site accessmedia.nz then I highly recommend you check it out. It’s sometimes quirky, always informative and entertaining, grass-roots content that reflects the many different faces and voices of Aotearoa.

Hei konā mai,

Cam

NZ Media Fund update

Our May round was for production applications to our Youth RFP, Scripted and Factual HEIHEI returning series, and Industry Development fund.

In total we received 111 new applications across our Scripted, Factual, Platforms and Industry Development streams, seeking $80.5m in NZ On Air funding. We are pleased to support the funding of 21 Scripted, Factual and IDF applications for up to $4.5m. In addition, we confirmed Platform funding for the 2021/22 year with 27 applications being approved for funding of up to $58.8m.

The full details of all funding decisions are at the end of this newsletter. You can also use the funding decisions search on our website.

Bouncers, Culture Factory and West Park Entertainment

Youth RFP

NZ On Air has greenlit 11 innovative new youth projects to be distributed through a variety of online platforms used by young audiences.

Up to $2.4m has been invested in content that will focus on youth voices, perspectives and issues in Aotearoa.

Read more about the 11 projects in our media release here.

Island Of Mystery, Adrenalin Ltd

HEIHEI

NZ On Air has funded almost $2m worth of Aotearoa’s most-loved children’s shows in the latest funding round, including news, creepy crawlies and a quirky local series that’s gone global.

NZ On Air has also allocated operational funding from this round to continue support for the HEIHEI Games platform, and to house HEIHEI content on the TVNZ OnDemand site.

Read more about the six exciting returning tamariki series in our media release here.

Able Captioning and Audio Description

Platforms

Our latest round saw us support 27 platforms for up to $58.8m.

Essential local platforms that have received funding for 2021/22 include 12 Community Access Radio Stations, five Student Radio Stations, Samoa Capital Radio, the National Pacific Radio Trust, the HEIHEI Games Platform, HEIHEI on TVNZ OnDemand Platform, Able Captioning and Audio Description, the Digital Media Trust which runs the NZ On Screen and AudioCulture sites and more.

You can read all the funding details about each platform at the end of this newsletter.

% expenditure to date

Current round

July is the first round of the new financial year and we expect the annual inundation of applications.

As we did last year, we intend to provisionally cap the Factual and Scripted funding committed to this round to ensure funds remain for later rounds.

Factual – genres prioritised for this round include Documentary and General Factual applications (including Events). Approximately $10m has been allocated for content intended for general audiences.
Scripted – applications for the Premier, Sustainable, Newer Storytellers strands of our Scripted Roadmap will be considered. Approximately $20m has been allocated for content intended for general audiences.
Development – both Content (including Diverse Development) and Industry Development applications will be considered. Please see the Development Roadmap.

Important dates

22 April 2021 - Funding round opens.

All applications must be made through NZ On Air’s online application system. Applications not submitted through this system will not be accepted. You must submit a request to register with our online system well in advance of the application deadline day.

20 May 2021, 4pm - Application deadline. Round closes.

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. But we will not be generous.

14 July 2021 - Decisions confirmed, applicants notified the following day.

This date may be extended at NZ On Air’s sole discretion

Information for funding applicants July 2021 PDF 246.9 KB

Public Interest Journalism

The inaugural funding round for the Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) closed at 4pm yesterday.

Decision for application up to $1m will be made by 28 June

Decisions for applications greater than $1m will be made by 14 July.

The below guidance documents were published to help applicants understand how the fund will work, what they can apply for, and whether they may be eligible.

The General Guidelines is the foundation document which sets out the fund’s objectives, eligibility and assessment criteria.
The Round guidelines set out what we were accepting applications for in this first round.
The Funding flowchart is a step-by-step guide to the funding application and assessment process from start to finish, and will be especially useful for first-time applicants.
The Q and A attempts to anticipate common questions and provide answers.
The Funding Deadlines document has the opening and closing round details until the end of the year.

Music update

Taite Music Prize winner – Reb Fountain

The 2021 Taite Music Prize was awarded to Reb Fountain at an event in Auckland on 20 April for her magnificent 2020 self-titled album.

At the ceremony Na Noise were awarded the Best Independent Album award for their debut album ‘Waiting For You‘, the Independent Spirit award was granted to Pete Rainey and Glenn Common from Smokefree Rockquest, and the Patea Māori Club were honoured with the Classic Record award for their ground-breaking single ‘Poi E’ released in 1983.

NZ On Air had invested in all of the finalist records for 2021 and the event highlighted the range of quality artists and recordings that are being produced in Aotearoa. Read more about the event and results here.

Music funding 2020/21

We have just completed the final New Music Single round for the 2020/21 funding year, rounding out a year of boosted funding thanks to the 2020 Arts Recovery package.

This has enabled us to invest in more than 206 New Music Single projects in the past 12 months, along with 49 New Music Project grants (multi-single releases), 80 New Music Development grants, 35 New Music Kids grants, 14 Waiata Takitahi grants (with Te Māngai Pāho) and 20 New Music Pasifika grants.

We’ve already seen a large increase in the range and volume of music coming through in the past few months and we’re very excited about some of the amazing songs, video and promotional content still to come. Our increased funding for music runs until June 2022.

Children’s Music Awards

The APRA Children’s Music Awards will be presented at Auckland’s Tuning Fork this Sunday 16 May - including awards for Best Children’s Song, Best Children’s Music Artist and Best Children’s Music Video .

We’ve created a playlist to celebrate all the wonderful children’s music practitioners who have been nominated this year – essential listening if you have little ones at home or in the car!

Meet the team

Meet Allanah, Head Of Communications at NZ On Air and the wahine who keeps us all informed!

Allanah's mahi spans all the way from dealing with media, stakeholder and public enquiries, to planning and overseeing our research programme. In her time at NZ On Air she's led the development of key industry research, including the annual Where Are The Audiences? report and 2019's New Zealand's Identity, Culture and the Media research.

Even when she's not at the office Allanah is still busy - tending to her menagerie of dogs, chooks and sheep is no small feat!

Learn more about Allanah, her role at NZ On Air, and what local content she's been loving recently on our Meet The Team page.