Television New Zealand Archive

In 2012 the Ministry for Culture and Heritage noted that TVNZ had identified items in the archive of commercial value – approximately 20,000 hours of news and 125,000 hours of other material. A further 375,000 hours of content had been identified as "heritage material".^[11] In 2013 the Ministry noted that the collection contained 647,000 items.^[2] This number was also used in the Cabinet paper that approved the transfer of the collection.^[12] However, in November 2017 Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision stated that it only contained 435,000 items,^[13] and a promotional video produced by the archive noted that there were approximately 373,000 physical items.^[3] In February 2018 the Ministry acknowledged that to their knowledge the collection had never been comprehensively audited before and was waiting on Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision to complete a stocktake of the collection.^[12] After undertaking the collection audit, the archive reported the following numbers in September 2018:

TVNZ Archive collection size^[14]

Media	Unit	Number of items
Film elements (picture and sound)	Reels	166,876
Videotape	Tapes	177,229
Optical Discs (DVDs)	Discs	19,611
Photographs (prints, negatives, transparencies)	Images	51,985
Documents	File boxes	1,927
Card Index	File cards	130,544
Total items		548,172

The number of photographs was estimated through an average count by box.

In a briefing in early 2013 to the Minister of Broadcasting Craig Foss, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage noted that it would not be possible to preserve all of the titles in the TVNZ Archive due to the limited life-span of the current equipment, which was already obsolete. The Ministry noted that it may not be possible to purchase replacement equipment, and it therefore would be necessary to curate and prioritise the digitisation work.^[15]

In May 2017 Chair Jane Kominik noted to the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Maggie Barry that within 4–8 years it was predicted that the Betacam and DigiBeta formats would cease to be accessible.^[12] In October 2017 the website of the Governor-General noted that 200,000 Betacam tapes from the 1980s, predominantly from the TVNZ Archive collection,^[13] are "deteriorating faster than Ngā Taonga can save them and it's estimated they only have eight years [2025] before the tapes degrade completely."^[16] Rebecca Elvy, Chief Executive of Ngā Taonga told RNZ news that the technology to digitise the Betacam tapes would vanish by 2025, and that the non-digitised content would be lost forever.^[17]

In a 2014 briefing to Minister Foss, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage noted that the long-term preservation of the collection did not align with TVNZ's business needs, and that transferring the collection to the Crown would allow for the proper preservation of the collection.^[7] Both the Ministry and TVNZ explicitly wanted to ensure the archive was preserved and that it was made increasingly available for re-use through online streaming and other means.^[8]

On 24 May 2014, Minister Foss made a speech during the Budget debate in Parliament. He said "A very good announcement today was that over 500,000 hours of Television New Zealand archives will be transferred from Television New Zealand to the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the Department of Internal Affairs to be made accessible to New Zealanders online. That is National's ongoing commitment to public sector broadcasting - the preservation of what we have already and making accessible stuff that has already been paid for and is owned by the taxpayer."^[10] Minister of Internal Affairs Peter Dunne said that the new archive facility would allow New Zealanders to access greater levels of audio-visual content online. "This is great news for teachers, researchers and anyone interested in New Zealand's television heritage" he said.^[9]

On 1 August 2014 guardianship of the TVNZ Archive was transferred from the state broadcaster TVNZ to the Crown. Minister Foss said the transfer reflected the Government's commitment to better public services and value for money by investing in the "purchase, improvement and ongoing operation of the archive."^[18]

Budget 2014 included $24.4 million to facilitate the transfer and ongoing management of the archive. Of that, $11.32 million was for the purchase of the TVNZ Archive facility at Avalon – including land, building, fixtures, fittings and plant. $5.066 million was for the depreciation and capital charge of the facility, and $8 million (spread over four years) was for the ongoing management of the archive.^[19]

The building and land were transferred to the Department of Internal Affairs and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage took over guardianship of the collection.^[9]

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In July 2012 a document from the Ministry for Culture and Heritage noted that it remained "MCH's objective that Avalon [the TVNZ Archive] will in due course be much more closely aligned with the activities of the New Zealand Film Archive [now Ngā Taonga]".^[11] And so in 2014 the Ministry for Culture and Heritage appointed Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision as the initial Archive Manager to manage the TVNZ Archive collection on a day-to-day basis.^[8] A Memorandum of Understanding between the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage Chris Finlayson and the Chair of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision Jane Kominik was signed on 1 August 2014.^[20] The Memorandum of Understanding was due to expire on 30 June 2017 but was extended by mutual agreement, and without modification, until 30 June 2018.^[21]

Following an Official Information Act request for more information about how Ngā Taonga was awarded the management of the TVNZ Archive collection, the Ministry revealed that it held very little official information authored by Ngā Taonga relating to the archive between 2012-2014. It only held two general organisation-wide reports, a draft digitisation summary,^[22] a draft operating budget^[23] and a table of criteria for the TVNZ Archive that Ngā Taonga had contributed to.^[22]

The Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage Chris Finlayson appointed the Ministry for Culture and Heritage to monitor Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, and to advise the Minister on the archive's ongoing service and financial performance. The Board of Ngā Taonga were responsible for ensuring the archive complied with the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding.^[20] The Memorandum allowed for the Minister to amend the agreement, withhold payments from Ngā Taonga or require repayment if the agreed outputs were not being met.^[20] These options however were never utilised by either Maggie Barry or Grant Robertson - the two Ministers responsible for overseeing the archive's activities during the period when the archive didn't meet its targets. Ms Barry did however request a progress report on the TVNZ digitistion project in 2017.^[24] This was supplied to the Ministry in September 2018,^[14] but has not been supplied to the current Minister, Grant Robertson.^[25]

In 2012 the Ministry for Culture and Heritage estimated the annual net cost to TVNZ of running the TVNZ Archive was between $0.5 and $1 million.^[11] For the 2014/15 year Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision received $1,590,000 from the Ministry for Culture and Heritage for the ongoing "management, archiving and increased accessibility" of the TVNZ Archive collection. Thereafter it received $2 million per year for the same purpose.^[20] Two documents were used to inform the initial Budget Bid for operating expenses by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage: a financial due diligence report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers and a "proposal from the New Zealand Film Archive".^[15] The Ministry later clarified that the Film Archive proposal was actually just a series of three draft budgets.^[23]

In May 2017 Chair of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision Jane Kominik wrote to the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage Maggie Barry noting that the archive was about to begin discussions with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage over two areas "for which Nga Taonga has never been funded":^[12] access to audiovisual collections beyond current levels and the digitisation of TVNZ Betacam and DigiBeta tape formats beyond business as usual levels.

In November 2017 Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision noted to the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage that activity-based costings were not conducted at the time of the TVNZ Archive transfer in 2014.^[13]

On 31 July 2014 an event was held at Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision in Wellington to mark the transfer of the day-to-day management of the TVNZ Archive to Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision. The event also marked the public launch of the amalgamated archive's new name: New Zealand Archive of Film, Television and Sound Ngā Taonga Whitiahua me Ngā Taonga Kōrero.^[1][26] The event included three official speeches from Chair of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision Jane Kominik, Board member Derek Fox and the Minister of Broadcasting Craig Foss.^[26] During Minister Foss's speech he announced a digitisation and access project.^[1]

Minister Foss said the TVNZ Archive transfer was not only about better public services and value for money, but it was also about public access to the collection. He gave Ngā Taonga the explicit responsibility of digitising the items of highest heritage value in the collection, ensuring New Zealanders could get online access, free of charge.^[1][26]

He said Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision would start immediately on that task, promising that the "first fruits of that work" would be online before the end of 2014. He was told that Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision hoped "to have around 20,000 titles or 5,000 hours of content online within the next three years".^[1][26] The figure of 20,000 was also used in a Government press release,^[18] reported in the media^[27] and talked about in an interview with Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision's first Chief Executive Frank Stark on Radio New Zealand's Mediawatch programme. In the interview Mr Stark affirmed that the archive's "main interest is providing public access". ^[28]

The 20,000 figure differs significantly from the digitisation and access targets set out in the Memorandum of Understanding between the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage and Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, signed the next day (1 August 2014) by Chair of Ngā Taonga Jane Kominik.^[20] In an email on 4 November 2014 to the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Frank Stark described the 20,000 titles as an "ambitious challenge". He felt it unlikely that the archive would make a bid for new funding in Budget 2015, but said the archive would need to consider the implications of the target set by Minister Foss.^[15]

In November 2013, prior to the TVNZ Archive transfer, Ngā Taonga provided the Ministry with a draft digitisation summary. Two project work streams would digitise 25,250 hours of TVNZ Archive content over a three-year period. The archive estimated this would equate to 55,550 individual programme titles - the majority being approximately 30-minutes in duration or less. An additional 9,750 hours of content was identified as a baseline work stream. This would be achieved over a three-year period with staff moving away from a production library activity to an archiving activity.^[22] These digitisation targets were significantly higher than what the archive had previously been able to achieve. A digitisation proposal from the archive in 2013 said that its medialab digitised 5,000-10,000 film and video titles per year.^[11] The archive's Annual Report noted that only 5,793 titles were digitised in 2012/13^[29] and 5,807 titles in 2013/14.^[30] In the 2014/15 Annual Report the digitisation key performance indicator was dropped and replaced with the more ambiguous Digital Titles Added (which included a combination of born-digital and digitisation activities).^[31]

In early November 2014 the Board of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision agreed that the archive needed to verify the size of the TVNZ Archive collection and confirm the extent of the archive's obligations under the recently signed transfer agreements.^[32] On 21 November 2014 the archive held its annual Strategic Planning hui. The Board and all staff focused on two issues, one of them being "How does Ngā Taonga respond to the challenge of making 20,000 titles accessible online within 3 years".^[22] The results of the discussion were to feed directly into the Board's planning for the 5-year strategic plan and Statement of Intent 2014-2017.^[22]

On 12 November 2016 an Official Information Act request was submitted to the Ministry for Culture and Heritage requesting the status of the 20,000 titles project.^[33] The Ministry responded two months later saying that it had not received any reports from Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision specifically in relation to the digitisation of the TVNZ Archive since its establishment in August 2014.^[34]

The Ministry did however point to excerpts from two six-monthly reports provided by Ngā Taonga. The first report from late-2014 noted that a preservation programme for the TVNZ Archive collection aimed to be up and running in early 2015. The second report from mid-2016 noted that a digitisation trial had commenced in April 2016.^[34] It also pointed to Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision's Annual Report 2015/16 which noted that digital titles were added consistently throughout the year and the target was narrowly missed. The Annual Report went on to note that "a new focused digitisation programme at Avalon has helped accelerate work in this area".^[34][35]

In January 2017, an internal memorandum to Ministry for Culture and Heritage Chief Executive Paul James noted that Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision "has a long way to go" to achieve the target of 20,000 digitised titles. The memorandum went on to note that the draft Letter of Expectations provided to the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Maggie Barry for signature established the expectation that Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision would continue to deliver this work within baseline funding.^[36] In March the Minister for Culture and Heritage Maggie Barry requested a report on the progress of the digitisation project. The report was due by 30 June 2018 ^[15] but the archive failed to submit it to the new Associate Minister for Culture and Heritage Grant Robertson.^[37]

When questioned over the digitisation project in November 2017 by RNZ news, Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision's Rebecca Elvy said that when she became Chief Executive in 2015 and learned of the 20,000 target, she made it clear to the Ministry for Culture and Heritage that it was unrealistic. "They agreed with that view" she said.^[17] Ngā Taonga went on to say that "we can't find any evidence that Ngā Taonga knew of or were a party to that number [20,000 titles] before it was announced"^[38][17][39]

The Ministry later said that although they agree the conversation(s) with Chief Executive Rebecca Elvy took place they could not provide any dates or official record of the exchange(s). No Ministry for Culture and Heritage documents exist that reference the Ministry believing the digitisation and access target to be unrealistic.^[40]

When questioned about the 20,000 titles statement he made in 2014, former Minister Craig Foss told RNZ he could not recall the target and added it must have been set by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.^[17] RNZ news asked the Ministry why Minister Foss's public target was 13,000 titles more than what was signed-up to in the Memorandum of Understanding. The Ministry replied "Minister Foss announced an ambitious target." When RNZ tried to ask further questions the Ministry phoned RNZ to say that their questions were "aggressive".^[17] The archive's own Statement of Intent 2015-2018 noted that it aimed to have 20,000 items (not only TVNZ titles) online by 2018.^[41]