Dame Julie Christie: Celebrity Treasure Island Creator on the NZ On Air funding boost for Kiwi made TV shows

A push to ensure funding for Kiwi made TV shows is a hand up, not a handout.  

NZ On Air has announced its non-fiction funding, which includes more than $1.3 million for Celebrity Treasure Island. 

It's returning for its seventh season.  

Creator Dame Julie Christie told Ryan Bridge we can't only have Australian and British shows, we need New Zealand to become a TV hub.  

She says we have to look at improving things within our own industry to get back to creating the shows we used to create.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
More questions this morning over the future of our screen sector.
New Zella OnAir has dropped nearly three million dollars in
taxpayer cash on new seasons of Celebrity Treasure Island and
The Traitors comes hot on the heels of a two
and a half million dollar bailout for Shortland Street just
last week. Dame Julie Christie's a television producer and creative
Celebrity Treasure Island with me this morning, Dame Julie, Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Is this it's an ungodly hour. I appreciate you being
here with me.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Should should I am Club? It's called isn't it?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
That's right?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
She's a very good book. Actually, there was a good
book called the five Am Club which helps with the
early mornings.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Well, I should have read that a long time ago.
Should we taxpayers be putting money into unscripted reality shows?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Well, I mean one of the side effects of the
movement of ed revenue away from traditional TV has been
the loss of actually the most popular shows because you know,
mostly because of their costs. I mean, for many years
drama has almost all New Zealand drama has been ordered
by government funding. And these shows actually deliver a big audience,
and bigger audience than any drama. We are facing having

(01:07):
no entertainment television at all on our screens, and you know,
we can't just have British, Australian and American shows. We
don't have the we don't have the the the I
guess the legislation which demands that you've got to make
so much local content in order to have a license
in this country to even be a broadcaster. So there

(01:29):
is no protectionism. So I think it's inevitable. It's a
really good short term decision, but we've got to find
a way to make it a hand up, not a handout.
So the long term sustainability is a challenge.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Really, we're all going on Netflix and watching American stuff
or British stuff, foreign stuff. Could you make an argument
that that's where we get our entertainment. But we also
now have social media. We see key we characters on
social media and we follow them and they entertain us,
and it's done in a different way perhaps to traditional television.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
It is, But the great thing about these shows is
they are a shared experience. You know, I like, I mean,
Treasure has been around since nineteen ninety seven, so twenty
eight years I think. And one of the other decisions
which you probably didn't notice about the latest thing was
the return of My House, My Castle, which is you know,
I was twenty four years old, it ran for ten years.
It was actually TV two's answered to Fair Go on

(02:29):
TV one, which we produced way back then. So I
think these shows which enable people to sit down together
are actually really good for us, I feel. I mean,
the question is, you know, it's going to be much
harder decision for a New Zellin heir when the block
the Bachelor married at first site and those shows say
me too, So how do you decide which of these
sort of shows to fund? Is going to be a

(02:51):
much harder decision than funding this one. Normally New Zealand
on here would have what would always cite reflecting our
cultural identity as being a criteria for funding. But this
time they appear to have made a commercial decision, which
is pretty much needed.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
God that's said, isn't it. But the thing that I
saw I saw you sterday that the Traitor is not
even one of our formats. It's a foreign one.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
No no, no, it's not it's not Treasure Onland is
original ip I mean, what does an ideal situation look
like to me anyway? And it's just my opinion. Is
it an ideal situation looks like is that we start
developing more New Zealand formats. We haven't had one for
many years actually, with exception of Guy Montgomery's unspelling B
which I think is now in Australia and New Zealand,

(03:37):
we're not developing those formats. So perfection looks like you
develop a New Zealand format, you create a hub like
a place where it can be made and all different
countries come in and make that show here in New Zealand,
therefore providing long term sustainability. We own the IP. There's
something of value, you know, that's a that's a that's
the what the ideal looks like. So to me, that

(04:00):
has to be the next step. If you're going to
go down this road, you've got to we've got to
look at New Zealand IP, We've got to look at
improving the things with things within our own industries. So
we're back creating those sort of shows which we used
to create a bit.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Of DIY don Julie Christie, I appreciate your time this
morning for more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen
live to news talks it'd be from five am weekdays,
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