Te Public Broadcaster I want my MTV

Rival broadcasters work on joint bid for World Cup matches
GOVERNMENT U-TURN: Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples, with Prime Minister John Key yesterday, accused National of a series of mistakes. State-funded television networks and privately-owned TV3 will today continue to work on a joint bid for local broadcast rights to 16 Rugby World Cup matches. Prime Minister John Key and Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples, also co-leader of the Maori Party, yesterday brokered a deal that ended the debacle which would have seen the Maori Television Service (MTS) and TVNZ bidding against each other - both backed by taxpayer money. MTS will lead the joint bid which is aimed at ensuring nationwide free-to-air broadcasts of the matches, including the semifinals and the final. Mr Key intervened after the row over broadcast rights became bitter and divisive.

as predicted
MTV will take it all as a win in their rise as the defacto public broadcaster, TVNZ will misinterpret it as a win as buyers quietly line up, TV3’s Australian owners will agonize whether to sell now or sell while TVNZ is also on the market and National look like they’ve given the Maoris a telling off and everyone gets to watch the final.

See, John knew about it all along, he just pretended not to know about it so the more red necked voters wouldn't flip out. MTV as the new public broadcaster is a done deal it's the Maori Party's pay off, the poor buggers have had to swallow so many rats just to be John's best friend forever and the sale of TVNZ post 2011 allows MTV to become the new public broadcaster.

Notice how the wheels came off once Murray and the grumpy social conservatives within National heard about it and promptly told TVNZ so that we had this farce of public money being used to compete against eachother for a tender. The Maori Party had been promised and got pissy once the heat came on and John pretended not to know, you could imagine the phone call from Pita to John, "ETS Key, I signed the bloody ETS, you give me some love now dammit"!

Within National's born to rule clique there is unease at John Key's big blue tent broad based support strategy, as far as rump National are concerned, it's just supposed to be a perception used to sell the hard right economic policy the Auckland Business Mafia voted for last November, Key the deal maker however knows the other person has to walk away with something, Murray doesn't usually care about that part of the process.

The spin job that National are broadbased and moderate allows them such scope on policy that Key had to give the Maori Party something, while all this was happening National managed to announce gutting ACC without a whimper.

Give Crosby & Textor another bonus.