1962: Television Anarchy

June 4, 2019

By AHNZ

Today in history: Television got going on 1st June 1960.

New Zealand television was held back by The State for 10 years or more. Even the Australians were up and running for years before Auckland’s Channel 2 (aka AKTV-2, aka 1YA) started doing more than experimenting. The UK and US were watching TV at home in the 1940s or earlier.

From this building (see image) in June 1960 the first official regular weekly broadcasts in New Zealand came. By January 1961 our Government TV had advanced all the way to daily transmissions. Why so slow!?

The State, under Labour 2.0, was too tight to import the expensive equipment or let anyone else either. PM Nash and Min.Finance Nordmeyer rightly suspected Kiwis would wish to buy very many TV sets and that this would inflate their phoney baloney fiat currency- the New Zealand pound.

In these days of Nordmeyer’s infamous Black Budget (1958) there was no money for TV! The puritanical Presbertarian penny-pinching minister kept Kiwis from watching the Game of Thrones of its day, The Adventures of Robin Hood. Now I finally understand this Minhinnick cartoon (see image) from the day after the Black Budget.

Anarchist Accelerationism

The New Zealander, having had quite enough of Robbin Nash and Frier Nordy started building television infrastructure themselves. Free, private people, formed their own societies to do so. They bought, constructed, and installed re-transmitting stations throughout the country without Government help and often in defiance of it. It was in this way, not by The State, that New Zealand caught up with the world by getting national television coverage.

As with schools, hospitals, roads, and telegraph before, it was the same old story. The government initially tried to monopolise free people from accessing the telecommunications technology. Kiwis did it anyway, creating hundreds of signal translators and mini-translator devices in a national network. Then, the State tried to ban this activity, threatening confiscation and conviction. Finally, the Government simply nationalised the equipment entirely after the work was done by others and for free.

The Kawerau Affair

Government TV infrastructure for the The Bay Of Plenty was still years away. And that was if the State even kept its promises. In c.July 1962 Local men Dennis Cobbe and Grahame Bryce decided to step up. Using their RAF Radar Commander skills from the war, the men constructed their own translators in the hills to catch the beams from Auckland and direct strong, new, signals to the Bay. “It worked brilliantly. Television had come to the Eastern Bay. And the government was not amused. In fact it was outraged..”¹

“It would appear that in our supposedly democratic country people of ability are not permitted to demonstrate in a practical manner their own individuality.”- Grahame Bryce²

In November 1962, the Minister of Broadcasting ordered the translators confiscated and a deadline was issued. Bryce of Kawerau and his fellow Ayn Rand heroes ascended the Manawahe Hills to receive the Television Mafia….who never showed up. The Government had lost the fight, it backed down.

The Government (National 2.0) changed its mind, saying that “authorised organisations” could exist. The “pirates” need not go to jail and the now daily Auckland broadcasts would go on being received in the Bay legally now.³ This also set a legal precedent allowing other Kiwis to build our television infrastructure without being made outlaws.

It it to such people as Cobbe and Bryce that New Zealand should make statues and monuments; Not to politicians!

National 2.0 Reaps TV Boom

Labour really are bad at People Farming. Nash and his Labour 2.0 goons really look incompetent given what Holyoake and National 2.0 went on to do.

“…sale of sets should not be proceeded with until the Broadcasting Corporation officially recognised the 1 watt translator station built on Princes Drive…Much credit for the introduction of TV in Nelson must go to Errol Neale and John Ross, two radio enthusiasts who built the translator after experimenting for some months.”- Nelson TV Pirates reported in Nelson Photo News, Nov 1963

New Zealand television consumers flourished. Every one taxed. Every one requiring a £4 annual Television Licence payable to The State (which Labour 2.0 had introduced just before leaving office!) All the TV content was under State control!

The licence revenue alone must have been huge. Everyone with a licences TV was paying about $200 in 2019 money each year and there were hundreds of thousands of people lining up to do so. Holyoake must have been raking in some $6 million a year, in our terms. Very many of these TV consumers were made possible by the illegal pioneers who expanded the transmission network at their own cost and effort! The people Nash tried to shut down were making Holyoake’s State flush with money for nothing. National had almost made Labour’s mistake of stopping a rich new source of revenue. But this was peanuts.

What Nash and his flying monkeys apparently did not foresee was the piles and piles of money to be made from television advertising. In the end, Holyoake cottoned on. National 2.0 had also unleashed TV advertising from 1961 and now started raking in the cash from their broadcast monopoly. TV advertisements alone now bring in hundreds of millions for The State every year.

Note: You wont read this story about TV in State history books because they give all the credit to The State. We need an Anarchist History perspective to even see past that and to give credit where it is due.

 

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See also: 1960: Arise, Television

1 Plenty (2, 2016)

2 ibid

3 ibid

ref. Radio Broadcasting in the Thames Valley; ohinemuri.org.nz

ref p2885 NZ’sH

ref. Television Comes To The Bay Of Plenty; Kete Kawerau

image ref. Cobbe and Bryce technology; Kel Rimmer; Plenty

image ref. 1YA site in 1986, Auckland; Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections

image ref. Minhinnick, 27/6/58; New Zealand Herald

image ref. Holyoake statue; Molesworth Street, Wellington; ref. wikipedia

image ref. Display panel from Whakatane Museum and Research Centre about Pirates; AHNZ files 2019

UPDATE: Added video clip of Trisha Dunleavy wondering at The State not stopping free New Zealanders from building the nation’s TV infrastructure; Ref. S3E03 Building New Zealand (2019)

#Televiewers Society

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