1977: Fair Go

May 14, 2024

By AHNZ

The Government show Fair Go (1977-2024) was one of several long-standing television features on TVNZ. Current affairs show Sunday was out too as was the Midday News. The plug was also pulled on the Newshub platform on TV3 with some vestiges apparently to be outsourced to Stuff (probably bought it for $1.00) in July that year. All these changes are a response to the media market which is largely accessed by hand-held screens rather than the old free-standing TVs in the home.

Consumer news apparently is better served by updates via social media. New Zealanders know more about new products and bad traders in real time so what’s the use of an expensively produced weekly TV show? Also, I suspect, Fair Go had powerful intelligence gathering in the past which would have helped its power base. Journalists with lots of dirt and leads pumping in through their fax machines and answerphones and emails would have had something to trade-up for bigger stories and concession. In its hey day traders would be afraid and concede anything to this televised judge, jury, and executioner of their business. Firms that had nothing to do with a dispute would also swoop in and display some televised philanthropy to save some downtrodden consumer with the Fair Go presenter’s blessing; Advertising in disguise. However, by the 2020s the show commanded no such power.

Many presenters and re-brands have occurred over the years. In the earlier part of its life it was journalistic and investigative combined with hard-nerved broadcast advocacy for every-day New Zealanders. It helped empower people to fix their own problems. In decline it became a light weight infotainment spread. A bit like an extended version of one of the government’s propaganda for the likes of the ACC or Ministry of Transport. I feel that they have substituted legal and economic knowledge for socialistic sentiments about egalitarianism largely because that’s so easy to do and lowers their budget.

When I was a little kid Philip Alpers was the key presenter of the show that was never to be missed. He was warm, intelligent, and engaging, and then gone. I didn’t understand why someone would leave their TV family and it undermined the idea that there ever was one to start with. I know now that actors, politicians, and TV presenters sell an idea of being attached while on the stage even though they may hate each other. Alpers then transformed into an anti-gun lobbyist and today is a professor of anti-gun lobbying at the University of Sydney! When he came out with this agenda it rocked my world a bit because the man I admired and his commanding baring turned out to be a left-wing plonker. Brian Edwards, a Fair Go predecessor, was no different. Kevin Milne was next in line and ejected (in my opinion) when his Middle-Age Spread started to show. He didn’t have a journalistic cred balance to transfer so much as a jovial presenter’s offerings. So, Kev turned to flogging carpet and padding out Jack Tame’s radio show with Old Uncle Fluffy editorial comments. Ref. 2000: Big Mouth Billy Bass, AHNZ

Fair Go always, or very almost always, has targeted the private sector for not giving the consumer a fair go. As an Anarchist I’d delight in seeing them tak on the Government for its endless failings but of course they never do that.

The show is a legacy organ of the New Zealand State which presents free people as the source of crooks and politicians, if ever, as the white knights who will come to save us from them.

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