How did TVNZ miss the history of contestant Wayde Moore’s serious charges related to his behavior with a teenager? And how did such a show get commissioned in the first place?
NZ Herald senior writer David Fisher told the Front Page podcast that TVNZ employs editors who hear pitches from people who want to make shows.
Those instructing editors will then green-light a show if they believe it has the potential to attract an audience and advertising dollars.
“With FBoy Island NZ and shows of that nature, things are a little different,” says Fisher.
“Warner Bros makes an extraordinary amount of content and they have a really close relationship with all broadcasters, which means those conversations are going on all the time. It wouldn’t be unusual for TVNZ to say, ‘Hey, we have a gap in our schedule for a dating show that would appeal to a young audience. What kind of things do you have rattling around the closet?'”
FBoy Island NZ is the local version of a show that first aired in the United States, but has since been green-lighted in Denmark, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
The premise of the show is that three women determine whether the 20 men who join them on an island are FBoys (just there to compete for the money) or nice guys (looking for love).
The term FBoy is slang for “f*** boy”, a term for men who never intend to involve a sexual encounter in a relationship or pretend they are entitled to sexual encounters.
FBoy Island isn’t the first reality dating show to make questionable casting decisions. In 2019, MediaWorks, then the owner of Three, was forced to fire contestant Chris Mansfield from Married at First Sight NZ after it was revealed he had been charged with domestic violence in the United States a year earlier.
MediaWorks would eventually remove Mansfield from the show – a move TVNZ will now take following the revelations regarding Moore.
Fisher says this points to the need to improve contestants’ background checks, especially when there’s a sexual element to the show.
As things stand, participants do agree to criminal record checks, but these only reflect convictions and give no indication of crimes committed in other countries.
“There’s definitely a case for better controls,” Fisher says.
“Even if you consider the investment you put into making a show like this, let alone the reputational damage. [measure] the potential costs are extraordinary.”
Fisher suggests engaging a private investigation firm to truly “rule the ruler” over these participants, including to investigate whether they’ve been charged in New Zealand or abroad.
“You should create a biographical timeline of each participant so you can look at the jurisdictions they’ve been in — and you could check in each of those jurisdictions.”
In addition, Fisher also wondered whether TVNZ should make these kinds of programs at all as a public broadcaster.
“I think TVNZ’s problem here is a lack of clarity about who it serves and how it serves that particular audience. Every channel from TVNZ [including TVNZ+] focuses on a certain demographic, because that’s where the ad money is.”
The latest data from the Advertising Standards Authority shows that the television advertising market raked in $585 million across all providers in 2021. For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2022, TVNZ reported ad revenue of $321 million, indicating the full weight of that commercial imperative.
“You have a situation where the commercial necessity is the true north of the broadcaster. We had a period where TVNZ had a charter, so the true north was a kind of public service.
“The need for public service by FBoy Island should be close to zero. I can’t imagine what it would be. And that’s really what having a commercial real north will do to you.”
Fisher says the debate over the role the public broadcaster should play is also in the plans to merge RNZ and TVNZ.
“This is the debate that” [Broadcasting Minister] Willie Jackson tries to have it, though he does a damn good job of putting it into words.
“The way broadcasting has changed over the past 20 years is extraordinary and the state broadcaster really needs to adapt to that new environment. With programs like FBoy Island, it doesn’t. All it does is run into the same wall, over and over. times trying to figure out why it didn’t fall over.”
• The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, which can be heard every weekday from 5am.
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