I’m still utterly astonished that this is not all over the news. Hello TVNZ! Come in Herald! This is your job. Let me get you started: Government Simply Gives Public Frequencies to CanWest. You can take it from there…

Christchurch station RDU‘s Wammo (aka Glenn Williams) has conducted an interview with Steve Maharey in which you can actually hear the doubt creep in.

At RDU’s website (nicely revamped since last I saw it), you can read more and listen to the minister’s responses to the perfectly reasonable observation that this scenario is quite different to that of, say, Access Radio or Niu FM.

In short, Kiwi FM will continue to play ads on its new frequency – and CanWest will most likely put The Breeze on Kiwi’s old Auckland frequency. Of course, because its business structure is the company and not by individual station, the first thing they’re essentially going to do is say ‘Buy an ad on The Breeze, get a free one on Kiwi FM’ (though one hopes they’ll be slightly more subtle and complex than that).

Clearly, Mr Maharey hadn’t thought through the fact that CanWest sells cross-network advertising packages and can easily dodge the 50% limitation on revenue through advertising for the station simply by using it as a way to give bonus spots to clients.

Maharey’s idea that after a year of broadcasting, CanWest will tire of their ownership of the brand and simply walk away, entirely undervalues the non-commercial asset. You can hear in his voice: ‘Well, now that I come to say it out loud…’

Interesting too that he invoked the Youth Radio Network without discounting it entirely.

I think Wammo’s done a superb job of respectfully laying out the issues, and every response from the Minister has that ‘Oh hell, I hadn’t thought of that’ tone about it. A very good piece of radio from a clearly talented broadcaster that I’d previously given too little attention to.

Whatever the truth of the matter may be and whatever you decide is the value of this deal for New Zealanders, as issues go, the Government giving publicly owned assets to multinational companies should be at least worthy of some discussion.

For the full story on this, read this press release on Scoop and listen to the interview.

And then, if you happen to work in the mainstream media, you might want to start asking your colleagues why this is not a story.