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Genre Diversity and the State's Hegemony over Free-to-Air Television in New Zealand

The commercialisation of New Zealand television in the 1990s has provoked debate between those who hold that markets increase diversity and those who believe that competition produces homogeneity. Focusing on the formal structure of program types, this article uses a range of statistics to assess historical shifts in the entropic breadth of genres, the stability of this mix, shifts in modality and variations by channel. In keeping with the convergence hypothesis, the findings indicate a general trend towards stabilisation, domination by entertainment and increased hybridity. However, entropy has remained consistently high. Moreover, entertainment declined and information rose throughout the 1990s. These unexpected results are an outcome of market partitioning established by state television in the 1970s and 1980s. Rather than either the advent of neo-liberal variety or a decline of public service diversity, this analysis emphasises the state's persistent hegemony over the free-to-air market.