Parliament TV offers the public the chance to catch all sittings of Parliament and more besides.
In keeping up with the general business of parliament, we'd all be a little lost if it weren't for Parliament TV.
It's a service freely available to the public as a television channel on Freeview TV and other platforms, live-streamed on parliament website, while RNZ, who provide the audio, also broadcast that on AM radio. There's even an app.
A government-owned company, Kordia, has been broadcasting Parliament TV for 15 years via a remote production setup from its custom-built digital studio in Avalon: three days a week for thirty weeks a year, using eight cameras (seven of which are robotically controlled) placed in the debating chamber via a fibre network. Kordia's Head of Media Dean Brain said that broadcasting the House when it's sitting was fast-moving television.
"When we first started out it was very rule sensitive, about what we could and couldn't show, and as time has progressed I guess we've earned trust from the people that control it, and we now have a clause that says 'at our director's discretion', so if it tells a story we would show something."
One of the main challenges, he said, is when the debate gets feisty in the chamber. The main rule is that if the Speaker is on his feet, Parliament TV must only show the Speaker.
Something PTV is not allowed to do is show a Member being booted out of the chamber, which is somewhat disappointing for us viewers. But there are plenty of other theatrics to keep people amused, from the intensity of Question Time to the somnolent musings of debates in the evening. Whether or not they know it, MPs are on show.
"Bill English, I think from memory, was always one that would always look up to see which camera was looking at him to get a shot, and I guess he played with it a bit in the early days," Brain said.
Bill English: here's looking at you, kid.
Refining the product
The sound and vision data is pumped out from the basement under the Beehive which is fed from the myriad cabling from Parliament House.
"There is such a mesh of cabling in this building that when you see it you could actually lose your mind," said Greg Cotmore, a Parliamentary Officer in the Office of the Clerk who oversees broadcasting and is PTV's go-to person at Parliament.
How PTV should use the downtime around sittings has long been a moot point, said Cotmore. Over the years Parliament TV has refined its product…