Farming on Air: New Zealand Farmers and Rural Radio Programming

Abstract

In the light of funding cuts for New Zealand and Australian public service broadcasters, this article examines the impact of Radio New Zealand's restructuring on one key audience group: farmers. The results of a mail survey of the agricultural community indicate that the recent changes have had a negative effect on the specialist rural programs. Supporting the notion that the specialist news media are an important component in the information-sharing process, agricultural publications were judged the most important source of news overall, and Radio New Zealand's rural programming the most important broadcast source.