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Today we hear from Lanita Ririnui, content commissioner at Māori Television in New Zealand, about the indigenous broadcaster’s efforts to help revitalise Māori culture, and from Rachel Antony, CEO of Border Patrol prodco Greenstone TV, about the Kiwi outfit’s scripted push.

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Lanita Ririnui has had a long career in factual TV programming and is now content commis-sioner at Māori Television, Aotearoa New Zealand’s indigenous broadcaster, which provides a wide range of local and international programmes for local audiences.

She spoke to Nico Franks about why Māori Television is willing to tell stories that other broadcasters aren’t and the crucial role it has played in revitalising the unique Māori culture and language since launching in 2004.

Ririnui also talked about why many indigenous stories need to be re-told on screen and Māori Television’s main priorities for the year ahead.

Rachel Antony, CEO of Auckland-based Greenstone TV, has an extensive background in fac-tual, entertainment and documentary production in Aotearoa New Zealand and internation-ally.

More recently she has been getting stuck into scripted, including Greenstone’s action thrill-er Vegas, which was produced with Steambox Film Collective, a group of Māori screen pro-fessionals local to Rotorua,and began airing recently on TVNZ.

The show has sparked a debate about storytelling sovereignty, as Greenstone is not a Māori-led prodco. The show’s co-creator, writer, showrunner and executive producer Mi-chael Bennett, who is Māori, has hit back at the criticism by emphasising the show’s au-thenticity.

Antony spoke to Nico Franks about these issues and what the thriller, which was produced on a budget of about US$4.5m, says about the development of the country’s scripted indus-try.

C21FM is live 24/7, with a block of interviews starting at 10am BST every day at c21fmradio.com. You can download the audio from the C21 Podcast by CLICKING HERE.