Well, blow me down - I did not think that Paul Goldsmith had the courage or the inclination to do something as bold as actually scrapping the Broadcasting Standards Authority.

I thought it was all talk when he kept dropping it as a possibility but it turns out I was wrong. He’s announced the BSA is gone; the laws will be drawn up in the next few months and they’ll be passed before the next election.

Why this surprises me is because this is culture war-adjacent stuff. This is exactly the kind of thing the Nats have tried to avoid of late - anything that makes you feel just a bit icky.

People aren’t going to like it. They’ve tried to get away from it because there is quite a high risk of blowback. If the Nats are accused of trying to protect their mates in the more fringe parts of the media, like Platform for example, that’s not necessarily a good look.

And on the other hand, there’s little upside - other than making a few broadcasters like me, irritated by the BSA, happy. The BSA is funded by the media so there aren’t even taxpayer savings they can crow about.

But it still is the right thing to do, because the BSA imposes quite significant costs on broadcasters.

Sky, for example, is rumoured to have paid half a million dollars to the BSA last year. That’s money the media simply can’t afford to fork out at the moment when they’re doing it as tough as they are.

And for little good because the BSA doesn’t actually police what we say - you do. We’re more worried about you than we are about the BSA if I’m being completely honest. We know that if we use expletives - say, if I were to use them on air while kids are in the car - you’re going to turn off the radio. You don’t want to hear that.

If we are untrustworthy - if you find out that what we’re telling you is wrong - you’re going to stop listening. And that, frankly, is more of a deterrent than a bunch of people in Wellington getting worked up about something and then slapping a $5000 fine on us.

The BSA has no one to blame but itself and its overreach in trying to police the internet for what has happened to it today. Had it stayed in its lane, it might have survived simply by not drawing attention to itself.

But it went for a power grab with The Platform and it has ended up sealing its own fate.

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