A recent pānui from Whakaata Māori said the company has reviewed its process around contracts, aiming to reduce present contractual wait periods. It specifically looked at the raising of the Broadcast Commitments (BC) and License to Broadcast Agreements (LBA) for commissioned projects.
Last month, the CE approved the removal of the BC from the process and effective immediately, the BC has been removed from the Whakaata Māori contracting process. This means producers will no longer be required to complete and sign a BC. All funded projects will go straight to LBA.
Whakaata Māori still provides producers with a letter of support for funding submissions, which outline the company's terms and conditions. Once funding is confirmed, Whakaata Māori will ask producers to complete a contract initiation form and go straight to LBA negotiations.
There will be some producers from the most recent funding rounds who have already been through the BC process, and Whakaata Māori says this is unavoidable. However, rather than waiting till the next funding round, Whakaata Māori wanted to support its production sector as soon as possible.