The Māori media funding agency Te Māngai Pāho is boosting funding for digital media to 1.5 million dollars in this financial year.
Larry Parr Photo: Supplied
That is up from between $400,000 to 600,000, which it has provided for digital media in each of the last three to four years.
This year funding will go towards the production of webseries, pilot series by new producers, and apps.
TV and new media funding manager Larry Parr said while they hope the funding will help produce some exciting new projects, a number of web series Te Māngai Pāho has co-funded with New Zealand on Air are already due to be launched.
"Anamata which is a futuristic Māori news programme and that's going out on NZME this week and Ngāi Tahu has a web series called Mahinga Kai which is going to be launched in the next couple of weeks."
Mr Parr said Te Māngai Pāho doesn't not receive extra funding for new media but it had diverted money from other areas as traditional media organisations are moving more content online.
He said Te Māngai Pāho needed to develop the capacity and expertise to provide funding for that shift.
Mr Parr said if the agency was providing funding over $100,000 it would require a commitment from a broadcaster or online platform to run webseries, but there are opportunities for content producers to get there work out inexpensively.
He said one web series they funded, Hahana, had 50,000 views within the first 24 hours, and then received funding to become a TV series for Māori Television.
