The casting controversy surrounding FBoy Island has led to scrutiny about the role a public broadcaster should be playing in society.

How did TVNZ miss the history of contestant Wayde Moore's serious court charges related to his behaviour with a teenager? And how did a show like this get commissioned in the first place?

NZ Herald senior writer David Fisher tells the Front Page podcast that TVNZ has commissioning editors who hear pitches from people who want to make shows.

Those commissioning editors will then greenlight a show if they believe it has the potential to attract an audience and advertising dollars.

"With FBoy Island NZ and shows of that nature, things are a little different," says Fisher.

"Warner Bros makes an extraordinary amount of content and they have a really close relationship with all the broadcasters, which means those conversations are going on all the time. It wouldn't be unusual for TVNZ to say: 'Hey, we've got a gap in our schedule for a dating show that would appeal to a young audience. What sorts of things have you got rattling around the cupboard?'"

FBoy Island NZ is the local version of a show that first aired in the United States, but has since been given the green light in Denmark, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

The premise of the show is for three women to determine whether the 20 men joining them on an island are FBoys (simply there to compete for the cash) or nice guys (looking for love).

The term FBoy is slang for "f*** boy", a term for men who never intend a sexual encounter to involve a relationship or act as if entitled to sexual encounters.

FBoy Island isn't the first reality dating show to make questionable casting decisions. In 2019, MediaWorks, then the owner of Three, was forced to axe contestant Chris Mansfield from Married at First Sight NZ after it was revealed he faced charges of domestic violence in the United States a year earlier.

MediaWorks would ultimately edit Mansfield out of the show – a step that TVNZ will also now take following the revelations related to Moore.

Fisher says that this points to a need to improve the background checks conducted on contestants, particularly when there is a sexual element to the show.

As things stand, contestants do consent to criminal record checks but these only reflect convictions and don't give an indication of offences committed in other countries.

"There's definitely a case to be made for better checks," says Fisher.

The FBoy Island NZ show has Kita Bunton, Coco Song and Kiera McLeod picking the "nice guys" from the "FBoys". Photo / Supplied

"Even when you just consider the investment that you're putting into making a show like this. Never mind the reputational damage. From a straight dollar spent [measure] the potential cost is extraordinary.

Fisher suggests the use of a private investigation firm to really "run the ruler" over these contestants, including looking into whether they have faced charges in New Zealand or abroad.

"You should build a biographical timeline of each contestant, so you could look at the jurisdictions that they've been in – and you could make checks in each of those jurisdictions."

Beyond this, Fisher also questioned whether TVNZ should be making shows like this at all as a public broadcaster.

"I think TVNZ's problem here is a lack of clarity about who it serves and how it serves that particular audience. Each channel of TVNZ [including TVNZ+] targets a particular demographic because that's where the advertising money is."

The latest data from the Advertising Standards Authority showed that the television advertising market pulled in $585m in 2021 across all providers. For the financial year ended June 30, 2022, TVNZ reported advertising revenue of $321m, offering an indication of the full weight of that commercial imperative.

"You've got a situation where the commercial imperative forms the broadcaster's true north. We had a period in time when TVNZ had a charter, and so, its true north was some sort of public service imperative.

"The public service imperative served by FBoy Island would have to be close to zero. I can't imagine what it would possibly be. And that's really what having a commercial true north will do to you."

Fisher says that the debate about the role the public broadcaster should be playing also feeds into the plans to merge RNZ and TVNZ.

"This is the debate that [Broadcasting Minister] Willie Jackson is trying to have, although he is doing such a terrible job of articulating it.

"The way that broadcasting has changed over the last 20 years is extraordinary, and the state broadcaster really needs to adjust to that new environment. With shows like FBoy Island, it's not doing that. All it's doing is running into the same brick wall, again and again, trying to work out why it hasn't fallen over."

• The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am.
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