After Warner Bros Discovery top brass broke the bad news to staff on Wednesday, Newshub at 6 that night became a news event in itself.

RNZ MEDIAWATCH: By Colin Peacock, RNZ Mediawatch presenter

After Warner Bros Discovery top brass broke the bad news to staff on Wednesday, Newshub at 6 that night became a news event in itself.

In her report, political reporter Amelia Wade reminded viewers more than 30 years of TV news and current affairs — spanning the entire period of commercial TV here — could come to an end in June.

Before TV3 launched in 1989, state-owned TVNZ had been the only game in town.

But for most of its recent history, TV3’s parent company MediaWorks was owned by private equity funds and it was hamstrung with debts.

There were periodic financial emergencies too which seemed to signal the end.

In 2015, the boss Mark Weldon axed the current affairs shows Campbell Live and 3D and replaced them with ones that didn’t pull in more viewers or pull up many trees with their reporting.

“Reports of our death at 6pm have been greatly exaggerated”, host Hilary Barry responded to reports 3 News might be for the chop the following year.

But Weldon persuaded the owners to stump up a significant sum to launch Newshub instead.

When the huge global company Discovery bought MediaWorks loss-making TV channels in December 2020, many in the media were pleased a major media outfit was now in charge.

Using the Official Information Act, Newsroom later reported the Overseas Investment Office fast tracked Discovery’s application and sought no guarantees of a commitment to local news.

The 2021 mega-merger in the US that turned it into “Warner Bros Discovery” excited The Spinoff founder Duncan Grieve.

“Tova O’Brien breaking stories on CNN NZ at 6pm, before an evening of local reality TV souped up by global budgets and distribution — with major sports and drama rights for good measure,” was one scenario.

“It could also swing the other way, with the New Zealand linear asset seen as too small and obscure,” he warned.

After losses including a $35 million one last year, the owners now “propose” to slice out the entire on-screen and online news operation. New Zealand could lose more than 15 percent of its full-time journalists in one go.

Beginning of the end?

“Oh, the irony, right? When those so-called ‘vulture funds’ had it, the operation still continued, albeit always run on the smell of an oily rag. Then a big media organisation was the one which axed it,” long-serving TV3 current affairs journalist Eugene Bingham told Mediawatch.

“I’ve been around long enough to see death by a thousand cuts over the years. But this was a moment we’ll look back on as a watershed moment in democracy and journalism,” Bingham said.

Former MediaWorks executive Andrew Szusterman told RNZ’s Morning Report the next day this decision would also ripple out to local drama and entertainment.

“We’re going to start to see how this is going to impact the production sector. Irrevocably, possibly,” said Szusterman, now the chief executive at production company South Pacific Pictures.

Does Newshub’s demise also kill off Three?

There’s been no shortage of people this week pointing out the appetite for TV news — and linear TV in general — is not what it was. That’s the main reason for the ad revenue slump cited by WBD.

Some who do tune in to Three (and WBD’s other channels) for The Block, Married at First Sight and free movies may not miss the news shows from June 30. So maybe Three will be fine?

“The loss of the newsroom represents the loss of the ability to respond to any event in real time. That is the heart and soul of a traditional TV broadcaster,” Hal Crawford — chief news officer at MediaWorks (and effectively Newshub’s boss) until early 2020 — told Mediawatch.

“When the Queen dies you can send a team to London, you can have someone in the studio talking about it, you can interact in a way that makes people feel like it is alive and a real human entity.”

Channels without the live element news brings are effectively just “content databases”, Crawford told Mediawatch.

“News is the one programme that runs 365 days a year . . . which the schedule is going to rely on to lead into prime time. So the rest of your schedule is going to dwindle. Ratings are gonna fall off and everything is going to go to pieces.

“It really is going to dwindle as a cultural entity in New Zealand because you’re not going to be able to justify the funding from NZ on Air if you aren’t getting audiences. It’s hard for me to see a way out of Three basically going away as a cultural force in New Zealand.”

But TV-style news and current affairs is also now being done online.

After Eugene Bingham’s TV3 show 3D was axed in 2016, four members formed the Stuff Circuit investigative team. Its video documentary productions won awards until it was axed by Stuff late last year.

“Of course, there have been changes in viewing habits . . .  but there’s still a reason that the ‘1’ and the ‘3’ on remotes around the country are worn down. Hundreds of thousands of people at six o’clock flip the channel. Without a TV bulletin there, doesn’t (Three) just become like Bravo, where there’s just programmes running and you either switch on or you don’t?”

In the end, journalists have to confront the fact that not quite enough people these days care about what they do — including executives at media companies, politicians not inclined to intervene and members of the public.

Most New Zealanders are happy to use services like Netflix or Google search or Facebook that carry news and local content but contribute almost nothing to it.

“But I don’t think people quite understand the depth of the problem facing media and the implications. That certainly came through to me watching the broadcasting minister saying, well, people can still watch programmes like Sky for news,” Bingham said.

The National Party went into the last election without a media or broadcasting policy or any specific manifesto commitments.

What should/could the government do?

While Wednesday’s announcement shocked the 300-odd staff, the local chief executive Glen Kyne — close to tears on Newshub at 6 —  told Newshub’s Michael Morrah he had known about the possibility since January.

The government also got a heads-up earlier this week.

Media minister Melissa Lee told reporters WBD made no requests for help, prompting Glen Kyne to tell Newshub WBD did ask both the current and previous government for assistance, such as a reduction in the multi-million dollar fee paid to state-owned transmission company Kordia.

Lee later clarified her comment but was firm that the government had no role to play because this was a case of a private company taking action because “their business model actually wasn’t working.”

On Morning Report, Andrew Szusterman disagreed.

“Channels 7,9 and 10, SBS, ABC, and Fox in Australia all run news services. I don’t think their government would let the last commercial free-to-air news broadcaster just walk away. The fact the broadcasting minister hasn’t fronted . . .  it’s quite shameless,” he told RNZ’s Morning Report.

Stuff’s Tova O’Brien — who famously turned on her former employer MediaWorks on air in real time last year when it closed Today FM — called the minister’s response “cold and tone-deaf” and accused the government of a “glib shrug”.

That was partly because Lee’s first response to the Newshub announcement was to tell reporters: “There’s Sky as well, there’s a whole lot of other media about.”

Sky contracts Newshub to produce its 5.30pm free-to-air news bulletin — and Sky subscribers won’t find any locally-made news on Sky TV’s pay channels.

Lee should have known that. She was a programme-maker before she was an MP and was National’s spokesperson on broadcasting for years in opposition.

Lee declined all interview requests this week — including from Mediawatch — but did tell reporters at Parliament: “I wasn’t as articulate as I could have been. But I am taking this seriously.”

The PM told Stuff he is expecting an update at Cabinet on Monday. The media will be watching that space with pens and cameras poised.

There is legislation currently before a select committee which could compel the big online tech platforms to pay local producers of news for it.

In opposition, Lee opposed it and called it “literally a shakedown” in Parliament. (This weekend Facebook’s owner Meta announced it would not do any more deals with media under Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, prompting a likely confrontation with the government there.)

“The government’s position on this will obviously take into account these latest developments in terms of the wider media landscape. This government is committed to working with the sector on ways to ensure sector sustainability, while still preserving the independence of a fourth estate and avoiding market interference,” Lee said in Parliament on Thursday when questioned.

The government already heavily intervenes in the market by overseeing the state-owned broadcasters and agencies — including TVNZ — and putting over a quarter of a billion dollars every year onto broadcasting, programmes and other content.

The former government also put $80 million over two years into Māori media content, partly in the expectation there might also be a new public media entity to broadcast it.

In 2019, Hal Crawford — boss of Newshub at the time — declared the New Zealand news media is broken.

His chief executive also urged the government to intervene. AM show host Duncan Garner switched the studio lights off as an on-air stunt.

Crawford is now a digital media consultant based in his native Australia. The broadcasting funding agency in NZ On Air hired him in 2021 to review its own spending of public money on the media.

“It’s not a good idea for governments to knee jerk and sponsor particular commercial companies in some sort of bailout,” he said.

“To give money to the people who are in financially the worst position is the most ineffective and unfair use of public money that I can think of. If the market is telling you that something isn’t wanted and needed, you have to listen to that.

“But it doesn’t mean that you have to always listen to the market and do things that have never been done before.”

He cites the Public Interest Journalism Fund which put $55 million into new content and created new jobs for cash-strapped news media companies.

Crawford’s fact-finding report on the planned PIJF in 2021 records media managers feared cuts and possible closures to come.

“Many of our interviewees believed that if an organisation could show that cuts were imminent, they should be able to apply for funded roles under the PIJF. Many saw the dangers in this non-incremental funding, but argued for exceptions in extreme circumstances. Although these arguments are compelling, Funding could evaporate quickly trying to keep the newsrooms of big commercial companies afloat if this became the primary aim of the fund.”

“Around the world and in New Zealand, there’s ample evidence that public funding of journalism is becoming more essential. There has to be a way there, because what we’re seeing with the the planned closure of Newshub is the end result of the factors that we’ve known about for at least a decade,” Crawford told Mediawatch.

“Direct subsidy from the government to a commercial newsroom isn’t going to work. The government has to find a way to sensibly finance news and structure it so that it doesn’t become a political football.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Mediaworks’ radio station Today FM abandoned scheduling today when presenters broke from programming to question the future of their employer.

Broadcasters told their audience they were going off air and had been instructed to play music.

Today FM hosts Duncan Garner and Tova O’Brien told listeners before 9am the station and staff were being cut.

“We’ve been told to play music.”

“This is it, folks.”

While still on-air, O’Brien said the station had not been given a chance.

Staff had been told they had the support of the chief executive, the board, the executive “and they have f…..d us”, she said.

Garner responded: “This is betrayal.”

Crying staff
“He said other staff had joined the two radio hosts in the studio and several of them were crying.

“Radio is one of those projects, where you have to settle in, and slowly but surely get your numbers, get your ratings, get your revenue,” Garner said.

He said the company was “bleeding cash”.

A short time later the station began playing music.

Show producer Tom Day tweeted that the Mediaworks board had made a proposal to shut down Today FM.

“They have given us only until the end of this afternoon to make submissions. I have no words.”

Today FM PULLED OFF AIR. as Duncan and Tova explain the station and staff are being cut.
“We’ve been told to play music”
“This is it, folks!”

— Tim Murphy (@tmurphyNZ) March 29, 2023

‘Gutting’ to be axed
Day told RNZ it was gutting to have their station axed by Mediaworks.

He confirmed the Mediaworks board had proposed to close down the Today FM Brand in a meeting this morning.

He wished they had been given more time to build their brand after being on the air for just over a year.

He said staff had attended a meeting with Palmer and HR staff this morning and it seemed clear the station would be shut down.

“It’s pretty much a done deal.”

Staff had been told there was a five-year plan for the station but instead it looked like it would close after just one year.

“We feel pretty gutted and let down,” he said.

‘Serious uncertainty’
A story on Today FM’s website says it is facing “serious uncertainty”.

It also references the appearance just before 9am of its key broadcasters Garner and O’Brien who went on air and used a swear word banned in most circumstances by the Broadcasting Standards Authority to describe their current situation.

In the on-air segment O’Brien said that following the resignation of Mediaworks head of news Dallas Gurney, soon after the sudden departure of chief executive Cam Wallace, the team had not been able to get the same level of assurance from the board or acting chief executive Wendy Palmer about the future of the radio station.

“We’ve got to hold out hope here, but we’re scared,” she said.

Tim Murphy, the co-editor of Newsroom, wrote that today’s development was shocking and gutting for many journalists and the industry.

Station-wide meeting
A station-wide meeting had been called with Palmer, the story said.

In a statement, Palmer said: “This morning at the MediaWorks board’s request, we have taken Today FM off air while we consult with the team about the future of the station.

“This is a difficult time for the team and our priority is supporting them as we work through this process.”

She said more information would be released at a later date.

Today FM was set up a year ago to replace Magic Talk, which had struggled to make inroads in the ratings.

MediaWorks also operates the Edge, the Breeze, Mai FM and the Rock among other stations.

Media commentator blames poor ratings
RNZ Mediawatch commentator Colin Peacock told Midday Report the company had spent a reported $6 million to $9 million to set up Today FM in a bid to compete with talkback radio market leader NewstalkZB.

The station needed to build its own news operation because Newshub and the TV channels had been sold to Discovery in 2021.

“The ratings didn’t work out bluntly over the past year,” he said.

The departures of Wallace and Gurney within the last month meant the biggest supporters of the station had left and current management was determined to cut costs.

He said “there was a lot to sort out” because the company would want to use the frequency and there would probably need to be payouts to any staff made redundant.

“They’ve really burned bridges with their staff so there will be fallout from this that will be financial as well.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Commercial broadcasting company MediaWorks has agreed to sell its television channels to Discovery Inc.

The US-based global entertainment company will become the biggest privately-owned player in New Zealand free-to-air TV industry in 2021.

MediaWorks has been trying to sell its television arm – including the free-to-air channel Three (formerly TV3) – since last year.

MediaWorks also owns half the country’s radio stations which have been profitable in recent years while the TV operations have lost money.

The deal will also include the news service Newshub, and on-demand platform 3Now. 

Bravo, an entertainment channel jointly-owned with US-based NBC Universal, and The Edge TV and The Breeze TV – music channels attached to MediaWorks radio stations – are also part of the deal.

MediaWorks says the sale is expected by the end of the year, subject to “a number of pre-completion approvals.”

Discovery already owns two free-to-air channels here. Choice, set up by local producers in  2012, was sold to a Canadian media company Blue Ant Media two years later which also introduced lifestyle channel HGTV. Discovery Inc acquired both channels without fanfare in 2019.

Discovery also has pay-TV channels here on Sky TV, including Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet.

What is discovery?
Discovery Inc began as a content creation company making documentaries, natural history programmes and entertainment shows.

In the 1990s, Discovery Channel began launching its own channels for cable TV and subscription platforms and taking over other creators of “real life entertainment.”

In recent years it has also invested heavily in digital innovation and online distribution. Growing its slate of broadcast outlets and platforms across the world in markets big and small has gone hand-in-hand with its programme-making and digital content creation.

Who will be in charge?
MediaWorks CEO Michael Anderson had already announced he would step down by the end of this year once the sale of the TV channels was agreed.

Today’s announcement says MediaWorks current commercial director Glen Kyne  – also the current chair of umbrella group Think TV – is now general manager of TV and he will continue in that role when Discovery takes over.

Discovery’s Asia-Pacific operations have offices in Australia, but he will report to Discovery’s New York based president for the region, Simon Robinson. The statement says Discovery’s Sydney-based general manager for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands Rebecca Kent will oversee free-to-air channels Choice and HGTV and Discovery’s pay-TV channels here.

Good news for the staff, stars and viewers?
After years of financial instability under the ownership of private equity funds, repeated refinancing and several months up for sale – during which there was speculation the TV channels could close before Christmas last year – MediaWorks TV staff will be relieved.

Very excited about this and what is to come! Some hugely positive news MediaWorks TV – including Newshub – has been bought by global player Discovery Inc. Celebrations all round! https://t.co/tygz5ZfbFJ

— Samantha Hayes (@SamHayes_) September 6, 2020

In 2019, Michael Anderson complained bitterly about government media policy cementing state-owned TVNZ’s pre-eminence in free-to-air TV. Covid-19 caused an immediate slump in revenue in March this year.

“It’s a cliff we can’t see the bottom of. It’s dark,” Michael Anderson told Parliament’s Pandemic Response Committee in April.

Any local media companies still pondering a play for MediaWorks TV would have shelved their plans at that point.

But Discovery Inc is a business which earned US$11 billion last year and has a track record of investment and innovation.

But its commitment to local content is unknown. News and local entertainment shows have been a critical part of the mix since TV3 was first established 30 years ago.

Many are publicly-funded by NZ On Air, but they are costly to make and don’t always pull a crowd. Very few of the top-rating free-to-air local shows appear on MediaWorks TV.

Discovery’s own shows
Discovery will certainly want to put the company’s own shows on its new channels in 2021.

But the current and prospective bosses were making the right noises though in today’s announcement.

“Under the ownership of Discovery, Three, Newshub and Bravo will have a long-term home and continue to play a vital role in New Zealand society,” said MediaWorks CEO Michael Anderson.

“We are committed to drive MediaWorks TV’s future growth and success, delivering increased value to audiences and advertisers across all screens in New Zealand,” said APAC head Simon Robinson.

“Our very talented teams continue to focus on bringing New Zealanders trusted, local news and current affairs and quality entertainment content,” said Glen Kyne.

The splitting of radio and TV operations will also create problems to solve by 2021.

Newshub was created in 2017 to serve MediaWorks radio, TV and online platforms. The AM show was designed to occupy the breakfast slot on Three and talk radio.

At the time, it was a signal MediaWorks’ owner had no interest in splitting off the profitable parts of the company from the TV bits.

But an awful lot has changed in the media industry since then.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By RNZ News

New Zealand’s MediaWorks has confirmed it will sell its television operations to US company Discovery Inc.

The deal includes channels Three and Bravo, streaming service ThreeNow, and multi-platform news and current affairs service Newshub, as well as the further channels Three+1, Bravo+1, The Edge TV and The Breeze TV.

The company says the sale is subject to pre-completion approvals and is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

READ MORE: MediaWorks confirms sale to Discovery – Newshub

MediaWorks has been trying to sell its TV operation since late last year and had already done a deal to sell its central Auckland premises.

In May, it announced 130 staff redundancies in response to a covid-19-driven slump in revenue.

Staff hours and pay were also reduced in April.

Chief executive Michael Anderson, who finishes with the company at the end of the year, said this was the best possible outcome.

‘Best possible outcome’
“We are very pleased to have reached a sales agreement with Discovery and to share this news today,” he said.

“This is the best possible outcome for the future of MediaWorks TV and its passionate and dedicated people who work tirelessly to make it a unique and special business.

“Under the ownership of Discovery, Three, Newshub and Bravo will have a long-term home and continue to play a vital role in New Zealand society.”

“The ongoing success of our radio and out-of-home business demonstrates that MediaWorks has a very bright future and with this unique and powerful combination, our focus now is to accelerate the opportunities that exist for our clients.”

Discovery president for Asia-Pacific Simon Robinson said it was an exciting purchase.

“MediaWorks TV is New Zealand’s leading independent free-to-air commercial broadcaster, with popular shows and great brands,” he said.

Global content creator
“Discovery is a global content creator, a major free-to-air broadcaster across several European markets, including the UK, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Nordics, and has expertise in evolving our linear business to direct-to-consumer.

“With a 26-year heritage in the New Zealand market, we are committed to drive MediaWorks TV’s future growth and success, delivering increased value to audiences and advertisers across all screens in New Zealand.”

Glen Kyne has been appointed general manager of TV, and would report to Simon Robinson once the deal was completed.

Discovery has had a presence in New Zealand since 1994, when it first launched Discovery Channel on Sky.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Sri Krishnamurthi, contributing editor of Pacific Media Watch

The thin veneer of a seemingly robust New Zealand media was ripped off like a plaster on a scab in front of Parliament’s Epidemic Response Committee today exposing its frailties. 

The heads of all New Zealand’s media companies appeared via Zoom and all spoke of the desperate times ahead. 

Stuff, NZME, Television New Zealand, MediaWorks, RNZ, Newsroom, The Spinoff and Businessdesk as well as iwi representation appeared before the Epidemic Response Committee, which is chaired by opposition National Party leader Simon Bridges. 

READ MORE: Media rescue package needed to save industry ‘on its knees’

What was unusual was that all reported that their audience and readership numbers were “skyrocketing” because people needed factual news, whether it was digital readership, broadcast or television. 

However, advertising revenue was at a nadir and that is what was hurting the media owners. 

Former New Zealand Herald editor and media commentator Dr Gavin Ellis in his opening submission said advertising revenue for media companies was estimated to drop between 50 and 75 percent, and there was concern that it would not return even after the Covid-19 pandemic crisis was over. 

“Magazine publishers are indispensable gurus of our unique culture and our habitat, they’ve got to be urgently granted as an essential business status,” he said. 

Media environment plight
“One media representative described the plight of the media environment as it needed an emergency triage and I think that’s right. 

“The government really needs to adopt a three-stage process to deal with the media systems,” he said. 

“The most immediate need is to help them recover some of that cashflow through diverting already committed government enterprise spend for example suspending regulatory and transmission costs for broadcasters, there is a large number of things that can be done. 

“In terms of magazines, just let them publish, post-lockdown government needs to fast-track media restructuring or buying media to find long term solutions and really fast-tracking, sidestepping the Commerce Commission and the process that exist even for distressed businesses,” he added. 

 He backed the proposed merger of Stuff and NZME to buy them some time. 

“There is a number of ways the government can make these businesses more attractive by changing the tax status,” Dr Ellis said. 

“And finally stage three is the post Covid-19 reconstruction, it needs a total rethink redefining the media ecosystem and replacing outmoded ownership structures with a more sustainable model.” 

More redundancies feared
He added that he feared the redundancies at Bauer and NZME would not be the end of it. 

“The elephant in the room is the social media companies, Google, Facebook, syphoning money off media companies,” he said. 

“The bottom line is there will be contractions.

“I am fearful if the financial standing of the owners of MediaWorks and Stuff decline sufficiently they may be minded to follow Bauer and simply close New Zealand operations,” he sounded a warning. 

In response, the Minister for Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, Kris Faafoi, said “the government is developing a short-and-long-term package for support to the media industry to deal with the challenges they identified. 

“I’ll be able to hopefully announce those next week but the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the first tranche of support for struggling media companies would be announced next week. 

At the same time, she defended advertising on social media, saying that’s where New Zealanders were. 

Nervous times

Next up at the Committee hearing was Sinead Boucher, the CEO of Stuff, who admitted the company, with the largest website, faced nervous times. 

She said ongoing government support was necessary – either through New Zealand on Air or through other mechanisms – because advertising revenue has “dropped off a cliff”, more than halving in the weeks since March and looking “particularly dire” for April. 

Like all those who appeared, she said the government should shift its advertising from social media giants like Facebook and Google to New Zealand media companies, and also consider special tax breaks. 

Shayne Currie, managing editor of NZME, again pressed for being allowed to purchase Stuff, something which the Commerce Commission has rejected previously. 

“We believe there is a sustainable model there and at the same time it will allow us to be equally strong,” Currie said. 

“I like the moves that just have been announced in France – and France is the first major country which has moved in this direction – and I think Australia will follow very quickly. 

“Last week, it was announced that France has ordered Google, and targeting Google in the first instance, they now need to start negotiating with media companies to pay them for the content that appears on their search engines. 

Moving ahead
“That is a really significant move and I think the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is certainly making similar recommendations along those lines. 

“They are moving ahead this year and it can’t come soon enough in New Zealand,” he said. 

As Kevin Kenrick, the TVNZ CEO, pointed out: “I will just reinforce every dollar the government spends on Google and Facebook is a dollar that is not spent supporting local media by New Zealand.” 

Michael Anderson, who said several people at Mediaworks had been tested for Covid-19, said the difference between TV3 and TVNZ was that TV3 had debts that they had to pay back. 

Meanwhile, in Australia the announcement of almost A$100 million in federal funding and support for regional newspapers and broadcasting during the coronavirus crisis is welcome but a long-term plan is needed to ensure the sector’s future, says the union for Australia’s media workers. 

The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) welcomes the belated support for regional media in the form of a $50 million Public Interest News Gathering programme and tax relief for commercial TV and radio.  

This comes after the closure of more than a dozen publications around the country due to reduced advertising revenue due to the pandemic, the statement read. 

MPs ‘understand what is at stake’
It prompted the Journalism Education Association of New Zealand (JEANZ) president Greg Treadwell to say: “The Australian government has moved to help the news media and I expect the NZ government to do the same.  

“It was clear, I thought, during the media company representations to the pandemic committee today that MPs understood the importance of what was at stake. That was something of a relief, to be honest. 

“Media bosses, too, seemed to understand their long-running struggle for financial security has just changed fundamentally in nature. In the background was some of the regular positioning we’ve seen from the various players over recent years – for example, Mediaworks’ resentment that a state-owned company, TVNZ, eats up much of the commercial advertising dollar.  

“But in the foreground was the urgent need to create enough security to enable the serious job of public communications to be done well. After all, these politicians will need the media with an election looming,” he added. 

He said he thought that the NZME-Stuff merger was probably “on again” because there was “little chance of both thriving now, if there ever was”.

The committee appeared “pretty keen” on the idea that there was “no possibility of a plurality of voices if there was not first economic sustainability in a market model”.

“In other words, actually existing diversity is, in the end, treated as a nice-to-have,” Dr Treadwell said. 

“I think one of the main messages today was that the market shouldn’t be killed off in an attempt to save it.  

“The work done on developing new models like The Spinoff, Newsroom and BusinessDesk, should not be lost in the rescue.”

Appearing before the committee today were: media commentator Dr Gavin Ellis; CEO of Stuff Sinead Boucher; managing editor of NZME Shayne Currie, CEO of TVNZ Kevin Kenrick; CEO of Mediaworks Michael Anderson; RNZ CEO Paul Thompson CEO; co-editor of Newsroom Mark Jennings, managing editor of Spinoff Duncan Grieve; co-founder of BusinessDesk Patrick Smellie; and Peter Lucas-Jones representing iwi broadcasters. 

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Michael Andrew

International and Pacific reporting are among the first casualties of struggling New Zealand newsrooms as they try to cut costs to make up for decreasing advertising revenue.

This was the bleak message from Dr Mel Bunce, a media academic speaking at Auckland University of Technology earlier this week.

Discussing her latest book, The Broken Estate: Journalism and Democracy in a Post-Truth World, Dr Bunce said the New Zealand media had been hit particularly hard by the immense changes brought about by social media and technology.

READ MORE: Ethics needed in computing and tech to stop ‘robber barons’, says academic

“You can see things are really quite bad here. The foundations of the media systems here are actually, compared to most countries more fragile and more vulnerable to further disruption.

“We’ve seen that in the drops in journalist numbers; in 2001 there were 2300 journalists in the census, by 2013 it had dropped down to 1500. So more than 30% of journalists have gone.”

A reader in journalism at City, University of London, Dr Bunce said a small market and the inability to exploit economies of scale was a main reason for the New Zealand media’s fragility.

A unique ownership model also meant that news outlets couldn’t adapt as well as other businesses to market disruption.

“A lot of it [New Zealand media] is owned by international financial companies who specialise in buying distressed companies which they buy to make short term profit and then sell off.

“What that means is that you’re not willing to accept losses in some parts of your business. You’re not willing to use your radio profits to subsidise your TV.”

The observation corresponds with MediaWorks’ decision to sell off its struggling TV business, a move that could further erode plurality in the media and could potentially jeopardise 500 jobs if a buyer isn’t found.

However, she said it was a lack of public funding of media that was the main reason for the dire situation.

Neglected public media

“The final reason things are so challenging is that we really have neglected public media here compared to other countries in recent years. Australia historically spends a couple of times more than us in public media, and the UK up to six times much.”

“We are almost alone actually among industrialised commonwealth countries in having no public broadcaster.”

In an op-ed in the New Zealand Herald earlier this week, Dr Bunce ventured the best options to create a state funded broadcaster would be to expand RNZ into a full multimedia organisation or merge it with TVNZ.

The result would be New Zealand’s version of the BBC or the ABC, both the preferred and most trusted sources of news in their respective countries.

“A newly merged, state-funded broadcaster could also include Māori Television. But it would be absolutely crucial, if that happened, to safeguard Māori Television’s unique and specific mandate (and funding) to support Māori language and culture,” she wrote.

Lack of diversity

Dr Bunce said that Māori Television added a vital counter weight to the lack of diversity which was still rampant in the mainstream media.

“We have lots of research that the media continues to represent Maori and Pacific Islanders very very negatively.”

While reporting on the Pacific region continues to suffer from the changes in the media landscape, she said that local community reporting, here and abroad had been hit particularly hard.

“One big study in the US found that there are now 1300 communities that have no access to local news whatsoever and that includes 200 counties so places where serious administrative power, decision making is taking place and not scrutinised and not reported on in any way.”

These “news deserts” were concerning she said as research had shown what happens to a community when it doesn’t have news.

“We see that voter turnout goes down, people become more polarised because they tend to get their info from national sources which are more politicised, we see that there is also more corruption and less efficient government.”

‘Silver lining’

However, she said there was a silver lining from the global changes that were having such a powerful influence on journalism, one being a boom in new media research to find solutions.

More money was being spent to fund grants and studies in an effort to confront the challenges posed by the likes of Cambridge Analytica.

However, she reemphasised that more investment in public journalism was essential to mitigate the crisis.

“We have a really really compelling moment at which we should be intervening to provide more public funding for journalism.”

“It’s going to be a hard battle because I don’t know that people are aware of what it’s like to be in a place without the news, yet.”

While the data and the research showed that the media as a whole was suffering, she said the quality of journalists’ work, especially in New Zealand, was not.

“Some of the best journalism in the world is being done in New Zealand by some very talented people.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz