Sky TV has agreed to fully acquire TV3 owner Discovery New Zealand for $1.

Discovery NZ is a part of US media giant Warner Bros Discovery, and operates channel Three and online streaming platform ThreeNow.

NZX-listed Sky said the deal would be completed on a cash-free, debt-free basis, with completion expected on August 1.

Sky expected the deal to deliver revenue diversification and uplift of around $95 million a year.

Sky expected Discovery NZ’s operations to deliver sustainable underlying earnings growth of at least $10 million from the 2028 financial year.

Sky chief executive Sophie Moloney said it was a compelling opportunity for the company, with net integration costs of about $6.5 million.

“This is a compelling opportunity for Sky that directly supports our ambition to be Aotearoa New Zealand’s most engaging and essential media company,” she said.

Confidential advance notice
Sky said it gave the Commerce Commission confidential advance notice of the transaction, and the commission did not intend to consider the acquisition further.

Warner Bros Discovery Australia and NZ managing director Michael Brooks said it was a “fantastic outcome” for both companies.

“The continued challenges faced by the New Zealand media industry are well documented, and over the past 12 months, the Discovery NZ team has worked to deliver a new, more sustainable business model following a significant restructure in 2024,” Brooks said.

“While this business is not commercially viable as a standalone asset in WBD’s New Zealand portfolio, we see the value Three and ThreeNow can bring to Sky’s existing offering of complementary assets.”

Sky said on completion, Discovery NZ’s balance sheet would be clear of some long-term obligations, including property leases and content commitments, and would include assets such as the ThreeNow platform.

Sky said irrespective of the transaction, the company was confident of achieving its 30 cents a share dividend target for 2026.

‘Massive change’ for NZ media – ThreeNews to continue
Founder of The Spinoff and media commentator Duncan Greive said the deal would give Sky more reach and was a “massive change” in New Zealand’s media landscape.

He noted Sky’s existing free-to-air presence via Sky Open (formerly Prime), but said acquiring Three gave it the second-most popular audience outlet on TV.

“Because of the inertia of how people use television, Three is just a much more accessible channel and one that’s been around longer,” Greive said.

“To have basically the second-most popular channel in the country as part of their stable just means they’ve got a lot more ad inventory, much bigger audiences.”

It also gave Sky another outlet for their content, and would allow it to compete further against TVNZ, both linear and online, Greive said.

He said there may be a question mark around the long-term future of Three’s news service, which was produced by Stuff.

No reference to ThreeNews
Sky made no reference to ThreeNews in its announcement. However, Stuff confirmed ThreeNews would continue for now.

“Stuff’s delivery of ThreeNews is part of the deal but there are also now lots of new opportunities ahead that we are excited to explore together,” Stuff owner Sinead Boucher said in a statement.

On the deal itself, Boucher said she was “delighted” to see Three back in New Zealand ownership under Sky.

“And who doesn’t love a $1 deal!” Boucher said, referring to her own $1 deal to buy Stuff from Australia’s Nine Entertainment in 2020.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Published in the Christchurch Star newspaper yesterday — this was the advert rejected last week by Stuff, New Zealand’s major news website, by an editorial management which apparently thinks pro-Israel sympathies are more important than the industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and Lebanon.

Stuff told the Palestinian Solidarity Movement Aotearoa (PSNA) on Thursday last week it would not print this full-page “genocide in their own words” advertisement which had been booked and paid to go in all Stuff newspapers this week.

Stuff gave no “official” reason for banning the advert about Israel’s war in Gaza aside from saying they would not do so “while the ongoing conflict is developing”.

It seems that for Stuff, pro-Israel sympathies are more important that Palestinian realities.

It’s worth pointing out that Stuff has, over many years, printed full page advertisements from a Christian Zionist, Pastor Nigel Woodley, from Hastings.

Woodley’s advertisements have been full of the most egregious, fanciful, misinformation and anti-Palestinian racism.

Our advertisement on the other hand is 100 percent factual and speaks truth to power – demanding the New Zealand government hold Israel to account for its war crimes and 76-years of brutal military occupation of Palestine.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Warner Bros Discovery has done a deal with Stuff to provide news to replace Newshub. It will keep news on TV channel Three from July 6 and help Three retain some viewers.

It also means important income for Stuff, but it will also stretch the company’s staff, finances and technology.

Stuff will provide a one-hour bulletin each weekday and a half-hour on weekends.

Stuff will also retain a live Newshub website.

Warner Bros Discovery chief executive and Stuff publisher Sinead Boucher confirmed the arrangement at a joint news conference today.

Boucher had told her staff the company will “definitely be bringing some Newshub staff” to produce the 6pm bulletins.

She then told reporters she was unsure how many staff would be required, but it would be fewer than “40 to 50” specified in a “stripped back” proposal from Newshub’s own staff.

‘We are digital first’
“We’re not getting into the TV business. We are a digital first multimedia company building a new 6pm product for Warner Brothers,” she said.

Mediawatch understands many media companies approached WBD with proposals to provide news after the company first proposed the cost-saving closure in late February.

However, by the time of the confirmation earlier this month most of those had been rejected by WBD.

Sky TV was also reported to be in the running. It currently runs a Newshub-produced bulletin at 5:30pm each weekday on the free-to-air channel Sky Open and would require a replacement. It also had plenty of TV production facilities.

Sinead Boucher said a Sky bulletin was not included in the deal, but she hoped there would be discussions about that.

Negotiations were carried out in secret both before and after Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) confirmed the complete closure of Newshub on July 5, leaving the company with no news presence.

Stuff refused to comment during the process and Stuff journalists told RNZ Mediawatch on Monday night they were unaware of an impending announcement.

“We didn’t want to raise expectations for Newshub staff when we weren’t sure what would be required,” Boucher told reporters today, explaining that the deal had been done in haste.

Why do the deal – and what’s it worth?
The money WBD is putting into the deal is confidential but it is certain to be just a fraction of the current cost of running Newshub, which would run to tens of millions of dollars a year.

WBD was clearly determined to carve that cost off the bottom line of its loss-making local operation. The financial benefit for Stuff may not be great taking the set-up and running costs into account.

WBD’s Glen Kyne said neither company would comment on specific commercial details, but when asked about the possible profit margin for Stuff, Boucher said: “Both parties are satisfied with where we have ended up.”

But while the audience for TV news bulletins is declining — and the ad revenue has fallen accordingly — it is still substantial for TVNZ 1 and Three. The “appointment viewing” time of 6pm creates a viewing peak which the TV broadcasters use to hold viewers for the entertainment or factual programmes that follow.

Former Newshub chief Hal Crawford told Mediawatch the overall audience for Three could collapse without news in the evening.

“There’s still a reason that the 1 and the 3 on remotes around the country are worn down. 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,” Crawford told Mediawatch.

“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.”

Why Stuff?
Stuff has journalists in more places around the country than any other news publisher.

Stuff’s publisher Sinead Boucher recently told a parliamentary committee it had journalists in 19 locations, even after years of cuts and successive retrenchments.

“We have replatformed our business and have new ways of working. We look at this as starting this bulletin afresh rather than using the broadcast-heavy technology of today,” she told reporters at today’s news conference.

It also has audio and video production facilities at some sites and some senior journalists with TV reporting and presenting experience, such as former Newshub political editor Tova O’Brien, former TV3 current affairs reporter Paula Penfold and senior journalist Andrea Vance.

But Stuff video ventures have not endured. It launched its own free online video platform Play Stuff in mid-2019. It also hired key former TV3 current affairs staff for its own longform video productions but disbanded the Stuff Circuit team earlier this year.

When the Stuff app and website were refreshed recently, short vertical videos were added as a feature, called Stuff Shorts.

Stuff’s weakness has in the past been a dependence on newspaper advertising. It was only last year that Stuff launched its first paywalls for online news for three of its mastheads.

Stuff’s main rival NZME has half the country’s radio networks in addition to newsrooms supplying its newspapers and websites. NZME’s New Zealand Herald has been getting revenue from “premium content” digital subscriptions for four years.

After Boucher acquired Stuff in 2020, Stuff embarked on a digital transition creating more digital audio and video content. It has hired executives from multimedia companies such as Nadia Tolich (ex-NZME now Stuff Digital managing director) and former NZME digital leader Laura Maxwell, now Stuff’s chief executive.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The day the news axe fell: Presenters, insiders fear ‘huge blow for democracy’

The future of New Zealand’s media landscape is becoming clearer by the day, with confirmation that it will no longer feature one of the country’s big two TV news networks.

Warner Bros. Discovery has revealed that all of Newshub’s operations will be shut down, effective July 5. That includes the flagship 6pm bulletin, The AM Show, and the Newshub website.

294 staff are set to lose their jobs.

It’s also been confirmed that TVNZ’s programme Sunday will be cancelled, following yesterday’s announcement that Fair Go, as well as both 1News at Midday and 1News Tonight, are being canned in their current format.

New Zealand’s media industry has been rocked by the bleeding obvious which is that their failed ratings system for legacy media was always more art than science.

The NZ radio ratings system is a diary that you fill in every 15 minutes — which no one ever fills in properly.

The NZ newspaper ratings are opinion polls and the NZ TV ratings system is a magical 180 boxes that limits choice to whoever had the TV remote.

When the sales rep told the advertiser that 300,000 people would read, see, hear their advert, it was based on ratings systems that were flattering but not real.

With the ruthlessness of online audience measurement, advertisers could see exactly how many people were actually seeing their adverts, and the legacy media never adapted to this new reality.

What we see now is hollowed out journalism competing against social media hate algorithms designed to generate emotional responses rather than Fourth Estate accountability.

New Zealand has NEVER had the audience size to make advertising based broadcasting feasible, that’s why it’s always required a state broadcaster — with no Fourth Estate who will hold this hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing government to account?

Minister missing in action
Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee has refused to support the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill that Labour’s former minister Willie Jackson put forward that would at least force Google and Facebook to pay for the journalism they take for free.

Lee has been utterly hopeless and missing in action here — if “Democracy dies in darkness”, National are pulling the plug.

This government doesn’t want accountability, does it?

Instagram this year switched on a new filter to smother political debate and we know actual journalism has been smothered by the social media algorithms.

I don’t think that most people who get their information from their social media feeds understand they aren’t seeing the most important journalism but are in fact seeing the most inflammatory rhetoric to keep people outraged and addicted to doom scrolling.

When Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters does his big lie that the entire mainstream media were bribed because of a funding note by NZ on Air in regards to coverage of Māori issues for the Public Interest Journalism fund — which by the way was quickly clarified by NZ on Air as not an editorial demand — he conflates and maliciously spins and NZ’s democracy suffers.

Muddled TVNZ
Television New Zealand has always come across like a muddle. It aspires to be BBC public broadcasting yet has the commercial imperatives of any Crown Owned Enterprise. If Labour had merged TVNZ and RNZ and made TVNZ 1 commercial free so that the advertising revenue could cross over to Newshub, it would have rebuilt the importance of public broadcasting while actually regulating the broken free market.

When will we get a Labour Party that actually gives a damn about public broadcasting rather than pay lip service to it?

Ultimately Newshub’s demise is a story of ruthless transnational interests and geopolitical cultural hegemony.

Corporate Hollywood soft power wants to continue its cultural dominance as the South Pacific friction continues between the United States and China.

New Zealand is an important plank for American hegemony in the South Pacific and as China and American competition heats up, Warners Bros Discovery suddenly buying a large stake in our media was always a geopolitical calculation over a commercial one.

Cultural dominance doesn’t require nor want an active journalism, so they will keep the channel open purely as a means of dominating domestic culture without any of the Fourth Estate obligations.

That bitter angry feeling you have watching Warner Bros Discovery destroy our Fourth Estate is righteous.

Social licence trashed
They bought a media outlet that has had a 35-year history of being a structural part of our media environment and dumping it trashes their social licence in this country.

That feeling of rage you have watching a multibillion transnational vandalise our environment is going to be repeated the millisecond you see the American mining interests lining up to mine conservation land with all their promises to repair anything they break.

Remember — the transnational ain’t your friend regardless of its pronouns.

That person they rolled in with the soft-glazed CEO face to do the sad, sad crying is disingenuous and condescending.

Now Warner Bros has killed Newshub off, we have no option as Kiwis but to boycott whatever is left of TV3 and water down Warner Bros remaining interests altogether.

They’ve burnt their bridges with us in New Zealand by walking away from their social contract, we should have no troubles returning the favour!

The only winners here are rightwing politicians who don’t want their counterproductive and corrupt decisions to be scrutinised.

We are a poorer and weaker democracy after these news cuts.

Why bother having a Minister of Broadcasting if all they do is fiddle while the industry burns?

Welcome to your new media future in Aotearoa New Zealand . . .

Republished with permission from The Daily Blog.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Warner Bros Discovery will struggle to retain viewers in New Zealand if it has no news operation, Newshub journalist Paddy Gower predicts, as he continues his crusade for someone to save at least part of its newsroom.

A grim 48 hours for news media has resulted in many jobs being lost in the sector — as TV3 confirmed the closure of Newshub, and TVNZ announced it was going ahead with axing its current affairs flagship Sunday, consumer affairs Fair Go and two news bulletins.

About 250 jobs are being lost in the shutdown of Three’s national news service, which will close in July.

Gower told RNZ Morning Report Warner Bros Discovery needed to get on and do a deal for another party to take over the news bulletin.

He was among seven senior Newshub journalists who pushed back against the company’s proposal and put forward their own plan.

The proposal, led by his colleague Michael Morrah, was “radical”, “aggressive” and would have pared the news operation back to the bone, he said.

It centred on the 6pm bulletin which brought in a lot of advertising revenue, retain the website and would later build up the digital operation.

“Basically it was a cutdown radical proposal to hang on to the 6pm bulletin and find digital solutions out into the future.”

While management gave them access to figures and helped them in other ways they ultimately decided not to go ahead.

He said when the closure was confirmed, there was a feeling of “the weight of history” at the loss of a taonga which Kiwis would miss when it disappeared.

“It’s gonna be a dark time for news in this country,” he said.

Gower said Warner Bros Discovery would have “a helluva time” keeping viewers without Newshub providing news and current affairs.

“We tried. That’s the Kiwi way. That’s the Newshub way.”

He said another media company, such as Stuff or NZME, could now come in and further their own news brand and their reputation by saving part of a significant news operation.

They would oversee the making of a 6pm news bulletin that would be sold to Warner Bros Discovery and in the process be working with one of the world’s leading media companies.

“That has to be a possibility . . . They would be seen to be saving news in New Zealand and that’s a big ups for them . . .

“The company that is able to get that deal done …. is going to get some incredible journalists on board to help them do it,” Gower said.

It would probably save about 40 to 50 jobs, he said.

Warner Brothers Discovery declined to be interviewed by Morning Report.

Broadcasting Minister accused of lack of vision
Former head of news at TV3 Mark Jennings believed Broadcasting Minister Melissa Lee was “all at sea” as the country veered towards a media crisis.

He found her response to the Newshub closure confusing and did not believe the cabinet paper she has been working on would provide anything beneficial.

“I think you’re likely to have three parties, New Zealand First, ACT and National, all with different points of view and I can’t see them agreeing on any forward course of action, particularly not with Melissa Lee who appears to have no vision here at all.”

Jennings said he was notsurprised the Morrah-Gower plan did not succeed, because employers had considered other options and then made up their minds before the consultation period began.

If an offer from an outside organisation did get the go-ahead, it would be a “basic product” and would be “news-light”, he said.

It might be shot on i-Phones and edited by journalists and would not resemble Newshub’s current flagship bulletin.

While both the pandemic and social media had lowered the quality threshold of what viewers might accept, it would still be compared to what TVNZ was screening.

“The challenge will be for them to hold on to their ratings and more importantly, their share. Their share has been decreasing over time and if it gets too much lower, they’ll find themselves back at square one really.”

Minister Lee was unwilling to be interviewed by Morning Report.

On Wednesday, she refused to tell RNZ once again what her plans to reform the sector were, citing cabinet confidentiality.

She said she was focused on ensuring New Zealand’s media industry was sustainable and modernised, and she was looking at reviewing the Broadcasting Act.

Although she has written a cabinet paper, she would not say what was in it.

Lee said she had talked to international companies on how they could support and increase New Zealand screen production, but it would not include a quota.

She said it would not have helped the situation at Newshub.

Not much scope for NZ on Air
New Zealand on Air chief executive Cam Harland said the agency had a limited ability to intervene because its remit was to provide funding for a large number of audiences across a range of genres.

He heads the agency responsible for distributing public funds but its budget isn’t nearly enough to address shortfalls.

Daily television news was expensive to produce, so he considered it unlikely NZ on Air would help much, he told Morning Report.

The loss of jobs and talent was “monumental” and NZ on Air bosses intended to meet with TVNZ and Newshub as well as senior journalists, such as Jennings, to get more information before making any decisions.

“We absolutely want to help . . .  so I guess our view now is: Can we be more innovative with what we’re funding, can we get more bang for the buck?”

The organisation was also faced with reviewing its spending in line with the government’s requirements for the public sector.

Union files claim against TVNZ

The union representing journalists has filed a claim against TVNZ alleging the company breached its own consultation requirements in its job cuts process.

E Tu’s negotiation specialist, Michael Wood, said the broadcaster should have involved its employees before the proposal was presented.

Talks were continuing with the Employment Relations Authority to see if a legal case could be heard as quickly as possible.

“It’s an urgent matter now . . . We’ll be trying to get an outcome there as soon as possible and we want to see an outcome that respects the process.”

He said mediation between the parties might be a part of the process.

While the union and employees had a small victory with a handful of jobs being saved, there was still “a massive loss of capacity” with the axing of several programmes.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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

Stuff, New Zealand’s biggest independently owned news business, today announced it will stop sharing content to X (formerly Twitter), effective immediately.

A media statement said that decision followed Stuff’s increasing concerns about the volume of mis- and disinformation being shared, and the “damaging behaviour being exhibited on and enabled by the platform”.

All Stuff brands including stuff.co.nz, and publishing mastheads brands The Post, The Press and Waikato Times will no longer post on X, with the exception of stories that are of urgent public interest — such as health and safety emergencies, said the statement.

Stuff will also publish these stories on Neighbourly, to reach communities fast and with hyper-local information.

The following message was sent to all staff from CEO Laura Maxwell:

Trusted storytelling
“When Stuff returned to New Zealand ownership in 2020, we set growth in public trust as a key measure of success. Three years on, our mission is to grow our business through trusted storytelling and experiences that make Aotearoa New Zealand a better place,” she said.

“As a business we have made the decision that X, formerly known as Twitter, does not contribute to our mission.

“We are increasingly concerned about the volume of mis- and dis-information being shared on the platform, and the damaging behaviours we have observed, and experienced.

“So, as of today, we will stop sharing our content on X. An exception to this will be stories that are of urgent public interest, such as health and safety emergencies. We will also publish these stories on Neighbourly.

“We also encourage you all to consider how much you personally engage with X, if at all. The platform is diametrically opposed to our own values, as outlined in our Editorial Code of Practice and Ethics. It deliberately and actively seeks to undermine the value of our journalism.

“We are aware many of you might use X for news gathering and as a way to share information with others. However, as a company that values truth and trust, this platform is no longer a tool for us.

“As many of you know, this is not the first time Stuff has taken such a stance.

“In July 2020, Stuff paused posting activity on Facebook. The move built on the decision to stop paid advertising on Facebook in 2019, following the live streaming and widespread dissemination of footage of the Christchurch mosque shootings on the platform. We will also continue to assess our use of other social platforms.

“As New Zealand’s biggest news organisation, we benefit from a loyal audience, who engage with us every single day on our platforms, our papers, magazines and at our events.

“As restless creators, our innovation mindset is enduring and so we’ll continue to innovate and invest in our platforms to deliver high-quality, trustworthy journalism that is relevant and reflective of Aotearoa.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

New Zealand’s Stuff media group has joined other leading news organisations around the world in restricting Open AI from using its content to power artificial intelligence tool Chat GPT.

A growing number of media companies globally have taken action to block access to Open AI bots from crawling and scraping content from their news sites.

Open AI is behind the most well-known and fastest-growing artificial intelligence chatbots, Chat GPT, released late 2022.

“The scraping of any content from Stuff or its news masthead sites for commercial gain has always been against our policy,” says Stuff CEO Laura Maxwell. “But it is important in this new era of Generative AI that we take further steps to protect our intellectual property.”

Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) is the name given to technologies that use vast amounts of information scraped from the internet to train large language models (LLMs).

This enables them to generate seemingly original answers — in text, visuals or other media — to queries based on mathematically predicting the most likely right answer to a prompt or dialogue.

Some of the most well-known Gen AI tools include Open AI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E, and Google’s Bard.

Surge of unease
There has been a surge of unease from news organisations, artists, writers and other creators of original content that their work has already been harvested without permission, knowledge or compensation by Open AI or other tech companies seeking to build new commercial products through Gen AI technology.

“High quality, accurate and credible journalism is of great value to these businesses, yet the business model of journalism has been significantly weakened as a result of their growth off the back of that work,” said Maxwell.

“The news industry must learn from the mistakes of the past, namely what happened in the era of search engines and social media, where global tech giants were able to build businesses of previously unimaginable scale and influence off the back of the original work of others.

“We recognise the value of our work to Open AI and others, and also the huge risk that these new tools pose to our existence if we do not protect our IP now.”

There is also increasing concern these tools will exacerbate the spread of disinformation and misinformation globally.

“Content produced by journalists here and around the world is the cornerstone of what makes these Gen AI tools valuable to the user,” Maxwell said.

“Without it, the models would be left to train on a sea of dross, misinformation and unverified information on the internet — and increasingly that will become the information that has itself been already generated by AI.

Risk of ‘eating itself’
“There is a risk the whole thing will end up eating itself.”

Stuff and other news companies have been able to block Open AI’s access to their content because its web crawler, GPTBot, is identifiable.

But not all crawlers are clearly labelled.

Stuff has also updated its site terms and conditions to expressly bar the use of its content to train AI models owned by any other company, as well as any other unauthorised use of its content for commercial use.

Earlier this year The Washington Post published a tool that detailed all major New Zealand news websites were already being used by OpenAI.

OpenAI has entered into negotiations with some news organisations in the United States, notably Associated Press, to license their content to train ChatGPT.

So far these agreements have not been widespread although a number of news companies globally are seeking licensing arrangements.

Maxwell said Stuff was looking forward to holding conversations around licensing its content in due course.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Nothing much changed in a 1News Verian poll released last Monday. However, some commentators treated the boring results as a blank canvas on which to express their creativity.

1News presenter Simon Dallow described the results of the newly named 1News Verian poll on Monday as a harsh verdict on the government.

“It is just under three months until the election and Labour seems to have been dented by a series of ministerial distractions,” he said as he introduced the story at the top of the bulletin.

Despite that effort to dress up the poll as a tough verdict on the government, it was mostly notable for how un-notable it was.

Few parties moved more than the margin of error from the last 1News poll in May, which also showed National and Act with the numbers to form the next government — just. National and Labour both dropped the same amount: 2 percent.

You might have thought the damp squib of a result would put the clamps on our political commentators’ narrative-crafting abilities.

Instead, for some it proved to be a blank canvas on which they could express their creativity.

‘Centre-right surge’
At Stuff, chief politics editor Luke Malpass called the poll a “fillip for the right” under a headline hailing a “centre-right surge”.

One issue with that: the poll showed a 1 percent overall drop for the right bloc of National and Act.

“Fillips” generally involve polls going up not down. Similarly, a drop in support doesn’t traditionally meet the definition of a surge in support.

The lack of big statistical swings wasn’t enough to deter some commentators from making big calls.

On Newstalk ZB, political editor Jason Walls said Labour was plunging due to its disunity.

“All [Chris Hipkins] has been really able to talk about is what’s happening within the Labour Party — be it Stuart Nash, be it other ministers who are behaving badly. Jan Tinetti. Voters punish that. And we’ve seen that from the Nats in opposition. They punish disunity.”

It’s uncertain what National’s equivalent 2 percent drop was down to. Perhaps voters punish unity as well.

Wider trends context
Mutch-McKay’s own commentary was a bit more nuanced, placing the poll in the context of wider trends.

On TVNZ’s Breakfast the day after the poll’s release, she said some people inside Labour couldn’t believe the results hadn’t been worse for the party.

Perhaps that air of disbelief also extended to the parliamentary press gallery.

After all, the commentators are right: Labour has had a terrible few months, with high-ranking ministers defecting, being stood down, being censured by the parliamentary privileges committee, facing allegations of mistreating staff, or struggling with the apparently near-impossible task of selling shares in Auckland Airport.

Maybe a sense of inertia propelled some of our gallery members to keep rolling with the narrative of the last few months, in spite of the actual poll result.

Or maybe part of the issue is that hyping up the significance of these polls is a financial necessity for news organisations which pay a lot to commission them.

“You’ve got to squeeze the hell of it. You’ve paid $11,000 or $12,000 for a poll, it’s got to be the top story. It’s got to be your lead. It’s got to have the fancy graphics,” Stuff’s political reporter and commentator Andrea Vance said recently on the organisation’s daily podcast Newsable.

‘Manufacturing news’
“It just feels like we’re manufacturing news. We’re taking a piece of information that’s a snapshot in time and we’re pretending that we know the future,” she said.

Vance went on to say these kinds of snapshot polls don’t actually tell us all much — but she said long-term polling trends are worth paying attention to.

It’s probably no coincidence then that the most useful analysis of this latest poll focused on those macro patterns.

In a piece for 1News.co.nz, John Campbell noted the electorate’s slow drift away from the centre, with Labour losing 20 percent of the electorate’s support since 2020 and National failing to fully capitalise on that drop-off.

He quoted Yeats line, “the centre cannot hold”, before asking the question: “What do Labour and National stand for? Really? Perhaps, just perhaps, this is a growing section of the electorate saying — you’re almost as bad as each other.”

That sentiment has been echoed by other commentators. In his latest column for Metro magazine, commentator and former National Party comms man Matthew Hooton decried the major parties’ lack of ambition.

“At least Act, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori aren’t insulting you with bullshit. Instead they offer ideas they think will make your life better, even if they’ll never happen. So here’s a better idea than falling for the big scare from National or Labour.

‘Reward ideas-based parties’
“How about using your ballot paper to tell them to f*** off and reward one of the three ideas-based parties with your vote instead?” he wrote.

And on his podcast The Kaka, financial journalist Bernard Hickey and commentator Danyl McLauchlan criticised our major parties for their grey managerialism.

“You kind of have to go back to the mid-1990s when so many people just hated the two major parties because they didn’t trust them,” he said.

“We seem to be going through a similar phase now. The two major parties are just these managerial centrist parties. They don’t have much to offer by way of a vision.”

Maybe it’s a little shaky to say anyone’s surging or flopping on the basis of a couple of percentage points shifting in a single poll.

But if you zoom out a bit, at least one narrative does have a strong foundation — voters saying, to quote Shakespeare this time — “a plague on both your (untaxed) houses”.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Colin Peacock, RNZ Mediawatch presenter

There is mounting pressure on tech titans Google and Facebook to pay local news media to carry their news online.

Google has already done deals with some for its News Showcase, but other big names in news are still trying to get the platforms to pay — and the government is hinting it could force the issue soon.

“Are you putting the hard word on them to secure deals to pay for content? Are you going to legislate?” Newshub Nation host Simon Shepherd asked Willie Jackson last weekend, putting the hard word on the broadcasting and media minister.

“Are you putting the hard word on them to secure deals to pay for content? Are you going to legislate?” Newshub Nation host Simon Shepherd asked Willie Jackson a week ago, putting the hard word on the broadcasting and media minister.

“I’m trying really hard. I have said to them, [in] three months let’s see the deals in the marketplace,” the minister replied.

For years local news media have griped about getting very little from the platforms distributing their stuff to huge audiences  — and profiting from it.

The thing most likely to persuade the tech titans to pay local newsmakers is the likelihood of the government forcing the issue with legislation — and this was the first time that a government minister had set any kind of deadline publicly.

‘I want to see fairness’
“I want to see some fairness. I want to see all these Kiwi news organisations looked after . . and these big players have the funding and the resourcing to be able to do that,” Willie Jackson told Newshub Nation.

Some of the deals that have been done were revealed earlier this month when Google launched the local version of its News Showcase service, now available via Google’s websites and apps.

The first Kiwi outlets ever to get regular payments from Google for that include The New Zealand Herald’s owner NZME and its subscriber subsidiary BusinessDesk, RNZ, online sites Scoop and Newsroom and the Pacific Media Network. There is also a handful of local outlets too like Crux, which serves the Southern Lakes region, and Kapiti News.

“It’s part of our commitment to continuing to play a part in what we see as a very important shared responsibility to ensure the long term sustainability of public interest journalism in New Zealand,” Google’s local country representative Carolyn Rainsford told RNZ’s Gyles Beckford recently.

Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson described that as “a good start, but not enough” — while the Spinoff’s founder Duncan Grieve was also underwhelmed.

He reckoned it was actually Willie Jackson that Google had in mind with the Showcase launch “to create a sense that Google is now a solid and public spirited ally to the news industry”.

For now, Google News Showcase is far from a comprehensive or compelling service for Kiwis. It offers nothing from our biggest national news producer Stuff or other big names in news like TVNZ and Newshub — or smaller outlets such Allied Press and The Spinoff.

Bargaining collectively
Several publishers — including Stuff — have banded together with the News Publishers Association to bargain collectively with Google and Meta (the parent company of Facebook).

Earlier this year the Commerce Commission gave them permission to negotiate a deal for a 10-year period.

So how’s that going?

“We can’t comment much on the status, but we are engaging with the NPA,” was all Google’s regional head of partnerships Shilpa Jhunjhunwala would tell RNZ earlier this month.

A recent report by the Judith Nielsen Institute estimate Google and Facebook paid Australian media companies about A$200m last year.

“Unfortunately an interview won’t be possible,” Google New Zealand told Mediawatch last week (without explaining why).

Instead they gave us a statement attributable to Caroline Rainsford, country director Google New Zealand:

“We are proud of the launch of Google News Showcase and continuing our conversations with other local news media businesses.”

“We can’t give you any kind of commercial numbers because they’re all commercial and in confidence,” Google’s regional head of partnerships Shilpa Jhunjhunwala told RNZ’s Gyles Beckford earlier this month.

When pressed, she said Google’s global commitment to News Showcase was $1 billion over three years.

“But beyond that, we’re not able to share anything specific to New Zealand,” she said.

Why is there no deal with other New Zealand news publishers yet?

‘No serious offers on table’
“Those negotiations are underway, but neither of those companies have put any serious offers on the table,” Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher told Mediawatch.

She said the Australian deals were their benchmark.

“What we produce is very similar kind of content and we operate in very similar markets. We’d be looking for payments that equate to more like NZ$40 million to $50 million a year into the industry here,” she said.

“I think the government and Minister Jackson have made clear that the government expect fair deals to be done — and that they are prepared to legislate in the near term to ensure that happens,” she said.

“The only way to materially address this is to create an environment where we can negotiate fair commercial payment from these giant multinationals who have built their businesses entirely off content created by other people,” she said.

“You could think of any search term and put it into Google and look down the results and see that a new story created by somebody is part of the results. What we are focused on negotiating a commercial payment for that content in the same way that you would for any other product,” she said.

“If you invested in a car and someone started running it as a taxi, you would expect them to compensate you for that — not to build their own business without recognising your investment,” Boucher told Mediawatch.

“Our problem is that these platforms are very reluctant to come to the table and have a fair negotiation. That’s why the sort of legislation has been needed in Australia and other countries and also here in New Zealand,” she said.

The tale across the Tasman.

For more than a decade, he chaired the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Australia’s competition regulator.

“It was fraught at times, but we presented the report to government in mid-2019 and they accepted the recommendation to have a News Media Bargaining Code six months later. It was legislated in February 2021. That’s pretty quick in terms of policy development in Australia,” Sims told Mediawatch.

“Google’s done a deal with essentially all media businesses. Meta has only done a deal with media businesses which that employ 85 percent of (Australia’s) journalists. It’s crucial that . . . it’s widely shared and you need legislation so that everybody has the ability to bargain.

“I know for a fact that the payments were well in excess of A$200 million — so NZ $40 million to $50 million sounds absolutely the right number to be spread across all media,” he said.

“Google and Meta were required to bargain with all eligible media businesses — and if they could not reach agreement, then arbitration would come into place. The threat of that evened up the bargaining power,” he said.

“The second component was that if Google and Meta did a deal with one media player, then they were required under law to do a deal with all media players. So their choice was either have no media content on their platform, or do deals,” he said.

“They chose to do deals with media companies because there’s value to them,” he said.

Arbitration threat needed
“I’m a bit concerned that in New Zealand you don’t have arbitration at the end of the negotiation period negotiations fail,” he said.

A Google officer once told me struggling news media pleading for “compensation” were like redundant drivers of horse-drawn carriages and rickshaws expecting today’s taxi drivers to pay them.

“No, that’s completely wrong. This is not like the car taking the place of the horse and carriage or smartphones taking the place of Kodak film because Google and Facebook don’t produce any journalism. So they haven’t taken the place of media, because they’re just not in the media business,” Rod Sims told Mediawatch.

“For Google to be a good search engine, it needs to bring in media into its search just about every time. But they don’t need any particular media company. So only by the News Media Bargaining Code could you even up the bargaining power,” he said.

“Unless we get payment for media that’s being taken and used for free, we’ll have a lot less media and less media harms society,” he said.

“It’s not up to me to tell the New Zealand government what to do, but my advice would be to pass the Australian News Media Bargaining Code,” he said.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher has purchased Stuff from its Australian owners Nine Entertainment for $1 to return the media company to New Zealand ownership.

The sale is expected to be completed by May 31.

“Our plan is to transition the ownership of Stuff to give staff a direct stake in the business as shareholders,” Boucher said in a statement.

READ MORE: Court reveals new possible Stuff buyer in NZ media crisis

“Local ownership will bring many benefits to our staff, our customers and indeed to all Kiwis, as we take advantage of opportunities to invest in and grow the business.”

Nine will retain ownership of Stuff’s Petone printing plant site and lease it back to the media company. And Stuff will receive a percentage of the proceeds of its sale of Stuff Fibre to Vocus.

“As a result of the successful completion of the Stuff Fibre sale on 20 May 2020, Nine will receive 25 percent of those proceeds before completion of the Stuff sale, plus up to a further 75 percent over the subsequent 36 months, depending on the Stuff business’ ability to raise funding,” Nine said in a statement to the Australian stock exchange.

NZME had entered negotiations with Stuff’s owner on 23 April and earlier earlier this month announced it wanted to buy Stuff for $1 and asking for urgent government legislation allowing it to skirt the need for Commerce Commission approval.

Merger attempts knocked back
The owner of the Herald and Newstalk ZB had been trying to acquire Stuff since 2016, with its merger attempts knocked back by the Commission and the Court of Appeal.

Nine Entertainment insisted deal had been agreed and negotiations with NZME were already over, and the spat ended up in the High Court with NZME denied an injunction against the Nine.

Stuff journalists reacted positively to the news with one saying it’s the “best possible outcome” for the company, though several said they were under no illusions about the financial challenges facing the business, Mediawatch reported.

Employees were last month asked to take a 12-week pay cut because of the impact of the Covid-19 crisis.

“We have always said that we believe that it was important for Stuff to have local ownership and it is our firm view that this is the best outcome for competition and consumers in New Zealand,” Nine chief executive Hugh Marks said.

• This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.
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Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A High Court judgment has revealed that an entity other than New Zealand Herald owner NZME is interested in buying the country’s biggest news publisher Stuff – and a deal could be done by the end of this month.

Stuff’s owner – Nine Entertainment in Australia – abandoned its negotiations with NZME after getting another offer from a prospective buyer, the judgment from Justice Sarah Katz revealed this week.

But the identity of the prospective owner is still under wraps.

READ MORE: A NZ without journalists: The implications of the combustion of our biggest news groups – James Hollings

NZME went to court last week seeking an injunction to prevent Nine Entertainment bargaining with any other buyer. It argued Stuff’s owner had breached the 14-day exclusive negotiation agreement it entered into with NZME on April 23.

Earlier it had announced it wanted to buy Stuff for $1 and asked the government to pass legislation expediting the deal, allowing it to skirt the need for Commerce Commission approval.

Nine Entertainment insisted no such deal had been agreed and negotiations with NZME were already over.

In court, Nine Entertainment’s lawyer accused NZME of damaging Stuff with its actions.

Commerce Commission permission not needed
Nine Entertainment said the alternative offer wouldn’t require permission from the Commerce Commission. It is now planning to complete the sale with the prospective third-party buyer on May 31.

So far NBR owner Todd Scott – who recently completed a buyout of the publication which began in 2012 – is the only person to publicly express interest in buying the business.

“We are very serious about taking over the liabilities of Stuff NZ,” he said in an online post earlier this month.

He said the Commerce Commission, the Minister of Broadcasting and the opposition Broadcasting spokesperson had been informed of his plan.

On Wedesday, he described Nine’s move as “logical” on Twitter and shared a link to an under-construction website combining the names of two Stuff newspapers – DominionPress.co.nz

Scott has named Australian private equity firm Anacacia Capital as a backer. Last week the firm refused to confirm to RNZ if it had an interest in a deal for Stuff.

In the judgment outlining her reason for declining NZME’s application for an injunction against Nine Entertainment, Justice Sarah Katz said on the face of it, there was a legitimate argument that Nine Entertainment breached the conditions of its exclusive negotiations period with NZME.

Unlikely Nine would accept NZME offer
But she concluded that the potential cost to Nine Entertainment of forcing it back into exclusive negotiations outweighed the price NZME would have to pay if she refused an injunction.

It was unlikely Nine Entertainment would accept NZME’s offer even if she forced it back to the bargaining table, because it didn’t want to accept a deal that would require Commerce Commission approval. Katz pointed to the fact that the government had already signaled it wouldn’t pass special legislation to allow the NZME-Stuff merger.

Meanwhile, Nine Entertainment’s separate deal with a third party might fall through if it had to resume negotiations with NZME, the decision said. Justice Katz noted that would also essentially force Nine to open its books to a competitor, despite having no intention of selling Stuff to that business.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Was New Zealand media giants NZME trying to pull a “fast one” when the company sought urgent approval to help to buy out rival media company Stuff for $1.

The New Zealand Herald owners filed an urgent Commerce Commission application at on Monday for the purchase – for $1 – and wanted to have the transaction complete by May 31.

In a who-will-blink-first move, it was seeking the government’s help with urgent legislation to help clear the way for the application.

READ MORE: NZME forces media merger issue – Colin Peacock, Mediawatch

The company revealed in a market announcement to the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) that it had entered an exclusive negotiation period with Stuff’s owner, Australian-based Nine Entertainment, on April 23.

However, Nine have said it “terminated” negotiations without a satisfactory conclusion.

As Andrew Holden, a journalist for more than 30 years, including five as editor of the Christchurch daily newspaper The Press, and four as editor-in-chief of The Age in Melbourne, told RNZ’s Nine-to-Noon programme yesterday:

“How strange it is, as Alice in Wonderland would say, it has become curiouser and curiouser.”

“At 9.34am, the New Zealand Herald website announcing precisely that, NZME has gone to the government and that it sought special legislation so it could circumvent the Commerce Commission and allow it to go ahead with the purchase,” the media commentator said.

“Pretty quickly Sinead Boucher, the CEO for Stuff comes back, and says the announcement was surprising to both to Nine and ourselves and not sure why NZME took this step given the clear message from our owners that there will be no transaction.

“That became more brutal when Nine entertainment issued its own statement to the Australian Stock Exchange saying not only that, but it had terminated further engagement with NZME,” he said.

Exclusive period
That forced NZME to issue another statement to the NZX saying as far as it was concerned it had an exclusive negotiation period with Nine and that had not finished.

“Further to that, we’ve had the regulator for the NZX asking some questions of NZME as to why their initial statement at 9.31am hadn’t mentioned the fact that talks had broken down, so there may be some further consequences,” Holden said.

“So basically, they are in a fundamental standoff and some of the commentators saying it was an attempt to bully the government,” he said.

“It leaves us in a very murky situation.”

There were also suggestions that a private equity firm in Australia were interested in Stuff, as was National Business Review owner Todd Scott.

With a day until the budget, and the government having already announced a $50 million first tranche of support for media, the question is whether NZME were already aware of what is in the budget?

Not so, said Dr Gavin Ellis, a former editor of The New Zealand and media commentator. He had a different take on what had taken place.

Budget process
“The budget process is such that it is not flexible enough to entertain 11th hour and 59th minute alterations,” Dr Ellis said.

“It is a bit puzzling I have to say,” he said of the whole process.

“The only development I’ve seen yesterday was a piece in The Australian about a medium sized private equity company having been in talks with Nine, apparently in conjunction with Todd Scott (NBR) but whether that was part of the ongoing discussion they had with a large number of people over a period of time with the possible sale of Stuff, I don’t know,” Dr Ellis told Pacific Media Watch.

His take was that there was a misunderstanding between the two parties.

“It seems to me that, both NZME and Nine, having made statements to their relative stock exchanges, that this appears to me not a matter of gamesmanship, so much as fundamental misunderstanding between the parties,” he said.

“They would not have made statements to the stock exchanges unless they believed it to be to current position because the consequences of misinforming the stock exchange are onerous.

“Particularly given that NZME share price rose yesterday,” Dr Ellis said.

‘Believed negotiations live’
“They must have believed the negotiations were live and that they were enlisting the aid of the Commerce Commission and potentially the government to ease the way for that sale to take place.

“The only unknown element is the role of Commerce Commission and the government, it is conceivable, and we’re privy to the financial details of Stuff or the liabilities that NZME would take on, but it is possible that if the government or the commerce commission were minded to facilitate a merger that they may put in place a number of binding conditions,” he said.

Meanwhile, Patrick Smellie of BusinessDesk in his column said: “Nine is ready to close Stuff down by May 31.

“It hasn’t said that publicly but BusinessDesk reliably understands that Nine has delivered that stark message to government ministers and officials,” he said.

“If Stuff were to close or were perhaps placed in receivership or liquidation next month, that could be the end not only for the country’s most-trafficked news website, but also a string of regional newspaper titles that are household names.”

That includes Wellington’s Dominion Post, Christchurch’s The Press, Hamilton’s Waikato Times, the Taranaki Daily News, the Timaru Herald, the Southland Times, and the Nelson Mail.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By RNZ News

NZME is insisting a deal for it to purchase media rival Stuff is still on the cards, despite Stuff’s owner saying it has wrapped up talks with no deal.

Stuff and NZME are seeking leave to appeal the High Court decision blocking their merger.

NZME said today it was asking the government to allow it to buy Stuff for a nominal $1.

READ MORE: NZME seeks urgent approval … to help ‘save jobs, newspapers’

Stuff’s owner, Australia’s Nine Entertainment, responded that it had terminated talks with NZME over a purchase plan last week and no deal was in place.

In the latest twist, NZME has since told the NZX that it believed it was still in a “binding exclusive negotiation period with Nine and does not accept that exclusivity has been validly terminated.”

Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher told staff this morning the announcement by NZME came as a surprise.

“There is no deal between NZME and Nine.

Clear no transaction message
“We are really not sure why NZME took this step, given the clear message from our owners that there would be no transaction.”

She said she would get more information and share it during the day.

In its initial announcement this morning, NZME said it was seeking Commerce Commission approval and special legislation from the government by the end of the month to purchase Stuff.

The commission has previously declined clearance for a merger of the two companies, saying it would substantially lessen competition, both for advertisers and readers. That decision was subsequently upheld by the High Court and the Court of Appeal.

NZME said in this morning’s market announcement the acquisition of Stuff would lower the costs of producing news, and ensure a committed local news media outlet into the future.

NZME believed the New Zealand media sector was too small for the current number of quality participants, the statement said.

“Consolidation is urgent in the face of dramatically declining advertising revenue and current general economic conditions.

NZME thinks it is ‘best owner’
“NZME continues to believe that it is the best owner for Stuff as it is best placed to preserve mastheads, newsrooms and jobs. NZME considers that in the current New Zealand media landscape, NZME’s acquisition of Stuff will not substantially lessen competition in any market.”

Last month NZME, which owns The New Zealand Herald, regional papers and radio stations including Newstalk ZB, announced 200 jobs would go due to sliding advertising revenue amid the covid-19 downturn. It also asked the remaining staff to take a 15 percent pay cut for the next three months.

Stuff also asked its employees to take a pay cut. Stuff staff earning more than $50,000 were asked to take a 15 percent reduction, the executive team 25 percent, and chief executive Sinead Boucher cut her salary by 40 percent.

Stuff was bought by Australian-listed media group Nine Entertainment in late 2018 but has been on the sale block for months.

In November last year NZME confirmed it had been in talks with Nine about a possible purchase and had put a proposal to the government regarding a possible transaction including a “ringfence” agreement for Stuff’s editorial operations.

Between them, NZME and Stuff own most of New Zealand’s newspapers.

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