Update Tuesday p.m: TVNZ confirms it is cancelling Fair Go, Tonight and the Midday news, but will create four roles for coverage of consumer issues for its digital platforms. The fate of Sunday will be announced Wednesday.
Comment: Too often in corporate restructures, a plan to cut numerous jobs is first proposed, then ‘consulted on’ with staff and unsurprisingly turns out to be the final decision.
All the consulting and talk and willingness to hear staff suggestions for innovation, cutting their own pay or accepting worse conditions comes to nought. Jobs pencilled in for elimination get eliminated.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, staff at TVNZ will learn if their feedback on the plans to axe the Sunday current affairs programme, the Fair Go consumer show and roles at the youth news service Re. has counted for anything, or nothing. A total of 35 jobs in the news division are marked for the axe, from a total of 68 TVNZ-wide.
A plea for public support through the ‘Save our Stories’ video campaign has delivered a petition with 13,124 signatures, a little short of its 15,000 target.
Staff, and the state-owned company itself, have considered bids to NZ on Air for funding for, at least, the Sunday programme and its team of 20. But NZ on Air has its own existential issues and like all government funded agencies is under pressure to reduce its spending. News is unlikely to see any additional funding although NZ on Air executives are understood to be concerned that local current affairs content is rapidly disappearing from our screens.
As TVNZ’s board responds to a 2023 loss of $4.6m (widening to $16.7m after an impairment charge) and economic and business headwinds expected to last through this year, it is unlikely to relent on its demand for multimillion savings from the news and current affairs division.
Also on Wednesday, the NZ arm of the US media giant Warner Bros. Discovery will confirm to its staff what it will do in relation to its February plan to get out of the news business altogether.
It, too, sought staff feedback on any other options for cost-savings and alternatives to the blunt instrument of closure of the Newshub newsroom – and while it has been has fulfilling its legal obligations there’s unlikely to be much hesitation in the Park Ave, New York headquarters of WBD. The accumulated loss since its bought Three from MediaWorks must now be getting close to $100 million.
The number of roles at Newshub to be made redundant has never been specified by the company, but an estimate of 300 jobs in the overall WBD NZ organisation was mooted by a visiting WBD executive when the big announcement was made, and perhaps 200 could go in news.
Is there any hope of the news going on? A staff committee of journalists at Newshub went public early in the consultation process to say they would propose a way forward. This still awaits a response from the company.
One media observer has mused there could be what he called a “cobbling together” of some post-Newshub news operation.
At the time of announcement a number of news organisations expressed interest in finding a way to keep the 35-year-old voice of Three News/Newshub going in some form.
The newshub.co.nz website has attracted sizeable audiences over the past year, to sit third after Stuff and the nzherald.co.nz at one point and currently just fourth to RNZ. With around one million monthly readers on the Neilsen measure, it could be a vehicle for ongoing news if someone can work out a way to monetise that audience to pay the salaries of the staff who’d be required.
The Government has ruled out intervening to save Newshub jobs or programmes.
Could there be interest from one of Three’s competitors, such as Sky TV which until now has re-broadcast a programme of the Newshub at 6pm daily bulletin on its free-to-air channel?
The two biggest news firms, NZME and Stuff, could see merit in hiring some of the higher-profile journalists, or even trying to take on the newshub.co.nz site if that were possible in the eyes of the Commerce Commission.
But WBD NZ is just the latest owner of Three to burn big money in running the channel and its news operation. If it couldn’t see a profitable path forward, what might its competitors know to bring to the table?
The golden days of flowing advertising dollars are over for now and might not return this year or conceivably ever to their past levels of income.
Election year, and trust in media plummets
Trust in the NZ media slumped again in the election year just gone, according to the annual AUT Journalism Media & Democracy survey.
The survey of 1000 people online by Horizon Research found that general trust in news fell from 42 percent in March 2023 to 33 percent this March, putting NZ well under the international average of 40, equal with the UK and just above the US (32).
The number of Kiwis who are now actively avoiding the news “to some extent” jumped from 69 percent last year to 75 percent this year. The NZ news avoidance score was almost double the international average in a Reuters Digital News report last year. In the UK for example, just over 40 percent said they avoided news in this way.
TVNZ is the country’s biggest source for news, chosen by 58 percent of respondents, followed by Stuff (51), Newshub (43) and the NZ Herald (42).
Interestingly, when social media were included Facebook was a bigger source (53) than Stuff, making it second overall. YouTube, on 33 percent, was sixth, higher than RNZ on 30 percent.
All 17 news brands in the survey saw their trust score of between 0 (not trustworthy) and 10 (completely trustworthy) fall.
RNZ reported a survey by Research NZ that appeared to say that NZers clearly want access to a plurality of TV news whether they watch it or not. I don’t understand why the government isn’t acting with speed to put in place such things as levies on advertising and devices used to consume news simply because these can then pay for the production of news and current affairs. What of the next Gabrielle or pandemic if all we have is TVNZ half hour of news? I agree that TVNZ should be sold if this is what they do because the job of the state broadcaster is to inform far more than it is to entertain. NZ will be a laughing stock in the western world if we let this level of loss of sound journalism proceed.