We are still waiting on the details- staff have been told there will be 68 job losses, but the rest they’ll find out tomorrow.
The speculation in the media is that half of those job cuts will be in the newsroom. Fair Go and Sunday reportedly will be merged, Breakfast and Seven sharp are affected, as is the late bulletin.
Shortland Street will be cut down to three nights a week at some point, and the main news bulletin will reportedly be cut down to 30 minutes, but nothing is confirmed right now.
To be honest, if they want to save the ship, that is how brutal they need to be, particularly with that bulletin. That thing needs to be cut in half.
When I first started working at TVNZ slightly less than 20 years ago, senior news bosses were already talking about needing to do that. It is well overdue.
And it’s actually not unusual internationally to have shorter news bulletins. The Germans have a 15 minute bulletin at 8pm, In the UK, the BBC News at Six is half an hour, it happens all around the world.
Seven Sharp, it they want to be brutal, should probably be cut altogether- you can probably buy a half-hour programme from overseas for much cheaper to put in that slot.
I don't say this because I want this to happen, I don’t want less news on TV. I don’t want less New Zealand content on screens.
But we need to be realistic, people are turning the TV off. And TVNZ cannot keep spending this much money on a product that fewer and fewer people want to use. It's not sustainable to keep pumping the same amount of money in when you're getting less from it.
It's a little bit like the postal service. Fewer and fewer people are using it nowadays, so it has to change and trim the budget to reflect the demand.
You don't get post delivered five days a week anymore, you get it three days a week. And fewer people are watching the news, so it needs to cut costs.
And actually not just the news, it's the whole of TVNZ. At some point, there will be so few people watching linear TV, we will have to pull the plug altogether. In the same way that one day we will have to stop the postal deliveries.
There is some hope for TVNZ, they’re going hard investing in TVNZ Plus- which is their online platform that's like the TVNZ version of Netflix.
Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. But while that is the future, linear TV is not.
So these job losses, sadly, will not be the last.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
10 comments:
The only person I respect from tv1 is Peter Williams. When covid totalitarianism began, Peter has said publically that he wanted to show both sides of the story and when they said no he resigned. The rest stayed, I.presume for the money, to be the face of the new goebbels propaganda show. Go woke go broke tvnz. You are a disgrace to your country.
We've all said it and now it is reality. Unlike you Heather, I'm not in your industry, however if I treated my customers like the media have treated me and my fellow kiwis quite frankly I would be so happy just to still be in business. I have never heard one, not one, thank the public for funding and paying their wages while they dish up crap that's disturbing imo but not uncommon behavior for lefties.
It still stuns me that the media are not listening to the great ppl of this country who are only requesting fair , balanced and unbiased news yet still serving up their nasty agenda.
So, I will be cracking open a bottle, the reality of their demise will be lost on the vast majority of them, they will blame Trump or Israel or whoever for their situation of their very own making. Good riddance.
A good cost-cutting measure would be to get rid of the big names who get the huge salaries.
Campbell, Dallow, etc.
Now's the time to stick the knife in.
Review TVNZ's performance against their Charter then announce a raft of changes to ensure compliance, a fair and balanced public service and a slimmed-down operation that can live within its budget.
In the meantime, the government just needs to keep slowly turning off the funding tap making life harder.
As an outsider, looking at this state broadcaster's news - at least half of it is allocated to Maori protests, unbalanced by clearly Maori reporters, then criticism of Government, then highly edited international headlines, followed by a fluffy story.
Why do TVNZ need a cast of hundreds to produce such a low quality product by international standards ?
My partner turns on TVNZ every evening ritualistically as he has for the last 20 years.
It used to be something we could both watch. Now I have to retreat to another room for my health since it puts my blood pressure up. I agree with only about one third of the items and sometimes not even that. The sport and fluff are also irritating. We already have 15 minutes of sport which I can't stand either.
It can't be compared with the postal service at all since one is a technology change the other is largely an ideological one.
Face it TVNZ has sacrificed the beliefs of the wider audience, in exchange for
indoctrination in their leftist ideology. Did they ever consider doing a survey on what people actually wish to have as balanced news?
Anon 9.38, you are so right! And if we watch the news tonight it will be all about them, sob sob, as the leading story, plus blaming the current govt. I will watch it tonight actually just to see how bad it will be.
To anon @ 9.38am.
To answer your question.
Because it's not their money and they are very happy to use my money on their far left toxic agenda.
As DeeM often says perhaps pull out the charter and hold them to it.
I'm loving how this is playing out however!
They’ve canned Fair Go to try and generate public outrage and pressure the government to inject more cash. It was one of their highest rating shows. Breakfast should’ve gone before it.
Anon 12.15 - cancelling a high rating show for whatever reason goes to show how much the media has lost the plot.
Fair Go was aimed at the few percent of the population who speak Maori.
English only speakers in recent years would not fully understand it because of the flagrant use of te reo either deliberately to piss us off, or part of the indoctrination process.
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