As Google ramps up its threats, the broadcaster has been told it needs to be financially sustainable, explains Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin.
To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.
TVNZ proposes axing news website
It feels like deja vu: news arrived yesterday afternoon that more jobs are on the line at the state broadcaster, TVNZ, as part of a $30m cost saving exercise. As the Herald’s Katie Harris reported, the proposed cuts would see the 1News website closed, with resources directed into creating news content for TVNZ’s on demand service, TVNZ+. It’s also been proposed that the network’s youth-focussed site Re:News will focus solely on video content. It’s just a proposal so far (though we know how proposals like this tend to resolve). Earlier in the year, TVNZ confirmed the end of its long-running current affairs shows Sunday and Fair Go as part of a restructure, effectively ending long-form news on free to air television (the NZ On Air-funded interview programme Q+A is one of the few programmes that still survives).
The government has reiterated that TVNZ needs to be financially sustainable, reported Stuff’s Ryan Anderson, with media minister Paul Goldsmith saying the current challenges facing the broadcaster reflect those threatening the wider industry. “We’ve been clear that we expect TVNZ to be financially sustainable, and to be innovative and responsive to changing customer demands,” he said.
In yet another case of the news reporting on itself, 1News reported last night that it had requested an interview with TVNZ chief executive Jodi O’Donnell regarding the proposed changes but was told that would not happen until final decisions are made.
Is it the right move?
Writing for The Spinoff, Duncan Greive delicately argued why choosing to shutter its online operation might be a good move by TVNZ. “1news.co.nz’s core output is text-based news. There are two huge incumbents in that space in Stuff and the NZ Herald, with RNZ seemingly having taken over third place. There is no prospect of TVNZ running any of them down without massive investment – and the whole point of this exercise is to find a huge $30m in savings or new revenue.”
But perhaps the strongest argument in favour of the move, argued Greive, is that TVNZ now has the opportunity to “dominate video news more profoundly than at any point since the arrival of TV3 more than 30 years ago”.
Writing for Newsroom recently, Mark Jennings and Tim Murphy looked at the recent surge for RNZ’s website since Newshub’s closure in June. It’s practically doubled between July last year and this August, up to 1.56m monthly visitors and just a few hundred thousand behind the Stuff and Herald behemoths. As the pair explain, part of this sudden surge can be put down to RNZ’s decision to expand its digital offering beyond traditional news. Should 1News.co.nz ultimately close, it will be interesting to see whether the million or so monthly views that site attracted shift over to TVNZ’s video output or are picked up by other digital news providers.
Meanwhile, at Stuff
TVNZ isn’t alone in making cuts, as reported last week by the Herald’s Shayne Currie in his Media Insider column (paywalled). Stuff has brought its video and audio teams under one umbrella, reported Currie, resulting in a reduction in the number of audio roles. It recently canned its daily morning news podcast, Newsable, and reshaped it to focus on breaking news and developing stories. Meanwhile, it launched a new video brand in the Patrick Gower hosted “The F#$%ing News” – a brand targeted at covering “good” news stories.
On Mediawatch over the weekend, Hayden Donnell questioned whether there would be an audience for positivity in the news, noting previous failed attempts to showcase the good and the great of Aotearoa.
Speaking on The Fold this morning, former NZ Warner Bros head Glen Kyne said he wasn’t surprised that Stuff was going all in on video, especially given they were now the producers of the ThreeNews TV bulletin. “I think a lot of the opportunity they have now is to move into that video first storytelling in short form,” Kyne said. “The ability to use the talent to go deeper on a story, build out a story on video, give video that might not be available on ThreeNews.”
Google ramps up its threat
In the background of all of this, there’s more possible upheaval on the horizon for our news media. Late on Friday, Google sent shockwaves through the industry when it threatened to hide news stories from its search results if the government pushes ahead with plans to pass the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill (albeit an adjusted version of the Labour drafted law). That’s the bill, explained Duncan Greive in May, that would force tech companies to pay for sharing local content and was revived by the coalition (without the support of Act) after once looking like it had been killed off.
Glen Kyne, this time speaking with Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking, said the threat should be taken seriously as local news would struggle without the support of Google. In the Herald yesterday (paywalled), Shayne Currie revealed details of the cabinet paper drafted by the government that detailed what it saw as the benefits of the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. That included the ability for media companies to negotiate deals totalling up to $50 million a year. “Media companies themselves have stated they do not want handouts from government and have asked for a legislative backstop to support commercial outcomes,” said Goldsmith’s paper.