Nope, it’s genius… Duke+1 is non-commercial at that time, TVNZ need all the ad-spend they can get right now. If they put it on 1 or 2, they’ll be chopping into space they can get cash for (or freebies which help get that cash). But having the govt to pay to put it on a channel that’s not eroding that income, in the right move.
Putting it on Duke +1 alone also keeps it separate from Duke, which is covering the Paralympics - the education channel in theory can go until 1-2pm most days, before daily coverage starts.
The entire series of Halifax: Retribution will be available on TVNZ OnDemand on Friday, September 10, at midday. The 7-part series, which debuted on Nine in Australia in August last year, had Rebecca Gibney reprising her role as forensic psychiatrist Jane Halifax. It also starred Anthony LaPaglia and Claudia Karvan.
TVNZ has also bought reality show Beauty and the Geek Australia, which aired on Nine earlier this year and was hosted by Sophie Monk. It will be shown on TVNZ2 and TVNZ OnDemand later this year.
Just a change in sky’s priorities, an FTA channel for sky would be fairly bottom rung now. Sky probably make more money selling it to TVNZ then what they would get in revenue on Prime. Plus they can probably still get their brand into the coverage (like they did with the Olympics) as well as advertising during the breaks.
Prime can continue to run as a low cost FTA channel by Sky, it has minimum local content already and anything that is would be NZ on Air subsidised. A lot of their output content would be a component of larger deals that Sky holds.
NZ on Air should stop funding programming on Prime if they are not willing to invest anything in their own programming. Otherwise it’s just a waste of taxpayer money on programmes that will not be watched by many.
EDIT: Just looked it up: Prime is!
ViacomCBS could buy it and rebrand it (over a few years) to 10, meaning they could cut costs and use the same packages on-air as 10 Aus, with only the voiceovers needing to be redone. Keep the deal with Newshub, rebrand that as 10 News First, and then attempt to buy up the rights to what they can of 10 Aus’ schedule, then effectively run the same programs, with only the sport/news potentially being different.
