Nice timeline here from Paula Penfold:
This is what happened on Newshub’s worst day:
https://t.co/Z16zNTVbcN
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What does the general wider NZ population think?
Surely there must be a bit of an outcry for the government to do something here.
Hard to know, it’s obviously been a big story this week but hard to get an idea from people who aren’t media obsessive - I think people will miss it more when it’s gone.
The government have made it clear they don’t intervene.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens, because we could be seeing this happen with the 10 network in coming years.
I work in a processing plant and it has been topic of discussion for a few groups of people. Many prefer Newshub and will refuse to watch 1 News, quite a few gutted about other decisions WBD are making regarding programming.
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Intervene to try and save or intervene to require news output?
Time for intervention has kind of gone though
Wished that Media and Communications minister Melissa Lee could introduce legislation about paying social media News content
It’s all well and good but look at what Meta did in Australia, walked away from the deals they signed with Australian media.
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Both - I think.
But I can’t see it happening.
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TVNZ absolutely right to reject any joint venture - media plurality is important - TV news being all provided by one provider is not good for journalism and not good for democracy. But on the flip side TVNZ being the only provider of TV news isn’t good news either.
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TV is the new video rental shop. The only people still using it regularly are the people who can’t afford Netflix or can’t understand how to set it up.
There is no point trying to save Newshub’s newsroom. Throwing money at it is only wasting money because the number of viewers will just keep dropping until it closes again. Saving it will only delay the inevitable. It will eventually close, just like the video shop.
The only justification for pumping money into Newshub to save it would be to give it more time to innovate into a product we might actually use in the future. But this product already exists. It’s every news site that carries video online. We have plenty of those already.
Very sad for all involved not only at newshub but media in general
Look at what happened with today fm as an example
I just hope something good comes out of this but i think the writing was on the wall a long time ago
Sure, they walked away. What happens next is unknown though. Under the law they must be in an agreement or be fined.
Hard to tell since we’re not privy to how dire the situation is at TVNZ, but I find their 48-hours of consideration to be a sign this was a instinctual rejection rather than anything well thought out, or attempted to be negotiated further.
That’s a pretty dumb decision to me. It’s arguably worse that they didn’t know Newshub was in the process of failing when they reacted in that way.
Both TVNZ and Newshub, over the past 15 years, have vastly reduced the number of news events where they will send camera crews out to cover. Especially on public holidays and weekends.
There are many events, e.g. light news stories/speeches/press conferences, where camera crews can often be doing duplicative work. It seems obvious, in that case, to have arrangements in order to pool resources in certain circumstances, so that as a whole, the sector can cover more stories than it otherwise could.
It’s not on TVNZ to rescue the situation though, for a whole range of reasons. If WBD can’t make news work, that’s a problem for them to attempt to solve (which includes what they’re doing, in walking away from it).
A reduction in news ‘voices’ isn’t great and it’s becoming the unfortunate reality of increasing costs and decreasing revenues, but there is no positive outcome either way (service folds or merges).
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Never said it was TVNZ’s responsibility to rescue the situation - hence why I said it’s arguably worse that they didn’t know Newshub was in the process of failing when they reacted to the proposal.
I just think it’s probably worse for TVNZ’s own interests, and also for the media environment in general, to ignore offers for more collaboration and greater cross-subsidisation of ongoing costs.
e.g. It doesn’t make sense from a structural point of view for TVNZ, RNZ, and Newshub to send three camera crews to a single must-capture media conference where there’s almost zero editorial value to having three teams doing what is effectively duplicate work.
Many situations like these already exist, and it’s worth looking at how you can pool your resources to cover those situations, while using the freed-up capacity to cover more stories or to create a better differentiated product at each organisation.
In the UK - a much bigger country (population-wise, anyway!) with a much more vibrant media landscape - this is already done, particularly for royal events. There is something called ‘the pool’, which BBC, ITN and Sky are all part of, and they take it in turns to report on/film royal events (i.e. the King’s Christmas speech). If the Brits can do it I can’t see why NZ can’t, though I suppose this is all academic now.
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Yep, a simple pool system that many countries already have. Given, Newshub sounded like they wanted something broader.
But I assume it would’ve at least begun with a pooling system similar for things like the Beehive stand-ups or for other predictable stories.
TVNZ giving it a day and a half of thought and going back with a hard no, suggests to me they aren’t interested in having the conversation to begin with.
“It was very much an opening conversation that we thought would give way to more talks where we expected there would be a willingness and desire to find collaborative industry solutions, and figure out in more detail, together, on what the new operation could look like; and we would only want to do this in collaboration with TVNZ,” Kyne said.
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Glen Kyne, Warner Bros Discovery’s senior vice president and head of networks, said learning of TVNZ’s latest big financial losses on Friday made TVNZ’s decision to reject the agency proposal “truly baffling”.
The company that slashed their news division is “truly baffled” that another company doesn’t want to step in to pick up their slack. Talk about out-of-touch!
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Pool cameras are already used by TVNZ, Newshub & RNZ, for certain events. Oddly, most of the organisations rely on RNZ as the pool camera operator.
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