What does this even mean?
They could still do that without cutting the 1news website… run it in parallel with video content. I guess, seeming as they’re not, the traffic numbers for 1news.co.nz must be abysmal.
What they really need to do, and I’ve said it before, is to put their news on the platforms where people (and advertisers) are.
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They already do - but it’s just not really a destination website for news - unlike Stuff and NZH, and to a lesser extent RNZ.
I guess - and I don’t have any great insight here - is that they’d be battling to sell advertising to the news portion of the website given it is fourth in the market (and a distance fourth at that).
What is quite incredible is how pared back it will be by February - from a midday, 6pm, late news, Fair Go, Sunday and news website to really just 6pm and some online news clips.
This could be where the NZH partnership/trial comes into it. Pre-roll One News at 6 promos, livestream it on the NZH website etc. Or it could be a RNZ/TVNZ website merger by stealth…
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1 News report.
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Websites are in theory a lot cheaper to run than TV shows. And that works in the context that you’d expect them to be loss-making. They’re a form of marketing as much as they are products in and of themselves.
If they are making huge savings there, then there’s a good question of how much money they’re spending on technology/staffing/etc, that might be way in excess of what’s needed.
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Pretty much the same trajectory as Newshub’s demise to draw comparisons.
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Bad move if true, not sure there would be much if any duplication across those departments?
How much ‘other’ content is TVNZ actually producing anyway? Can’t imagine it’s very much.
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Definitely not.
And usually these are two departments that clash. For example, News has a breaking news story that they want to move into a rolling story for a couple of hours. They’d have to go to content/programming to ask to keep going/the time on air versus showing Deal or No Deal or whatever. The fact there is some natural tension/back and forth should be celebrated. Now it could just be content dictating what they do/when.
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Creates potential problems when TVNZ needs to report on itself. This is a good example. It also could be seen as deprioritising news at the executive level, if it means the HONCA role is going. It rarely goes well when a non-news exec is charged with making final decisions on news strategy.
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Part of me wonders how long it will be before the likes of Campbell and Dallow suddenly decide to take early retirement.
I suspect the long-term outcome is that TVNZ will stop making news altogether, instead outsourcing it to RNZ or NZME.
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Yep, hammer meets nail.
A Mark Jennings special from a couple of weeks ago:
Speculation is growing that TVNZ could do the same thing [as TV3] and outsource its news and perhaps make an even bigger saving.
NZME (publishers of the NZ Herald and owners of Newstalk ZB) would likely be interested. The company entered the bidding process to produce TV3’s news but lost out to Stuff. But a more palatable (for TVNZ’s owners) and likely candidate is RNZ.
RNZ has dabbled in news video since former Labour Minister of Broadcasting Clare Curran earmarked it to be a full-blown multi-media public broadcaster. Curran’s plan faded with her own demise, but RNZ could easily ramp-up if TVNZ decided to outsource. RNZ has more in-house TV and broadcasting capability than Stuff did when it took over the news reins at TV3. Its strong online news presence would also be helpful in counterbalancing the shutdown of the 1news site.
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They clearly need an ITN style business there.
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Stuff is reporting that TVNZ employees have been told confirmation decisions on “stage one” of the proposed changes will be announced on Tuesday, after the Labour Day long weekend.
As a reminder, the proposed changes so far include (from Stuff):
- Stopping 1news.co.nz in February 2025, and focus the youth platform Re: News solely on video storytelling
- Outsourcing some areas across TVNZ’s content workflows and technology (in FY26)
- Investing in news on TVNZ+ and establishing a new, dedicated team for this function
- Changes to some roster patterns
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The restructure of the proposed changes at TVNZ set to be announced today. Potentially.
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Good, but one wonders where they’ll slash costs instead then
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- Creating a new creative hub.
- Creating centres for excellence for data, analytics and AI.
- Bringing news and content together into a new division to drive audience and digital growth.
- Investing in News on TVNZ+ progressively to build audience and capability.
- Retaining a reduced 1news.co.nz while building news audiences on TVNZ+ and develop news capability on TVNZ+.
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