unbelievable…
TVNZ wants less of election
Television New Zealand says it should be allowed to drop some of its election coverage because of terrible ratings.The broadcaster has long been required by law to broadcast political parties’ opening and closing election addresses.
But it says viewing patterns have changed and a sharp fall in ratings during the presentations – once central campaign events – justifies a change.
During the last election the opening addresses had ratings that were 38 per cent lower than the average for the six previous Saturday evenings.
“TVNZ has a commercial mandate … based on this we believe the requirement under the Broadcasting Act for us to provide free time to parties for opening and closing election statements, during primetime, is out of step,” a spokeswoman said. “Ratings support this point … we suggest that Parliament TV is better suited to this specific function.”
In a submission to the justice and electoral select committee, the broadcaster wants its obligations removed, or, alternatively, them extended to its commercial rivals.
…the saddest thing about this story is that it’s relegated to the business section and not the political section. You would think after the hate crime against public broadcasting that is Seven Sharp, TVNZ would be keen to lift their woeful game in terms of being a public broadcaster that challenges the powerful and fulfills its 4th estate obligations, not so. They want to dump one of the few things they are compelled to do and play political advertising during the election. Once every 3 years is hardly onerous and wanting to dump it because democracy doesn’t rate would be a sick sad joke if TVNZ weren’t being serious.
The solution is to extend this obligation across ALL media to play simultaneously party political broadcasts, not let TVNZ off the hook. These media companies who have been built by taxpayer dollars and lax media regulation legislation owe us the people of NZ to provide a platform for political parties to debate their ideas during an election.
It’s the least these media companies can do.
Only SOME of it! Boy! that’s a relief – at least we will be able to see all the bits that TV1 thinks is worthy, like the National Party opening address, and their walkabouts with all the handshaking and baby kissing. And of course, all the worthless promises.
I didn’t know John smoked.
That picture is hilarious. I’d definitely buy a calendar/fridge magnet/mug of like images.
He’s only holding it for a friend.
“Cos it makes him look cool. Reflected glory and all.
Just give half the TV political coverage time to good reporters like Martyn, Frank, and their ilk and the ratings will shoot sky high TVNZ, if you dare!
Stop sending us fake patsy excuses for Jouro’s using walking dead ones and bring some riveting comments and real hot activity to election time next time around!
Get the message why people go away in droves?
At least they (TVNZ) are honest with this, that they have a “commercial mandate”. That should actually disqualify them from being a public broadcaster, because once you make a broadcaster commercially dependent, all credit to be neutral and balanced goes out the window.
What was done with TVNZ should never have been allowed. But the misinformed, short sighted majority in the public let all this happen, many years ago, when the broadcasting fee was abolished, and advertising became a major source of funding.
The idiots thought that they would “save” money, but in reality they still pay for running TVNZ, by buying the products and services from the companies that advertise, which have the cost for advertising included. Now even children, buying an ice cream or so pay for it, they just don’t realise it, and think TV is for “free”.
I’d rather pay a bit in extra taxes than have my media depend on the cheque book of advertisers, who wield their power by expressing certain unspoken expectations.
Good call TVNZ, Parliment TV is the perfect place for all of the political spouting that goes on that no one is really interested in.
People rarely get excited by politics or politicians except the extreme lefties like you see on sites like this.
And on a Saturday evening??? There is so much going on out in the world instead of worrying about watching those muppets.
You can always read about it in the Herald the next day anyway…
I think that TVNZ should only show the Nats opening commercial and then only shots of our great leader smiling on the domestic and world stage to adoring masses. Only then will TVNZ meet it’s commercial objectives. A commercial/corporate TV promoting corporate/commercial interests.
Campbell did a story on hedgehogs tonite…..ffs…..then I changed to Ch1, for the first time in years…
Well, “light and fluffy” seems to work wonders for “Seven Sharpless”, doesn’t it?
Whilst I wouldn’t want to see “light and fluffy” dominate Campbell Live, at the same time, having Dead Serious Stuff all the time will also turn viewers off. To paraphrase our Dear Leader, “I think they have the right mix”…
I watched Campbell Live for the first time in months because they had stories on Auckland (because I live there). I gather that whenever he does programmes on Auckland he gets loads of complaints about being Auckland-centric, and fair enough. I have no interest in what’s happening in Ekatahuna, so I won’t be watching any programmes on it. However, if he is avoiding doing too many stories on Auckland, then he is missing a huge audience. Makes me wonder whether there is a need to some form of regionalisation for this segment that follows the national news.
Last night he would have been better to continue the Auckland series and leave out the hedgehogs. I actually switched off once the petrol story was done.
This might be a good time to copy and paste the remit for the BBC:
“The Charter defines the main objective of the BBC as the promotion of six public purposes. These are:
Sustaining citizenship and civil society
Promoting education and learning
Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence
Representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities
Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK
In promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television.”
The BBC has many critics, including those who have to pay quite high licence fees, but it makes them accountable. I suspect that it would be a hard ask to reintroduce licence fees, especially now that Netlix is available at a low monthly cost. It does show though that there are other responsibilities for a state run media outlet than just making a profit.
Just wondering whether TVNZ are softening us up for a profits warning. The new commercial-free internet media (that many of us are happy to pay for) will really hit them.
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