TVNZ/RNZ merger killed – Winners, Losers, Predictions

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After launching a hate campaign that made the social media abuse Jacinda faced look tame, the private media alongside TVNZ management have killed the TVNZ/RNZ merger because they feared losing NZ on Air money.

Despite this being the anniversary of the Parliament Lawn protests and the clear evidence of what happens when you have a population led down conspiracy rabbit holes. The merger was supposed to build a platform of news that was respected and trusted so that the Parliament Lawn radicalism doesn’t happens again, unfortunately corporate media interests have trumped that.

 

WINNERS

Bread & Butter Politics: Bread and Butter Politics does two things, it puts delivery over ideology and because most middle class woke activists are gluten free vegans, they run a mile from Bread and Butter. So Chippy can redesign policy to delivery while freaking the woke to run away and stop alienating voters. Bread and Butter politics in the merger context means providing the content with extra NZ on Air funding while dumping the ideology which was the merger.

Fuck Boy Island: The crass clickbait shit TVNZ vomits up will continue to be vomited up.

Corporate Media: They will be delighted they’ve killed off any public broadcasting merger that was a threat to their networks.

NZ on Air Woke Clique: The woke clique who get NZ on Air funding will jump with joy at their ongoing ability to get millions to produce shit no one cares about. The Working Group that hits number 1 in the weekly political podcast charts doesn’t get a cent from NZ on Air.

Chippy back on ZB: Mike Hosking is an arsehole, but he’s the best arsehole in the game and the Prime mM minister of the Day has to front weekly on his show, Chippy is back doing that and did a strong debut performance.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

 

LOSERS:

Democracy: The radicalisation that demented the Parliament Lawn protests should have demanded the merger but Labour didn’t have the courage to make TVOne commercial free so NZ Democracy is ultimately weaker today.

Public Broadcasting: Is now a joke looking for a punchline.

Thomas Coughlan: Who described the Willie Jackson Q+A interview as a train wreck but didn’t call the Wayne Brown interview a train wreck. Most likely to never talk to another Labour Minister for the rest of the election.

Labour planning: Another big project they’ve dumped because they couldn’t articulate an argument. The Left’s reliance of deplatfoming and cancellation means we’ve lost the skill to actually argue our position anymore.

 

PREDICTIONS:

If Simon Power isn’t replaced right after the election for all his attempts to screw the scrum on this, I’ll be very surprised.

The NZ on Air Clique consisting of The Spinoff, RNZ and Stuff will continue to produce woke identity politics box ticking rather than journalism.

Our Democracy is a weaker place this week and our Fourth Estate are only guard dogs to their interests and lap dogs to the truly powerful.

Chippy better be cooking up something magnificent back there because we are all eating lots of dead rats out here.

 

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26 COMMENTS

  1. A disastrously right-wing decision, but probably a victory for the Right Faction and the corporate political donors.

    Bread and butter politics on the Left should revolve around public utilities and other state owned enterprises, so this is not a good sign at all.

    The idea that getting the merger ball rolling was going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars seems ridiculous to me. He could have taken two existing executives at RNZ, and put them in ultimate control of both TVNZ/RNZ programming and news. You’ve spent nothing — and yet he could still claim that “the merger is now progressing”, and that the signwriter will be around next year to change the name back to NZBC.

    (And even that could simply be a name change of two separate companies, rather than an actual merger — still costing virtually nothing!)

  2. The only winners from the cancellation of the merger, are those who benefit from the media status quo. The losers will be the audiences who will continue to be served reality dreck.

  3. “because most middle class woke activists are gluten free vegans, they run a mile from Bread and Butter.”
    Gold amongst the bombast- that quote wins Best Internet of the day and why I keep coming back to TDB.

  4. They can’t articulate the value proposition because there isn’t one.
    Just like Light Rail, COVID lock downs, 3 Waters, etc.
    Aside from that, Labour is just completely incapable of delivering anything, which is a good thing because all their ideas are awful.

    • We’re told by the anti-infrastructure shysters to believe that tramways in the major cities were a roaring success for decades, with a much smaller population, but are ‘impossible’ now.

      These same tax-dodging con artists want you to believe that a modern economy should have no railways, no trolleybuses, barely any freeways, barely any industry, not even one refinery — even though everybody already had all this in the 1930s, and the rising great powers have all this right now.

  5. “If Simon Power isn’t replaced right after the election for all his attempts to screw the scrum on this, I’ll be very surprised.”

    How the hell did he ever get the job in the first place is a question that Chippy should be asking. Sure, the commitment to ‘the revolving door’, and possibly wanting to appear fair and balanced by appointing gNat. They could have at least got someone like Chris Finlayson if they really did think they had to adhere to the now standard procedure

  6. Chippies chopping list just shows you that Cindy was out of her depth and having a mental episode at NZders expense.
    Someone should send her a bill for all of her fuck ups on her watch.

    • Be practical and pragmatic Denny. And remember the frequently applicable phrase to be used in NZ – ‘Someone else would probably have been worse’. We have to suck up so much that we have to be grateful when the smoothie offers some virtuous ingredients.

  7. This reflects on Jackson’s inability to sell the concept of improved broadcasting without bring race into it .The same could be said for Mahuta on 3 Waters. Race should not be involved in running public facilities

  8. Bread and Butter politics start with making a few things affordable
    housing
    education
    healthcare
    dental care
    public transport

    fuck island would have been the main diet on any new channel, after all hunger games is us, every one wants to be a winner and get fucked, and thus people watch that shite.
    Labour should have never spend the gazillion of dollars of public money on that travesty and their mates the consultants. But then the tax payer will pay, and both L and N have no issues with sending the bills high and fast to the tax payer for dues.

  9. Loser? The bank that would have lent this ovt the 400 million to piss away on a venture that is bound to fail (fail defined as not really improving the quality of programming). BTW…WHY have this merger? We have Maori TV for all those maori programme ideas they had lined up as part of the merger ? What’s they point then of having maori TV? Anyone who insists on hearing their language will surely tune into that?

    • Maybe because the commercialised T.V.N.Z. is total garbage that nobody even watches, whereas the B.B.C., the A.B.C. and S.B.S. are actually still quite good?

      • Agree Kristoff. Love BBC programmes. But you seriously think we have the nous or the skills here to create that kind of quality? Also, what about the TOW compliance conditions? Mate, it’ll be a slugfest of ‘affirmative programming’ boys and girls with guitars’ singing sad songs on the beaches and clifftops…all day and all night long. You see, BBC doesn’t have to make TV programmes that have to adhere to some woke charter. They just make good programmes.

  10. Totally agree Martyn. I think there should be a re-introduction of a charter for TVNZ. Perhaps the charter could eliminate programming choices such as FB Island!

  11. Chippy isn’t about bread and butter issues. He was there all the way when labour brought in their woke bullshit policies. Chippy s just doing this to win. Surely any fool can see through this

      • If we understand the politics going on so well and we can see right through Hipkiss then we have got to a place where we can do some actions that will get him to act and benefit the country. We will know what likely can be managed and how to save us from slipping on the banana skin. That is of course, only one of the banana skins, but hopefully we can stay upright and lessen the future numbers.

        Perhaps we can save important bits of our country from the wealthy and wannabe predators. We need to work with as good as a political person we can get and try hard to not be taken over by avatars and technological marvels out of comic books and science fiction. Don’t decimate Hipkiss – he may be Our Mate for a few years who keeps the dark shadow of unbridled capitalism at a distance.

        Don’t dream it’s over, the old ways, so keep up strength to manage the present and future – as best we can – our old vision of the future is past. Work with what we have.

        Crowded House’s words – Don’t Dream It’s Over are spot on.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjBwAYIxUso

  12. TVNZ profit is down because the advertising dollars are heading towards streaming and the internet. TVNZ can’t compete with the likes of Netflix but have spent a lot money on trying to digitally adapt. Someone tell me how the merger was going to fix the financial situation, unless you are robbing NZ on air money to prop up NZTV. They need to give a better news service that includes weekends and holidays and have a few good locally made programs and instead of showing shit just cut transmission hours. Get back to basics. The merger would be a waste of money IMO.

    • TVNZ were never supposed to operate using advertising revenue in the first place — it was supposed to be a public broadcaster funded by the licence fee. Indeed it was supposed to simply be the television division of the NZBC, and was spun out into a separate company for some incomprehensible reason.

      • Well KR you are right but the government of the day most likely felt that TV was growing out of itself along with its budget so went commercial. Imagine the scenario where you and I are paying a broadcasting fee along with the tax to fund this shit. Apart from news current affairs and locally made programs the rest is a luxury we can’t and shouldn’t afford. If we want to be entertained by good overseas programmes we should pay to stream them.

    • IIRR in the 1960s the Swiss did not have a national television public service with their own creations on it. They bought in what they broadcast. I have just looked up some detail on the Swiss system.

      …For a long time, the audio-visual public service was financed exclusively through public radio and tv reception fees, but with the introduction of TV advertising, new ways of financing could be found. Until very recently, the SRG budget was made of 75 % reception fees and 25 % advertising income. However, with ongoing digitalization, this income source has strongly declined, and new solutions must be found.

      In 1983, the SRG underwent another major transformation, when the media law was liberalized and private radios started to compete with the SRG. Ten years later, the same happened to television. Today, the audience is fragmented and there are numerous channels for every field of interest. Linear television will more and more be replaced by online on-demand content. This is why the SRG is aiming at a fifty-fifty solution and will offer half of its contents via traditional channels (broadcast) and the other half via Internet (broadband).

      But one of the greatest challenges the SRG ever had to face was not so long ago: March 2018 and the No Billag initiative. With 71.6 percent the Swiss people voted clearly in favour of the audio-visual public service. The SRG will go on and so will its exciting and rich changes. As an important pillar of public life, SRG is just as subject to technological and social change as the country as a whole, but it remains true to its principles: federalism and solidarity in diversity. The SRG is present in every one of the four language regions. The SRG is present for everyone.
      https://www.srgssr.ch/en/who-we-are/the-history-of-srg
      (The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG) will celebrate its hundredth anniversary in just over ten years. Founded in 1931 as the umbrella organisation for all radio companies, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (hence the abbreviation SRG) went through a lot of transformations and mastered a good deal of challenges. The «Chronicle of SRG» offers an overview of the main events since the foundation of SRG.

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