TVNZ has revealed it wants to retain a “reduced” version of the 1News website as the broadcaster pushes ahead with major changes to its business.
The decision to cut their website was always deeply insane.
Newshub was the 3rd biggest news site in the country and 1News was the biggest. Losing both would have been an enormous blow to Fourth Estate Journalism.
The true reason TVNZ are leaning into video is because they can streamline advertising directly into the content.
It’s purely cost cutting and penny pinching, fuck the impact on the wider media eco-system.
They have backed down because of the backlash but the solutions all reek of desperation and fear.
A spokesperson for TVNZ confirmed a series of changes today. They include
-
- Retaining a reduced 1News.co.nz while we build news audiences on TVNZ+ and develop news capability on TVNZ+
- 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
- Creating centres for excellence for data, analytics and AI
- Creating a new Creative Hub.
Nothing is clear because they are terrified the Union will attack them as savagely as they got attacked in the last round of cuts.
How to Save TVNZ + Public Broadcasting?
We need a mix of ideas:
Fund TVNZ 1 commercial free – If we can have commercial free radio, why not commercial free TV? By removing TV1 from the ratings, the advertising flow would immediately go to Newshub and allow them to stay on air. You save two birds with one stone.
NZ on Air ‘Read between the Flags’ Kiwi journalism – In a world of disinformation, we need journalism we can trust. We all get the ‘swim between the flag’ model of surf life saving, NZ on Air should be given extra funding for ‘Read between the flags’ Kiwi Journalism. This money is to ensure plurality of voice for independent media, Māori media, specific communities, news blogs and mainstream news media who become eligible if they agree to a set of Journalistic Principles. If you do agree and sign up, you are entitled to funding and must have a Kiwi Journalism flag on your site to show you are obliged to the Journalistic Principles Code of conduct.You would have an awareness campaign to urge NZers to ‘read between the flags’ for trusted information.
Promoting Journalism in the Pacifc to counter other influences – I think one way NZ could uniquely promote its interests into the Pacific could be via Journalism. AUT run the excellent Pacific Media Centre to promote quality Journalism throughout the Pacific. What if NZ saw the promotion of quality Journalism as a craft throughout the Pacific as a strong way to counter corruption and external influence? Scholarships, Pacific News Media websites and support of local ethical journalism, these could be the pillars of promoting corruption free politics and holding those Governments to account. Promotion of Journalistic standards throughout the Pacific could counter external influences and promote NZs strategic interests.
Māori Media – Māori TV & Māori Radio need a baseline increase rather than extra budget for collaborations because the bigger players give very little back.
The NZ population has always been too small for advertiser funded journalism, it has ALWAYS needed State support, add a broken market where social media takes all the revenue while providing none of the journalism and you have a hollowed out Fourth Estate that can’t be a watchdog to anything other than their own self interest.
Current policy is simply adding more money to Corporate News to cover the news they should be covering anyway and to fund echo chambers of elite opinion so that the Spinoff Story gets posted on RNZ who then co post it on Stuff who then co post it on newshub.
It’s the same people saying the same thing to the same echo chambers.
The last election was a warning that disinformation campaigns can wreck the trust in our system, a strong public broadcaster alongside an expanded NZ on Air journalism fund paid for via taxes on the social media currently gutting traditional journalism would be a bold vision that would seek to genuinely rebuild public broadcasting.
Unfortunately the Political Right want to keep you stupid and want to leash the fourth estate if not kill it off altogether.
We currently have a Broadcasting Minister who has washed here hands of the media meltdowns and actively wants the free market to kill off Newshub and mutilate TVNZ.
Democracy dies in darkness and all this Government is doing is turning off the lights.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
I honestly didn’t know that the 1News website was a thing and when I was searching for information it never appeared in the search results.
That said, I would never go there expecting to be informed because most of what TV News delivers consists of errors, omissions and outright lies.
Best they just shut it down. Not the website – all of TVNZ. LOL
As it has been said people watch the “news” so they know who to hate.
TV “News” is just another consumer product which has to make a profit
I stopped watching TV “News” in 1974 because I knew then it
just pandered to White, Right wing prejudice, ignorance and power
because that was and remains the most profitable demographic.
But now 50 years later TV is virtually dead.
It’s mostly only oldies who watch TV.
Who needs TV1. No one really.
Closing down TV1/TV2/TV3 would not be noticed a month later.
There are thousands of TV channels and sites like this all over the internet.
Ending TV1 50 years of promoting White Right wing prejudice would be long overdue and worthy of 10 hearty Seig Heil salutes.
Your chips are showing again Hone
Left wing countries control the media particularly Communist and Socialist,indeed the media in these countries is an extension of Government.
State TV without ads will turn into a woke super orgy of identity politics and victim worship. No one will watch it. TVNZ is doomed.
Advocacy and support for Pacific media – MFAT and foreign aid budget.
TVNZ need to use the online news site to get oldies to the news videos. Meantime work on a capacity to have page layers to their news videos storage (by topic to develop a record).
TVNZ should seek rich backers and general public donor funding to retain some semblance of a channel of public broadcasting till the end of free to air.
This is the time that real change comes.
Most likely the move to the Sky platform with Gold Cardies get set up with free service for “TVNZ” (without being online) at government cost. Others having to pay a sub for it.
What that means for online could include the issue of separation of public service TVNZ (news/doc/some sport/culture) for sub funding. And otherwise drama/some sport with ads.