Historically the NZ market was never big enough to support a public service broadcasting model tv channel, particularly one that could still provide the overseas content New Zealanders wanted to see.
I think the closest we’ve come to that is Maori television, but its news abilities were defanged under Pita Sharples when corporate iwi objected to investigative journalism around kohanga reo.
Be interesting to try it though.
RNZ has the sword of Damocles over it most of the time.
Broadcast television died the day the internet became an ordinary household service.
It’s just taken the last 25 years for its carcass to start to smell.
The actual broadcast infrastructure was profitable, so much so that the government separated Broadcast Communications Limited (BCL, later Kordia) from TVNZ to stop BCL from subsidizing the non-profitable parts of TVNZ. From then on FTA TV has been circling the drain, a race to the bottom chasing advertising dollars. Now it’s just a licensor of Disney and Warner’s content.
I haven’t watched broadcast TV at home in close to a decade, and our TV isn’t even hooked up to an aerial any more, and probably never will be. Even before that, I preferred to read the news rather than watch it.
I just had brief look at their website, their reporting is also nothing special. A bizarre number of stories about John Key’s opinions on things, for some reason.
Yep, it’s been over a decade since I watched terrestrial TV. Seeing it at my mum’s was a shock. I couldn’t watch it. She also has TalkBack radio on all day…
We watch the chase and the news most nights, which are good for the kids imho. We watch the odd housing show or doco on tv as well, although all of this can be streamed on tvnz+.
Wasn’t there journalism funding from the government that went from COVID until recently? I wonder if cutting that was the last straw since they mention advertising dollars have dried up (something the government funding was meant to help).
As I understand it, it wasn’t: “Here’s some money so you don’t go broke”
And more like: “We commission you to write articles about the subjects of X, Y, and Z”
Personally I get the hesitation for state funded journalism, but I would read RNZ over Newshub any day. Interestingly, there is a lot of syndication between the major media outlets so you get a lot of the same stories anyway.
As soon as journalism is for profit it cannot be impartial. It’s either chasing eyeballs for advertisers or its funding is contingent on not upsetting the vested interests.
Commissioning content is just fine, it’s no different to any other public spending.
Yeah, it’s a nice idea, but the world is fully of countries with state funded journalism and in general it cannot be trusted. It’s hard, because the commercialisation of the media is what keeps it independent of the government it criticises.
In NZ I trust the state funded media the most, but world wide that is not the case at all.
Add comment