The future of news on TV is still in the balance after news of planned cuts at TVNZ and the complete closure of Newshub. The government is working on a policy but the prime minister has warned that media companies must innovate to survive just like other under-pressure industries. But does innovation pay off?
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The government has warned struggling news media companies not to expect subsidies or bailouts. The PM told reporters last week they must innovate to survive. Photo: The Press
While the fallout from the deputy prime minister's speech preoccupied political reporters earlier this past week, the broadcasting minister's muted response to proposed cuts at TVNZ and Newshub was on the radar for TVNZ's Benedict Collins.
Noting the prime minister's office had advised the media and communications minister to limit her communication with the media, he asked Melissa Lee bluntly: "Are you struggling in your portfolio?"
"No," she replied firmly.
"I agreed to do two interviews that I have actually cancelled," she confirmed, including one with Mediawatch.
Melissa Lee told RNZ said she feared that would have been "a bit boring" anyway, because she could not say a lot while making plans for media policy to take the cabinet.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said his office's advice to Lee was that she may want to wait until she got feedback on the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill which was going through the select committee process.
Previously, the minister said that commercial TV broadcasters' current news crisis had been some time in the making.
"Media companies will need to innovate just like every other company does in every other sector that's gone through tough and challenging and structural challenges," Luxon said at his post-Cabinet media conference last week.
"But I want to be quite clear. The ability for the government to step in and ... subsidise media companies is probably not the pathway that we will be looking to go down."
Does innovation mean remuneration?
These days innovating means following the audience and operating online. But those who do are not always rewarded with the required revenue.
Unless you can get enough online supporters or subscribers to pay, which also means trying to secure digital advertising - and the vast bulk of revenue from that goes offshore to the companies which have cornered that market.
Peter Newport innovated with Crux, an online-only new service based in Queenstown covering the Southern Lakes region.
It carries news and information updated daily. It has received some public money from NZ on Air for video content and from the Public Interest Journalism Fund.
"Crux has grown so much that our audience is bigger than the district we cover, in terms of people engaging with it online. In February, our unique users were over 130,000. We had over 300,000 pageviews, the average time on that page is up to two minutes long," Newport told Mediawatch.
"Those numbers mean we should be making a fortune in terms of advertising, but we're not," the former reporter and producer at TVNZ, the former TV3 and RNZ said.
What can replace national TV news if it dies?
"We need to sort out something fast. This can't be dominated by profit. It has to be dominated by public interest journalism and how it’s funded,” Newport told Mediawatch.
"I've worked in television news, more than I've worked in any other branch of journalism. I think we have to accept that linear viewing - if it's not dead already - needs to be dead. In New Zealand, we can't afford it.
"We've had 20 years to get used to technology. You can timeshift (TVNZ) 1News now so easily that it's virtually on-demand. It doesn't need to be seen as a broadcast product. We can make great traditional news stories ... for a fraction of what the traditional broadcast news people spend.
"We need to use the technology that's available to us. And we need to educate the audience that it's going to be delivered differently.
"What we should do instead is produce quality news across audio and video - and employ professionals and videographers-but put the packages online as soon as they're ready. Don't make people wait until six o'clock.”
When media are asked to innovate then couldn't the same be asked of governments? The structure set up 30 years ago - with commercial TVNZ, non-commercial RNZ and NZ on Air - is not ideal for the current digital era. And it is the government that oversees all that now.
"I think that's right. I think we all need to treat this like an earthquake - a civil, civic emergency. Then the government can get involved because they wouldn't say Cyclone Gabrielle isn't their problem - or an earthquake in Christchurch isn't their problem," he said.
"We can only fix it by working with government - and with Google and Meta - to get it fixed. Everybody has their own agenda. But if we can make journalism the focus - and not commercial success - we can start.
"We have to rescue the essence of journalism, and getting small but very professional is the first step. Then we can grow, but we have to survive first.
"One ‘green shoot’ is that there's still plenty of money even in a distressed advertising market. Today FM was put out of business because their revenue was only $6m - and they needed $7m to break even.
"Everything needs to be trimmed. The old days have gone, they've been kept alive ... by the wrong type of advertising for too long."
National network
Peter Newport Photo:
For the past year, Peter Newport has been promoting a nationwide network of local news sites like Crux - Regional News Network (RNN).
He was seeking financial backers and journalists to staff this very ambitious plan.
Even before the commercial crisis in news media deepened this month, that seemed like a very long shot.
The business manager with a background and online subscription sports coverage - Tim Martin - stepped away from the project earlier this year. There are no new details on the RNNZ website almost a year after it appeared.
Is the idea still a going concern?
"We have met Minister Melissa Lee - and previously Willie Jackson - quite a lot. Minister Lee has been very supportive," Newport said.
"In the regions, news ... is actually about social cohesion and economic development and the minister is the minister for economic development as well as media. We might be looking at some type of support that will get us going from a regional development point of view.
"But private investors do not want to have anything to do with news. We got that wrong. We discovered from private investors that news is toxic. But I think there is an appetite there from the government to find some way to support genuine innovation."
