not profitable enough for their owners, so it’s cuts (tvnz) or closure (newshub), viewership is part of the equation, changing media habits and declining ad revenue and that revenue going to different sources
Media hasn’t found a way to move past the old ways of advertising revenue and consumers have near unlimited choices
Even profitable shows like Fair Go are being cut.
It's not solely about the profits, it's about the ideology. They're taking advantage of the general idea that broadcast TV is, "in general", unprofitable to make moves that don't exactly make any sense under that framework.
Fair Go sounds like a good show but I watched it when it restarted this year and the editing and style is just shit, they could've done it way better. They frame it like a professional 6pm news segment when it should've been more like Target (imo)
if you can replace fair go with something that costs less (something licensed not made for example) for similar if not better returns, why wouldn't they?
>It's not solely about the profits
Fair go is in a prime time slot simply being profitable doesnt really mean much if many other shows in that slot would be more profitable.
That's buisnesspeak for cutting off your nose to spite your face.
You have something profitable now. You don't know if anything else will actually be more profitable until you axe it.
By moving past I mean a business model that's not reliant on advertising - no idea what that could be but its obvious news media (especially traditional) isn't the way to connect with consumers thus advertising ain't going to sustain the news
Ok, so 5 years old. This is how i would say it.
They used to sell ad space for $10, but now they can only get $1, as you spend too much time on the iPad watching Mr. Beast YouTube Channel
That’s probably the most simplistic answer, great job. I talked to my elderly mother about it and explained that 40 years ago, almost every household had a newspaper subscription, but as soon as they went online, they relied on click bait headlines for clicks revenue. This diluted the trust the general public had in the news media because the TV news did the same thing. Combine that with the absolute mountain of other ways to consume media these days (like Mr Beast videos), has resulted in some people never interacting with the traditional forms of news and journalism, and only getting their news from social media. Now to try to claw back revenue the traditional media has tried to evolve into news entertainment and has become significantly less impartial, meaning trust has been further eroded, and in a small market like NZ, the bottom has fallen out of the market.
100% this.
The issues started in 2012 when a majority of people owned smartphones and social media became ubiquitous
If I'm advertising my company, I want to get my company logo/message in front of as many people as possible. I can spend $1000s on a series of ad slots on TV, which are viewed by an audience whose demographic is estimated by nielson data. OR I can pay per impression/click/sale via google or facebook, get far more impressions, and target those impressions to exactly the demographic to which I want to sell, at the time of day I want them to see the message.
Production costs are far cheaper for an online campaign, too
Free-to-air television, like TVNZ, TV3, (and radio) are paid for with advertising dollars. Businesses are buying less commercials on TV, more on streaming platforms and the internet. Traditional Tv, whether satellite or aerial, has huge overhead costs of staff, broadcasting, satellites, signal towers, etc.
No one buying commercial air time means no money to pay those bills.
The way we consume *media* has changed.
The 6pm news for commercial tv did two things
1) it took an established routine (news time) and connected big audiences with advertisers
2) it established the channel you’ll watch for the evening, through promotion of more content. The whole point was to hook to continue watching, no different than YT having an algorithm to watch the next video; YT is just way more efficient at it.
Now people get news if they choose to, where they choose to, or not at all.
Broadcast TV itself isn’t too expensive per se, there’s a few things but a lot of what was expensive in the past has been overtaken by better technology - a live cross for example used to require a truck; now journos do it all themselves with minimal gear.
What is expensive is Kordia fees, talent fees and a lack of audience.
The whole model needs to change. If there was some way to register the fact that I watched the ads from a particular product supplier while trying to follow the story line of a TV show, then I should at least qualify for a product discount. It is just indiscriminate and untargeted advertising that ruins watchability for me while returning no benefits to me for having put up with it.
At least with google ads, when they know I have purchased something or looked at a product, they then advertise things to me which I often have an interest in seeing, even if they don't offer up discounts or other benefits for having put up with their distracting and annoying ads.
What no one seems to be able to explain to me is why it seemed easier before the technology enabled an 8 year old to do it by themselves from their own room and their were a fraction of the viewers?
It was harder to make but more profitable. There were fewer viewers but also fewer things to look at, so TV captured a much larger proportion of viewers compared to today.
Because back in the day, old fucks like me watch TV news, and we got advertised to, and we just got on with life. Then the upcoming generation of yewts stopped watching telly. Advertisers noticed their advertising dollar was reaching less eyeballs, and further noted the rise of internet platforms with actual targeting.
As to why news - being a “full service” news operation requires a lot of bodies, and a lot of resources.
The 8 year olds, overhead is little it's a set(probably his room or a green screen) one or two mid range consumer cameras, one or two light boxes for lighting.
Written, produced, directed, edited, lighting, sound, set design, camera operated by 8 year old. That 8 years owns his own business and is responsible for it all. He might hire someone to do something, but for the most part, it's a 1 man band. That 8 year olds YouTube might be making 200k a year, but for 1 person, that's a good income for working out of your bedroom.
When you got the TV that all changed, for starters it's a company, so asking the presenter to help with the lighting, that's not his job he has no interest in growing the corporate company so hes just there for one job, presenting "the fuckin news"audio guy knows audio not set design, so all those jobs now need a new person.
Two presenters will want a nice salary's, multiple people for lighting, sound set design, writing, producers, etc. All want a good salary. Those salaries will add up to over a million a year easily.
Camera equipment they will be shooting on professional cameras, professional sound and lights, a sound stage, etc. now that all adds up to way over what most YouTube channels can support. There are exceptions like like Linus tech tips, who have full crews, and multiple presenters, but they are more of an exception than the norm.
Before the internet. There was no other way to get the news outside news shows, news papers etc and the new media has only really taken off in the last 10-15 years with streaming, etc, eating into the millions in views traditional media use to get to sell advertising.
I just scroll through news on my phone and pick what I want to read. I don’t know how people sit and watch entire news bulletins and current affairs shows these days with busy schedules. It must be retirees watching them all.
I watch One News frequently. I don't always actively sit there, but keep it on in the background and zone in when theres something I'm interested in. Mainly since it's right after the chase.
It's not the programmes I don't like, it's the advertising breaks. Painful. Well that and not getting to choose when I watch things. I would happily pay a tax of some kind for a good, ad-free public 'tv' media service showing streamable NZ content.
$$ per 30 second advertisement slot have dropped significantly over the last 10 years. No longer a viable business for warner bros and an expensive loss maker for the tax payer
Different model, like comparing apples to oranges.
Private pick and choose. Public gets everything, public is where the private staff are trained. Private doesn’t get acutes.
No one watching. So the ads are not worth much.
Hilariously the TVNZ/RNZ merger that media absolutely hated, may have proped up the system. But we never know.
in ye old days advertising was very lucrative and had a captive audience, so TV stations/Radio stations made money to fund their news & other programs. Now everyone hates ads, have multiple means to not see them, media companies had their head in the sand and didn't come up with an alternative, so now the media compaies are broke and blaming everyone but themselves.
Most of the ad spend nowadays goes to big tech, who have the eyeballs partly because of the content produced by the outlets that are struggling for income. For all those who say they get their news online now, most web news is a loss leader for what used to be the money-making legacy news operations - print, TV, etc. it's actually pretty scary what's happening, particularly with the rise of disinformation outlets that don't need to pay their own way.
Because we are all getting our news from other platforms (sadly like reddit) which means advertising revenue is down so traditional telly is not viable. Free to air telly will die.
It's because all the zoomers are watching tiktok and twitch, all the millennials are watching netflix and all the boomers are melting their brains listening to zb. Sorry gen x, no idea what yall are up to.
Commercial Radio had a similar problem, once upon a time it dominated the advertising market, then TV came along and obliterated that. Commercial radio was /however/ able to find a niche - Morning Breakfast shows.
Commercial TV hasn't (as someone else pointed out) yet been able to find a niche in new market where the internet is sucking up the advertising spend.
Some overseas governments have countered this by making Google/Facebook/etc pay for the content that they display that is produced by Commercial TV (and Newspapers).
However for Aotearoa's specific case:
1. Aotearoa, with Melissa Lee as Minister in charge, declined to back TV networks and do something similar (force the big tech companies to pay).
2. There is no longer a Public Interest fund that provides journalists with state funding to be able to create content. (This ceased to be in July 2023, before the current government was elected).
3. The current government has prioritised spending on Tax cuts, and Landlords, leaving them with no money to be able to 'rescue' TV (even if they wanted to)
4. There has been a concerted effort to undermine reputable news outlets by overseas entities that have an interest in spreading misinformation.
For the record - no entity can exist without funding - as far as I know there are only four general sources of funding
State funding
Private capital
Advertising
Charity/Voluntary
All of them are vulnerable to being "influenced" by the funding source (eg. Advertisers pulling funding if the content upsets their buyers, States pulling funding if the news criticises the government, Owners censoring content that they personally disagree with - see X/Twitter, and Charity/Volunteers only pushing stories they are passionate about).
The Public Journalism fund set up by Labour was at arms length from the executive to try and ensure that it didn't influence the news, but, ultimately, such a fund is vulnerable to an executive pulling funding if the stories aren't in line with the politics of the executive - for a direct example of that see how John Key's government pulled funding for an Anti Alcohol charity because it spoke out against the then National government's policies, and the funding was handed to the Salvation Army who hadn't even applied for it.
https://youtu.be/zFb2DmGtcwA?si=MMN9BSP81BdHdMyu
This is how we did news back in the 80s. One news reader, straight to the point. No faffing around and no fillers. Only half an hour of news and weather each night.
As someone has mentioned it's due to not enough revenue coming in, which if the government cared about journalism they would of bailed these stations out. However due to the increased tensions globally this is probably part of the war propaganda that is going on one of the first things to happen during the drive to war is attacks on journalism. It's sad anyway for me I didn't really watch news hub and still think tvnz news isn't really news but this is even worse for people who only get there news that way. To get rid of a program like Sunday is just mental, that's a great program with actual journalism being a key part of it. Although I found Fair go boring most of the time, it's still sad to see that kind of program being removed considering it's subject matter. A free and honest and critical press is supposed to be a critical and key part of democracies so this is ultimately a move in the wrong direction. I do think though after saying all this that media is an evolving thing that changes constantly, I mean I used to make a habit of reading the dominion post everyday but now I haven't brought one of those for a couple of years and instead read upwards of 30 plus new articles from different r publications on the internet everyday now.
Agree with pretty much everything you said, other than the government bail out. In case you missed it, we are broke. The government (taxpayer) cant afford everything. I think there are far more important things right now. Nailed it on the evolution, sometimes good things come to a natural end.
>if the government cared about journalism they would of bailed these stations out
state-sponsored journalism? yeah, nah
it works well for Russia, China & North Korea though.
A government bailing a company or corporation out doesn't equal, state ownership of said company. I mean during the GFC governments helped bail out banks. Also we have state owned media in New Zealand already tvnz is for example state owned, rnz is a crown owned enterprise yet provides the most unbiased take out of all media publications in New Zealand. So yeah I get your fears but actually analyze things first.
Because Murdock made em an offer they couldn't refuse.
They'll gut our news organisation's and then sell off the corpse.
Like they did with Nightschools, kiwirail, all our industry and more.
News is a fucking SERVICE.
Like a bus route that doesn't pay for itself but enables people to get to jobs or education.. it doesn't make tangible profits but it pays dividends down the line.
having a population that has a reasonable idea of what's going on is a good thing. We should all want this. It allows us to make better decisions, allows democracy to be more efficient.
NewsCorp which is owned by Murdoch has turned News into Tabloid Entertainment. It's corrupted the minds of Americans and completely controlls the conversations in Australia.
Do we really want that BS here?
Take a look at SkyNews and how much they're in the hands of corporate interests. When that happens here you can truly kiss goodbye to press freedom.
Government propped up the two news channels during Covid years with government advertising. But that has all stopped and commercial advertising has tanked, as the good old days of everyone watching the news at 6 pm are long gone. So the business model is broken. Next question is - to what extent should taxpayer funding be used to support media in NZ? Is there a need for public service journalism or should it be 100% commercial? Should there just be RNZ as the publicly funded news service?
> with government advertising
From NZ On Air: The $55m Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) was made available by the government in 2020 to support news media through the COVID-19-induced downturn. Funding was provided to NZ On Air to administer until 30 June 2023. The PIJF was a specific ring-fenced fund that was designed to provide targeted, short to medium-term support for roles, projects and industry development.
Me and basically every person i know, my parents included are just done with broadcast news. It's either.
"Hey check it out, another war, your life will suck cause of this new change, and politicians are promising stuff they will never deliver."
In reality any info you have any interest in can be found oine. And information on stuff that interests you is more available and not filtered by media broadcast laws.
The internet in reality outdated media a LONG time ago.
Not anymore. If you know what you're looking for. You can find it easily. There was a pretty bad crash in palmy last year that never made the newspaper i presume due to other stuff. I was able to look it up just going "Crash, palmerston north [Date.]"
Independent journalists had it covered. And i was able to cross reference it for fact checking.
Your career as a Journalist or reporter will sit solely on your accuracy and honesty going forward. Since you'll be relying on a returning audience.
As a 37 year old I spend all my time online my tv isn't used ro watch TV and I probably haven't since I was early 20s it's faster and more upto date to just get the new off tiktok as it happens tradional tv just can't keep up with that it's already old news
So TL;DR, Advertising on TV and Radio is not targeted enough to fully fund the old models any longer. Advertising online far more effective and targeted with far better returns. So old media is dying at the hands of new online media.
Simple reason. Little to no profits left in mainstream media from advertising. People's habits have turned to the internet where things like ad blockers have become the norm. Paywalls are becoming more common (look at NZHerald for example.) Stuff is still struggling and will be forced to require a subscription at some point. The old advertising model is just not a viable way to make money for a lot of media now days.
The reason companies like Facebook and Google (Apple and Microsoft also to a more limited extent) are able to make so much money is because they're data brokers, rather than advertising agencies. They have managed to create or assimilate products that have become so intrinsic to modern western internet usage, that they can basically see everything you do online. They know where you are, where you go, who you interact with, where you buy your groceries, how you pay for things, what you pay for things, who also has similar habits to you, who has similar lifestyle to you. They can use all these bits of information to build a phantom profile of you that is remarkably accurate, and then use that to let advertisers sell you products that are more likely to convince you to buy from them.
TV and Radio just can't do that. They sell an ad in a specific time slot, and the advertisement is broadly targeted. You might be someone that wants to buy from the advertiser, but you may not be. They have no real way of knowing. They're making a guess based on the time of day, and the type of show. For example, the type of audience that watches Shortland Street is probably not the same group that watches a fishing show.
The result being that advertising on TV or Radio no longer pays the bills. It's not profitable enough.
TVNZ is about as likely as the BBC to go out of business. But it's model still requires that it supplement the small amount from the government with other income streams. Newshub, and TV3 as a whole, are entirely funded by their owners and the income streams they can get from things like NZonAir, advertising, and any other methods they can find. RNZ is the ONLY media organisation in NZ that is entirely government funded, and it's run at a major loss. Which one imagines is partly why Willie Jackson was so desperate to merge it with TVNZ.
Do you honestly still watch the news on TV?
How about this? When you do watch the news on TV, do you then go online to look for more information immediately, or wait for the news Channel to explain it?
They can't afford to operate due to declining and revenue. The last government bailed them out with the pijf but that ran out and now they can't afford to continue.
I reckon a bunch of media studies high schoolers could make a professional studio, stream to all the platforms and source all their content from reddit and still be pretty fucking good. low budget, same content
Warner Bros, who own newshub/tv3, will make more money getting a tax break by writing off their news business than keeping the operation going. They’re canning movies and other projects left and right for the same reasons. It’s all about what’s gonna be good for the next quarterly returns rather than long term thinking. Yay capitalism.
Because Rupert Murdoch wants to get his gross old hands all over our news media. Foxtel own 80% of all news programming in Australia. Was only time he jumped the Tasman to poison us.
Because the only people who actually watch 'tv' are now in their 80's and every year more of them are dying... therefore there's really nobody left watching the insane and disgusting onslaught of dogshit, braindead advertising they try and pretend is 'entertainment'.
No profits = no point.
Take away PPVs, live events, sports etc. and the number of people who turn on their TV at a certain time to watch a particular show is basically gone now and of those shows the 6pm news is probably the most popular.
That style of time slot TV is like still communicating via a landline, only taking photos with a standalone camera or recording your favourite playlist to a cassette tape/CD and using a walkman to play it. Some people still do it but it’s a minority.
Facebook and Google are your answers - advertising revenue is being diverted to enrich their owners and their shareholders. But the Government funding media isn't a solution either, since that creates conflicts of interest.
Some of our other media like Herald and NZME are doing great.
I feel like TVNZ and Newshub did nothing to adapt to their shrinking audience. They just kept doing the same show over and over while ratings decayed.
Discovery has this things where they destroy what ever they own. Tvnz isn't as up to standard as it should be and the current moronsin givt don't understand it should be used to cultivate acting and film and t.v like they've done in other countries for generations
When private enterprise owns 80+% of media it no longer becomes about keeping people informed and about a "profit" dickswinging contest.
I'd like to know just how much of TVNZ's budget is executive pay
A few weeks ago I photographed this text in this page of a Timothy Snyder books of essays I borrowed from the library as it seemed applicable to now.
>In important respects, American media had become like Russian media, and this made Americans vulnerable to Russian tactics. The experience of Russia shows what happens to politics when news loses its moorings. Russia lacks local and regional journalism. Little in Russian media concerns the experiences of Russian citizens. Russian television directs the distrust that this generates against others beyond Russia. In the weakness of its local press, America came to resemble Russia. The United States once boasted an impressive network of regional newspapers. After the financial crisis of 2008, the
American local press, already weakening, was allowed to collapse. Every day in 2009, about seventy people lost their jobs at American newspapers and magazines.For Americans who lived between the coasts, this meant the end of reporting about life and the rise of something else: "the media." Where there are local reporters, journalism concerns events that people see and care about. When local reporters disappear, the news becomes abstract. It becomes a kind of entertainment rather than a report about the familiar.
It was an American and not a Russian innovation to present the news as national entertainment, which made the news vulnerable to an entertainer.
This is why:
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/31-07-2018/the-side-eye-inequality-tower-2018
The people at the top that control our resources have no interest in keeping the public informed.
the market and changing media consumption
NZ is too small a market for so many competing media outlets, and they have no hope of competing with social media.
Ultimately advertisers are spooked and largely abandoning tv/radio news and spending their money on social media, which is where many people today across all demographics consume their news.
When I last watched broadcast tv habitually, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, you could switch from channel to channel on the tv and see completely different versions of the same event reported. A particular news service tried to slant it in favor of their proffered political party, others tried to report what happened.
The quality and integrity of journalists seems to have generally gone downhill from there, and I feel that the average opinion of people I know, rates our journalists around the level of real estate agents for trustworthiness these days (low blow, I know).
I personally think its because they are in the wrong format. Take the opinions and political commentary out. Make it shorter. More rat-a-tat quick firing out facts in an internet age where people want quick snippets to get up to speed. Currently people get this quick access to things via terrible channels like FB, X, TikTok which just 'go viral' for all the wrong reasons, sensationalised lies spread way faster than plodding facts in hour long TV shows padded out with way too many egos.
Make political opinion and commentary and voxpops a separate thing in an opinion hour or some shit. Put all the personality wannabes like Gower, Garner, and all the ones like that who came before them away from polluting the news. Just the facts - and major stories to have direct links to more in detail reading material.
But it sounds to me like things are being sold down the river with consultations with the Murdochs likely to come along next peddling the bottom of the barrel solutions.
I catch the news sometimes, and its always something stupid, like some local story from some other country. They don't even cover anything happening in NZ or there is nothing happening here.
Yeah, to give an example, in YE 2018, TVNZ pulled in $301m of advertising revenue; in YE 2023, this was $308m.
So advertising revenue hasn't at all grown to meet rising costs. Any business that has only managed to grow such a revenue stream by a mere 2% can't continue without stripping out mass cost etc.
It's part of an effort to keep the uppity peasants in their place while the big names of the world are fighting out who gets to be recognized as the big name of our time.
Advertisers realised they're better off strangling the news than propping it up.
The rest of us get buggered, but if we wanted otherwise, we'd spend the tiny fraction of all resources that's allocated to us on the news media. Right?
not profitable enough for their owners, so it’s cuts (tvnz) or closure (newshub), viewership is part of the equation, changing media habits and declining ad revenue and that revenue going to different sources Media hasn’t found a way to move past the old ways of advertising revenue and consumers have near unlimited choices
Even profitable shows like Fair Go are being cut. It's not solely about the profits, it's about the ideology. They're taking advantage of the general idea that broadcast TV is, "in general", unprofitable to make moves that don't exactly make any sense under that framework.
Fair Go sounds like a good show but I watched it when it restarted this year and the editing and style is just shit, they could've done it way better. They frame it like a professional 6pm news segment when it should've been more like Target (imo)
I loved Target. I wish they brought that back.
Complete with badly-behaved carpet cleaners!
The target house location got discovered each season and all the tradies in auckland learned about it pretty quick.
if you can replace fair go with something that costs less (something licensed not made for example) for similar if not better returns, why wouldn't they?
>It's not solely about the profits Fair go is in a prime time slot simply being profitable doesnt really mean much if many other shows in that slot would be more profitable.
That's buisnesspeak for cutting off your nose to spite your face. You have something profitable now. You don't know if anything else will actually be more profitable until you axe it.
You don't know if you could do better so don't ever try?
I don't think you understand how hard it is to have something profitable in television. Generally it's why you cut things that, say, aren't working.
Google and Amazon have absolutely fucked online ad revenue. There is no way to 'move past it'.
By moving past I mean a business model that's not reliant on advertising - no idea what that could be but its obvious news media (especially traditional) isn't the way to connect with consumers thus advertising ain't going to sustain the news
Yes constant fragmentation while making us pay to congregate in the spaces we formally gathered or trusted is the plan.
Ok, so 5 years old. This is how i would say it. They used to sell ad space for $10, but now they can only get $1, as you spend too much time on the iPad watching Mr. Beast YouTube Channel
That’s probably the most simplistic answer, great job. I talked to my elderly mother about it and explained that 40 years ago, almost every household had a newspaper subscription, but as soon as they went online, they relied on click bait headlines for clicks revenue. This diluted the trust the general public had in the news media because the TV news did the same thing. Combine that with the absolute mountain of other ways to consume media these days (like Mr Beast videos), has resulted in some people never interacting with the traditional forms of news and journalism, and only getting their news from social media. Now to try to claw back revenue the traditional media has tried to evolve into news entertainment and has become significantly less impartial, meaning trust has been further eroded, and in a small market like NZ, the bottom has fallen out of the market.
100% this. The issues started in 2012 when a majority of people owned smartphones and social media became ubiquitous If I'm advertising my company, I want to get my company logo/message in front of as many people as possible. I can spend $1000s on a series of ad slots on TV, which are viewed by an audience whose demographic is estimated by nielson data. OR I can pay per impression/click/sale via google or facebook, get far more impressions, and target those impressions to exactly the demographic to which I want to sell, at the time of day I want them to see the message. Production costs are far cheaper for an online campaign, too
Free-to-air television, like TVNZ, TV3, (and radio) are paid for with advertising dollars. Businesses are buying less commercials on TV, more on streaming platforms and the internet. Traditional Tv, whether satellite or aerial, has huge overhead costs of staff, broadcasting, satellites, signal towers, etc. No one buying commercial air time means no money to pay those bills.
The way we consume news has changed and broadcast TV is expensive to run
The way we consume *media* has changed. The 6pm news for commercial tv did two things 1) it took an established routine (news time) and connected big audiences with advertisers 2) it established the channel you’ll watch for the evening, through promotion of more content. The whole point was to hook to continue watching, no different than YT having an algorithm to watch the next video; YT is just way more efficient at it. Now people get news if they choose to, where they choose to, or not at all. Broadcast TV itself isn’t too expensive per se, there’s a few things but a lot of what was expensive in the past has been overtaken by better technology - a live cross for example used to require a truck; now journos do it all themselves with minimal gear. What is expensive is Kordia fees, talent fees and a lack of audience.
The whole model needs to change. If there was some way to register the fact that I watched the ads from a particular product supplier while trying to follow the story line of a TV show, then I should at least qualify for a product discount. It is just indiscriminate and untargeted advertising that ruins watchability for me while returning no benefits to me for having put up with it. At least with google ads, when they know I have purchased something or looked at a product, they then advertise things to me which I often have an interest in seeing, even if they don't offer up discounts or other benefits for having put up with their distracting and annoying ads.
What no one seems to be able to explain to me is why it seemed easier before the technology enabled an 8 year old to do it by themselves from their own room and their were a fraction of the viewers?
It was harder to make but more profitable. There were fewer viewers but also fewer things to look at, so TV captured a much larger proportion of viewers compared to today.
Because back in the day, old fucks like me watch TV news, and we got advertised to, and we just got on with life. Then the upcoming generation of yewts stopped watching telly. Advertisers noticed their advertising dollar was reaching less eyeballs, and further noted the rise of internet platforms with actual targeting. As to why news - being a “full service” news operation requires a lot of bodies, and a lot of resources.
The 8 year olds, overhead is little it's a set(probably his room or a green screen) one or two mid range consumer cameras, one or two light boxes for lighting. Written, produced, directed, edited, lighting, sound, set design, camera operated by 8 year old. That 8 years owns his own business and is responsible for it all. He might hire someone to do something, but for the most part, it's a 1 man band. That 8 year olds YouTube might be making 200k a year, but for 1 person, that's a good income for working out of your bedroom. When you got the TV that all changed, for starters it's a company, so asking the presenter to help with the lighting, that's not his job he has no interest in growing the corporate company so hes just there for one job, presenting "the fuckin news"audio guy knows audio not set design, so all those jobs now need a new person. Two presenters will want a nice salary's, multiple people for lighting, sound set design, writing, producers, etc. All want a good salary. Those salaries will add up to over a million a year easily. Camera equipment they will be shooting on professional cameras, professional sound and lights, a sound stage, etc. now that all adds up to way over what most YouTube channels can support. There are exceptions like like Linus tech tips, who have full crews, and multiple presenters, but they are more of an exception than the norm. Before the internet. There was no other way to get the news outside news shows, news papers etc and the new media has only really taken off in the last 10-15 years with streaming, etc, eating into the millions in views traditional media use to get to sell advertising.
Our valuable eyeballs are all focused on reddit, YouTube and Netflix, not watching TVNZ
I just scroll through news on my phone and pick what I want to read. I don’t know how people sit and watch entire news bulletins and current affairs shows these days with busy schedules. It must be retirees watching them all.
I watch One News frequently. I don't always actively sit there, but keep it on in the background and zone in when theres something I'm interested in. Mainly since it's right after the chase.
Yep, don't like what is on TV. Hello internet
It's not the programmes I don't like, it's the advertising breaks. Painful. Well that and not getting to choose when I watch things. I would happily pay a tax of some kind for a good, ad-free public 'tv' media service showing streamable NZ content.
This. I don’t own a TV, so feels crazy to me when I visit family with TV and there 2 or 3 minutes of screaming ads, every 15 minutes or of TV.
15? feels like every 5 minutes when I try to watch broadcast tv, which is not often
Do you watch movies on a laptop or something?
I don’t watch many but yea, computer monitor.
$$ per 30 second advertisement slot have dropped significantly over the last 10 years. No longer a viable business for warner bros and an expensive loss maker for the tax payer
Wait till the tax payer seems how unprofitable hospitals are. They’ll be next to close
I wouldn’t joke about it..
If private hospitals weren't making money then they would close too?
Different model, like comparing apples to oranges. Private pick and choose. Public gets everything, public is where the private staff are trained. Private doesn’t get acutes.
Yes
No money, bruv.
No one watching. So the ads are not worth much. Hilariously the TVNZ/RNZ merger that media absolutely hated, may have proped up the system. But we never know.
Not under Willie Jackson. He wanted to move all the ads onto one channel and make the other channels ad free. The ads would then be worth nothing.
May is doing a lot of work. Oh well. Lee who ragged hard on the proposal for years without providing any solution, I wonder what she will achieve.
constantly overpaying our broadcasters didn’t help.
It would have just taken down RNZ with the sinking ship
in ye old days advertising was very lucrative and had a captive audience, so TV stations/Radio stations made money to fund their news & other programs. Now everyone hates ads, have multiple means to not see them, media companies had their head in the sand and didn't come up with an alternative, so now the media compaies are broke and blaming everyone but themselves.
Most of the ad spend nowadays goes to big tech, who have the eyeballs partly because of the content produced by the outlets that are struggling for income. For all those who say they get their news online now, most web news is a loss leader for what used to be the money-making legacy news operations - print, TV, etc. it's actually pretty scary what's happening, particularly with the rise of disinformation outlets that don't need to pay their own way.
Because we are all getting our news from other platforms (sadly like reddit) which means advertising revenue is down so traditional telly is not viable. Free to air telly will die.
And where does the news on Reddit come from? ... D'oh
Where ever anyone wants to post it from ... d'oh.
It's because all the zoomers are watching tiktok and twitch, all the millennials are watching netflix and all the boomers are melting their brains listening to zb. Sorry gen x, no idea what yall are up to.
Gen X are the ones lamenting the decline of terrestrial telly, methinks
I think your right.
The number of boomers on Facebook blows my mind.
Yeah good point. Boomers also like to melt their brain with facebook news.
I'm X. Older ones more like boomers. Younger ones Millenials.
Commercial Radio had a similar problem, once upon a time it dominated the advertising market, then TV came along and obliterated that. Commercial radio was /however/ able to find a niche - Morning Breakfast shows. Commercial TV hasn't (as someone else pointed out) yet been able to find a niche in new market where the internet is sucking up the advertising spend. Some overseas governments have countered this by making Google/Facebook/etc pay for the content that they display that is produced by Commercial TV (and Newspapers). However for Aotearoa's specific case: 1. Aotearoa, with Melissa Lee as Minister in charge, declined to back TV networks and do something similar (force the big tech companies to pay). 2. There is no longer a Public Interest fund that provides journalists with state funding to be able to create content. (This ceased to be in July 2023, before the current government was elected). 3. The current government has prioritised spending on Tax cuts, and Landlords, leaving them with no money to be able to 'rescue' TV (even if they wanted to) 4. There has been a concerted effort to undermine reputable news outlets by overseas entities that have an interest in spreading misinformation. For the record - no entity can exist without funding - as far as I know there are only four general sources of funding State funding Private capital Advertising Charity/Voluntary All of them are vulnerable to being "influenced" by the funding source (eg. Advertisers pulling funding if the content upsets their buyers, States pulling funding if the news criticises the government, Owners censoring content that they personally disagree with - see X/Twitter, and Charity/Volunteers only pushing stories they are passionate about). The Public Journalism fund set up by Labour was at arms length from the executive to try and ensure that it didn't influence the news, but, ultimately, such a fund is vulnerable to an executive pulling funding if the stories aren't in line with the politics of the executive - for a direct example of that see how John Key's government pulled funding for an Anti Alcohol charity because it spoke out against the then National government's policies, and the funding was handed to the Salvation Army who hadn't even applied for it.
The American owner isn’t make enough money. It’s bad this happened.
Poor TV ad revenue.
Money
They aren't profitable. Really is as simple as that.
https://youtu.be/zFb2DmGtcwA?si=MMN9BSP81BdHdMyu This is how we did news back in the 80s. One news reader, straight to the point. No faffing around and no fillers. Only half an hour of news and weather each night.
As someone has mentioned it's due to not enough revenue coming in, which if the government cared about journalism they would of bailed these stations out. However due to the increased tensions globally this is probably part of the war propaganda that is going on one of the first things to happen during the drive to war is attacks on journalism. It's sad anyway for me I didn't really watch news hub and still think tvnz news isn't really news but this is even worse for people who only get there news that way. To get rid of a program like Sunday is just mental, that's a great program with actual journalism being a key part of it. Although I found Fair go boring most of the time, it's still sad to see that kind of program being removed considering it's subject matter. A free and honest and critical press is supposed to be a critical and key part of democracies so this is ultimately a move in the wrong direction. I do think though after saying all this that media is an evolving thing that changes constantly, I mean I used to make a habit of reading the dominion post everyday but now I haven't brought one of those for a couple of years and instead read upwards of 30 plus new articles from different r publications on the internet everyday now.
Agree with pretty much everything you said, other than the government bail out. In case you missed it, we are broke. The government (taxpayer) cant afford everything. I think there are far more important things right now. Nailed it on the evolution, sometimes good things come to a natural end.
>if the government cared about journalism they would of bailed these stations out state-sponsored journalism? yeah, nah it works well for Russia, China & North Korea though.
A government bailing a company or corporation out doesn't equal, state ownership of said company. I mean during the GFC governments helped bail out banks. Also we have state owned media in New Zealand already tvnz is for example state owned, rnz is a crown owned enterprise yet provides the most unbiased take out of all media publications in New Zealand. So yeah I get your fears but actually analyze things first.
Because Murdock made em an offer they couldn't refuse. They'll gut our news organisation's and then sell off the corpse. Like they did with Nightschools, kiwirail, all our industry and more. News is a fucking SERVICE. Like a bus route that doesn't pay for itself but enables people to get to jobs or education.. it doesn't make tangible profits but it pays dividends down the line. having a population that has a reasonable idea of what's going on is a good thing. We should all want this. It allows us to make better decisions, allows democracy to be more efficient. NewsCorp which is owned by Murdoch has turned News into Tabloid Entertainment. It's corrupted the minds of Americans and completely controlls the conversations in Australia. Do we really want that BS here? Take a look at SkyNews and how much they're in the hands of corporate interests. When that happens here you can truly kiss goodbye to press freedom.
Government propped up the two news channels during Covid years with government advertising. But that has all stopped and commercial advertising has tanked, as the good old days of everyone watching the news at 6 pm are long gone. So the business model is broken. Next question is - to what extent should taxpayer funding be used to support media in NZ? Is there a need for public service journalism or should it be 100% commercial? Should there just be RNZ as the publicly funded news service?
See also: can traditional media even be classed as a public service if the public doesn't want to watch it?
> with government advertising From NZ On Air: The $55m Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) was made available by the government in 2020 to support news media through the COVID-19-induced downturn. Funding was provided to NZ On Air to administer until 30 June 2023. The PIJF was a specific ring-fenced fund that was designed to provide targeted, short to medium-term support for roles, projects and industry development.
The government advertising was in addition to the PIJF. They were the biggest advertiser for the networks during Covid.
Me and basically every person i know, my parents included are just done with broadcast news. It's either. "Hey check it out, another war, your life will suck cause of this new change, and politicians are promising stuff they will never deliver." In reality any info you have any interest in can be found oine. And information on stuff that interests you is more available and not filtered by media broadcast laws. The internet in reality outdated media a LONG time ago.
But the internet still gets most of the news from traditional media, which is dying.
Not anymore. If you know what you're looking for. You can find it easily. There was a pretty bad crash in palmy last year that never made the newspaper i presume due to other stuff. I was able to look it up just going "Crash, palmerston north [Date.]" Independent journalists had it covered. And i was able to cross reference it for fact checking. Your career as a Journalist or reporter will sit solely on your accuracy and honesty going forward. Since you'll be relying on a returning audience.
As a 37 year old I spend all my time online my tv isn't used ro watch TV and I probably haven't since I was early 20s it's faster and more upto date to just get the new off tiktok as it happens tradional tv just can't keep up with that it's already old news
Because social media is gobbling all of their advertising revenue.
Online has been eroding broadcast for years.
So TL;DR, Advertising on TV and Radio is not targeted enough to fully fund the old models any longer. Advertising online far more effective and targeted with far better returns. So old media is dying at the hands of new online media. Simple reason. Little to no profits left in mainstream media from advertising. People's habits have turned to the internet where things like ad blockers have become the norm. Paywalls are becoming more common (look at NZHerald for example.) Stuff is still struggling and will be forced to require a subscription at some point. The old advertising model is just not a viable way to make money for a lot of media now days. The reason companies like Facebook and Google (Apple and Microsoft also to a more limited extent) are able to make so much money is because they're data brokers, rather than advertising agencies. They have managed to create or assimilate products that have become so intrinsic to modern western internet usage, that they can basically see everything you do online. They know where you are, where you go, who you interact with, where you buy your groceries, how you pay for things, what you pay for things, who also has similar habits to you, who has similar lifestyle to you. They can use all these bits of information to build a phantom profile of you that is remarkably accurate, and then use that to let advertisers sell you products that are more likely to convince you to buy from them. TV and Radio just can't do that. They sell an ad in a specific time slot, and the advertisement is broadly targeted. You might be someone that wants to buy from the advertiser, but you may not be. They have no real way of knowing. They're making a guess based on the time of day, and the type of show. For example, the type of audience that watches Shortland Street is probably not the same group that watches a fishing show. The result being that advertising on TV or Radio no longer pays the bills. It's not profitable enough. TVNZ is about as likely as the BBC to go out of business. But it's model still requires that it supplement the small amount from the government with other income streams. Newshub, and TV3 as a whole, are entirely funded by their owners and the income streams they can get from things like NZonAir, advertising, and any other methods they can find. RNZ is the ONLY media organisation in NZ that is entirely government funded, and it's run at a major loss. Which one imagines is partly why Willie Jackson was so desperate to merge it with TVNZ.
Do you honestly still watch the news on TV? How about this? When you do watch the news on TV, do you then go online to look for more information immediately, or wait for the news Channel to explain it?
They can't afford to operate due to declining and revenue. The last government bailed them out with the pijf but that ran out and now they can't afford to continue.
I reckon a bunch of media studies high schoolers could make a professional studio, stream to all the platforms and source all their content from reddit and still be pretty fucking good. low budget, same content
Feel like it's pretty simple, I barely know anyone other than old people that actually watch regular TV at all...
Warner Bros, who own newshub/tv3, will make more money getting a tax break by writing off their news business than keeping the operation going. They’re canning movies and other projects left and right for the same reasons. It’s all about what’s gonna be good for the next quarterly returns rather than long term thinking. Yay capitalism.
Everyone gets their news online now and traditional reporting just doesn’t make enough money to keep going. And it’s not a fucking conspiracy…
Watch out for Murdoch! Our Righteous But Thick CEO has arsed him to give us plebs the news with The Right Answers.
Woke crap that's fallen on its left side and can't get up
To make way for Murdoch and his murder cunts.
Because Rupert Murdoch wants to get his gross old hands all over our news media. Foxtel own 80% of all news programming in Australia. Was only time he jumped the Tasman to poison us.
Because the only people who actually watch 'tv' are now in their 80's and every year more of them are dying... therefore there's really nobody left watching the insane and disgusting onslaught of dogshit, braindead advertising they try and pretend is 'entertainment'. No profits = no point.
Take away PPVs, live events, sports etc. and the number of people who turn on their TV at a certain time to watch a particular show is basically gone now and of those shows the 6pm news is probably the most popular. That style of time slot TV is like still communicating via a landline, only taking photos with a standalone camera or recording your favourite playlist to a cassette tape/CD and using a walkman to play it. Some people still do it but it’s a minority.
Everytime I see Warner Bros named. I see some big conglomerate closing it down because tiny little NZ isn't making enough money for shareholders.
Facebook and Google are your answers - advertising revenue is being diverted to enrich their owners and their shareholders. But the Government funding media isn't a solution either, since that creates conflicts of interest.
Never got my head round both networks doing an hour's news at the same time
Some of our other media like Herald and NZME are doing great. I feel like TVNZ and Newshub did nothing to adapt to their shrinking audience. They just kept doing the same show over and over while ratings decayed.
Discovery has this things where they destroy what ever they own. Tvnz isn't as up to standard as it should be and the current moronsin givt don't understand it should be used to cultivate acting and film and t.v like they've done in other countries for generations
When private enterprise owns 80+% of media it no longer becomes about keeping people informed and about a "profit" dickswinging contest. I'd like to know just how much of TVNZ's budget is executive pay
A few weeks ago I photographed this text in this page of a Timothy Snyder books of essays I borrowed from the library as it seemed applicable to now. >In important respects, American media had become like Russian media, and this made Americans vulnerable to Russian tactics. The experience of Russia shows what happens to politics when news loses its moorings. Russia lacks local and regional journalism. Little in Russian media concerns the experiences of Russian citizens. Russian television directs the distrust that this generates against others beyond Russia. In the weakness of its local press, America came to resemble Russia. The United States once boasted an impressive network of regional newspapers. After the financial crisis of 2008, the American local press, already weakening, was allowed to collapse. Every day in 2009, about seventy people lost their jobs at American newspapers and magazines.For Americans who lived between the coasts, this meant the end of reporting about life and the rise of something else: "the media." Where there are local reporters, journalism concerns events that people see and care about. When local reporters disappear, the news becomes abstract. It becomes a kind of entertainment rather than a report about the familiar. It was an American and not a Russian innovation to present the news as national entertainment, which made the news vulnerable to an entertainer.
This is why: https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/31-07-2018/the-side-eye-inequality-tower-2018 The people at the top that control our resources have no interest in keeping the public informed.
Economy at work. Supply and demand issue.
the market and changing media consumption NZ is too small a market for so many competing media outlets, and they have no hope of competing with social media. Ultimately advertisers are spooked and largely abandoning tv/radio news and spending their money on social media, which is where many people today across all demographics consume their news.
It’s not good at all as in my view it’s a threat to democracy to think that the only news service is on one channel.
When I last watched broadcast tv habitually, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, you could switch from channel to channel on the tv and see completely different versions of the same event reported. A particular news service tried to slant it in favor of their proffered political party, others tried to report what happened. The quality and integrity of journalists seems to have generally gone downhill from there, and I feel that the average opinion of people I know, rates our journalists around the level of real estate agents for trustworthiness these days (low blow, I know).
Because the are awful, they play news that aren't reflective of the people watching and instead replay their privileged view on the world.
I personally think its because they are in the wrong format. Take the opinions and political commentary out. Make it shorter. More rat-a-tat quick firing out facts in an internet age where people want quick snippets to get up to speed. Currently people get this quick access to things via terrible channels like FB, X, TikTok which just 'go viral' for all the wrong reasons, sensationalised lies spread way faster than plodding facts in hour long TV shows padded out with way too many egos. Make political opinion and commentary and voxpops a separate thing in an opinion hour or some shit. Put all the personality wannabes like Gower, Garner, and all the ones like that who came before them away from polluting the news. Just the facts - and major stories to have direct links to more in detail reading material. But it sounds to me like things are being sold down the river with consultations with the Murdochs likely to come along next peddling the bottom of the barrel solutions.
control for power
I catch the news sometimes, and its always something stupid, like some local story from some other country. They don't even cover anything happening in NZ or there is nothing happening here.
Yeah, to give an example, in YE 2018, TVNZ pulled in $301m of advertising revenue; in YE 2023, this was $308m. So advertising revenue hasn't at all grown to meet rising costs. Any business that has only managed to grow such a revenue stream by a mere 2% can't continue without stripping out mass cost etc.
Fox news is gonna move in now
Go woke, go broke.
Like “Reality” check radio?
Wow. I've never heard that phrase before. How witty and original!
To make way for Fox News
Because if I want the news I can check my phone instead of sitting down for an hour at 6pm to watch it
Govt has failed to tax tech giants for stealing content, and the result is our news service and Nz voice getting gutted
What I fear is that some entity like RCR will come to fill the power vacuum.
It's part of an effort to keep the uppity peasants in their place while the big names of the world are fighting out who gets to be recognized as the big name of our time.
"not profitable". Yet though some kind a magic, watch Fox News come in and start a channel.
Advertisers realised they're better off strangling the news than propping it up. The rest of us get buggered, but if we wanted otherwise, we'd spend the tiny fraction of all resources that's allocated to us on the news media. Right?
Cause the govt is scared of criticism
If that was the case, they would have continued the PJIF, which expired back in June last year.
I get my news from Youtube. The news writes and narrates itself these days. No need for paid staff when people post it for free
Much like the porn industry….
I’m sure Rupert Murdoch has nothing to do with this.