I do have a shred of sadness if it turns out that TV3 wont have a news service anymore. A shred because it really is a shadow of its former self. It seemed like New Zealand had finally joined the rest of the developed world when finally private enterprise had been permitted to broadcast television news in competition with the state-owned enterprise, TVNZ.
However, when TV3 launched it was in the context of a transformation of TVNZ from the mixed-mode blended commercial/public service broadcaster to a fully fledged commercial broadcaster, which had dire consequences for the depth and breadth of TV news. Under CEO Julian Mounter, TVNZ achieved significant commercial success, but saw its news and current affairs shift towards the model seen largely in US local commercial broadcast news. Serious reporting of politics and world affairs got diluted in favour of crime, celebrities, sport and disaster, as the idea was to maximise the news audience by making it “accessible” (dumbed-down) and “relevant” (relatable). The preference being for stories to be binary in nature, like sport. Crime is easy – “bad person does bad thing to good person”. Disasters “bad thing happens to good people”. Nuance and depth of discussion around public policy and politics, or world affairs has little space in this. Indeed, the focus on international affairs was largely to “make it relevant” which from time to time meant finding a NZer in whatever country something was happening, so we might “understand” what it means. Of course, it worked in getting sheer numbers of viewers and pleasing advertisers, so TV3 entered the market finding it very hard indeed to attract enough people from TVNZ. So much so that TV3 effectively went into receivership in under a year, resulting in liberalisation of media foreign ownership laws so that there could be 100% foreign ownership of broadcasters.
Of course it was what happened to TVNZ that saw Lindsay Perigo leave TVNZ declaring its news and current affairs "braindead", and of course he was right.
TV3 news in the 1990s did have some highlights. It was notable in extending what was the half-hour news bulletin to one hour, at 6pm at the time of the Gulf War. TVNZ for some time claimed it had a “news hour” because it had half an hour of Holmes, but eventually relented and extended to one hour. TV3 took direct TV news feeds from NBC during the Gulf War, and TVNZ followed with ABC (US) and ITN. TV3 also for a while had a weekly current affairs show called The Ralston Group, hosted by Bill Ralston, which had him discussing issues of the week with four journalists/commentators from across the political spectrum.
Newshub today is a shadow of that, and is essentially indistinguishable from TVNZ. It’s far from clear why anyone would prefer either channel for news, short of personal preference around personalities. Both channels take a “once over lightly” approach to news, both are more than keen to place a major sports success for a NZ team as a lead story over war overseas. Both channels also have a statist leftwing slant to their bulletins, noting most recently their willingness to report statistics published by Hamas. The fact they are philosophically indistinguishable, and also indistinguishable in terms of depth and emphasis means that it is hard to miss Newshub. A tweet a few days ago asking what people think of the new Jetstar uniforms rather said it all for me.
So yes, it will be a shame if the only NZ television news comes from state-owned broadcasters. Yes I mean broadcasters, because Whakaata Maori (once known as Maori Television) is another TV broadcaster with news, although it is ideologically also statist, collectivist and left-wing in its bias. However, Newshub offered nothing new or different. It could have gone more in-depth, less populist and more serious, in the hope it could attract an audience of people with higher incomes, higher education and attractive to a smaller, but wealthier base for some advertisers. It could have been philosophically more pro-business, less-statist, less-collectivist more in the mould of Sky News Australia or GB News, which might have attracted an audience that was not keen on “woke”, identity politics or the solutions to problems being new laws or new taxpayer spending. It could have chosen to have a current affairs show at 7pm instead of the woeful The Project, which just was a variation on TVNZ’s Seven Blunt. Given its 200 or so staff, it’s astonishing how light in content Newshub is.
I hope TV3 can come back with some form of news broadcast, even if it collaborates with Sky, relegates international news to a rebroadcast of a foreign broadcaster’s content, and just sticks to reporting a shorter serious news bulletin. Having the state monopolise TV news just feels wrong, as of course there is no hope that the current government, given the presence of NZ First, would privatise TVNZ.
However, if it doesn’t happen, we wont have lost much, because NZ lost TV news that wasn’t braindead a long time ago. If you want something akin to Newshub, you just need to switch to One News.
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