Broadcasters back on top in fragmented market

One of the pre-requisites of déjà vu is that you knew what happened in the first place.

I have a feeling that the people flooding the New Zealand marketplace with streaming platforms offering boundless content are blissfully unaware of what happened to radio in New Zealand in the 1990s.

In 1989 the local radio market was deregulated and the number of stations rocketed. In 1984 there had been 22 stations but by 1999 the number had reached almost 300. Something had to give, and it did. Rapacious networks began swallowing up stations and the market rapidly became consolidated again.

I feel we are at the 1999 stage with streaming platforms, although the numbers are nowhere near as high as in the heyday of independent radio. Nonetheless we have gone from one dominant operator (Sky TV) to an array of separate operators, each offering the world of your dreams…for a price. There are at least 15 video streaming platforms in addition to Sky’s offering and the on demand services of TVNZ+, Three Now and Māori+.

The top seven, according to NZ on Air’s Where Are The Audiences? 2026 report, are Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Neon, Skysport Now, Apple TV+, and CrunchyRoll (no, I hadn’t heard of it either because I’m not a fan of anime). Then there are nine ‘others’, including Hulu, Acorn, Stan and F1TV (for keen motorsport enthusiasts).

Th NZ on Air/Varian audience research was released last week. You can access it here.   It suggests, to me at least, that we may be at the proliferation zenith and are starting to see changes that could lead to some consolidation of the market. Continue reading “Broadcasters back on top in fragmented market” →

Milestones: The punctuation marks of media moments

My attitude to milestones is somewhat ambivalent: On the one hand they mark notable events, but on the other they remind me that time presses on.

Speaking of presses, a milestone was reached last week with the announcement that NZME is to acquire the printing equipment from Stuff’s Petone plant. It will replace the behemoth that has printed the New Zealand Herald since 1995 in the purpose-built Ellerslie press hall, where I stood to watch redesigned newspapers come off the press under my watch as editor.

The Petone press is only a third the size of the machine that is housed in an iconic edifice beside the Southern Motorway at Ellerslie. It is also more modern and was relocated from Australia when Fairfax (then owner of Stuff) closed its Melbourne printing site at Tullemarine. Stuff is consolidating its printing to its more modern Christchurch plant (see Tuesday Commentary March 31 2026). 

More importantly, the Petone press is right-sized for the current circulation of the Herald.  When the Ellerslie plant was established three decades ago, the paper’s net paid circulation was well over 200,000. The Herald no longer publishes its circulation figures, but it is undoubtedly selling fewer than half the number the Goss HT70 presses were designed to pump out for each issue.

The agreement between Stuff and NZME is a good one. It ensures the equipment remains in New Zealand and push out another (inevitable) milestone. It will extend the life of the print edition of the country’s largest newspaper. NZME would not be replacing its presses if the print edition was about to be dropped. The company revealed last week that there would be annual operational savings of about $7 million a year, and that could be the deciding factor in maintaining a print edition longer than would otherwise be the case. On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether there is anyone looking to buy 30-year-old presses built for the golden age of newspapers. Continue reading “Milestones: The punctuation marks of media moments” →

A painless way to cut newsroom costs

Last September I warned of the prospect of news deserts developing in this country. Among my recommendations was a policy offering tax credits to news media organisations for the employment of journalists. The report was met with indifference by the politicians in a position to do something about the hollowing out of our news ecosystem.

Yesterday, the News and Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra released a report advocating the use of refundable tax offsets for the employment of journalists in Australia. It is an idea whose time has come – on both sides of the Tasman.

For two decades our news media have faced the profound effects of technological change on a business model that has become increasingly fragile. Part of their response to declining traditional revenue has been cuts to editorial staff. Those cuts have been made not with scalpels but with machetes. Our newsrooms are a shadow of what they once were, and regional newsrooms have suffered particularly deep incisions. Australia has suffered similar damage to its journalistic resource.

Payroll tax credits are not a new suggestion – such proposals have surfaced more than once in Australia. Canada and two U.S. states (New York and Illinois) have made them a reality. South Korea has an even broader scheme that embraces the creative industries, while France has tax incentives to encourage investment in news organisations. Continue reading “A painless way to cut newsroom costs” →

If you can read to the end, you are not the problem

Before my 18-year-old grandson returned to his Australian university after a short visit, I pressed to his chest a 10-page magazine article and told him to read it. It was the cover story from the August issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The story’s title was “The Age of Reading is Over”.

Earlier, his 15-year-old brother had told me how his class received a synopsis of the plot of Macbeth to help them understand Shakespeare. I said I could accept that (because my late mother’s Junior School Shakespeare copy of The Merchant of Venice has a preface that fully outlines the plot). Nevertheless, I showed him her copy of Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare and told him he should read that if the Bard’s blank verse and rhyming couplets were a problem. The bestseller retains as much Shakespearean language as possible while telling wonderful stories. A copy of it was waiting for him when he returned to Sydney.

My grandsons are children of the digital age. While my childhood was defined by the six inches by nine inches dimensions of a hardback book, theirs is defined by the size of the latest mobile screen they have been able to persuade their parents to buy – roughly half that of my childhood page. And, while they are adept scrollers, I am fairly certain they have never scrolled as far as I read as I consumed 285 pages of Charles Dickens’ close typed Tale of Two Cities.

Don’t get me wrong: My grandsons do read books, but their generation has been hardwired into screen-based information.

After reading Rose Horowitch’s deeply disturbing article in the Atlantic Monthly I felt I had to embark on a personal mission prove to her wrong…in some small way. The timing of my grandsons’ visit made them ideal targets. I thought I was off to a good start when the 18-year-old assured he would read the article on the flight home. Continue reading “If you can read to the end, you are not the problem” →