Tag: TV3

Time to rethink the nightly news and current affairs offering

 

It may be time for television broadcasters to see the writing on the wall and cut their early evening news offering to a total of an hour – 30 minutes of news and the rest devoted to current affairs.

They have ample reason to think that the days have gone when they could hold large audiences until 7.30 pm with material that was even loosely news-based.

Warner Bros-Discovery NZ is already partway to that conclusion, announcing last week that The Project will not be renewed next year. TV3’s owner did say it would be replaced by “a redefined news show in the 7 pm slot”. The as yet undefined nature of that programme has led to speculation that Patrick Gower may be the beneficiary of the vacated timeslot.

However, both Discovery and TVNZ had a very hard 2022-3 financial year. In spite of both networks cracking hearty about prospects for the current year, the fact is that broadcast television is looking into the same sunset that newspapers have long contemplated.

Added to that is a drift away from news bulletins. When NZ on Air started its Where Are The Audiences? surveys in 2014, the total television audience peaked at about 70 per cent in the 6 pm to 8.30 pm timeslot. This year, the peak in that time slot was 37 per cent of the potential audience. Given the rate of decline, next year the news slot is likely to attract less than half the audience it boasted a decade earlier. Continue reading “Time to rethink the nightly news and current affairs offering” →

It was graphic election night coverage and a touch of déjà vu

It would be far too boastful to use the phrase ‘great minds think alike’ but the Herald’s Simon Wilson and I had the same thought on the general election result: There is a parallel with what happened in Britain in 1945. British voters turned their back on the man who had led them through the Second World War, and New Zealanders wanted to turn their backs on storm and pestilence.

Wilson commented that Churchill’s rival, Labour leader Clement Atlee, promised a welfare state, and that looked like the kind of peace voters believed they deserved. In 2023 “it has meant that one thing trumped everything in this election. We want to forget. Move on and forget. Don’t tell me about the pandemic, I have to find the money to feed my family.”

I think he’s right.

Winston Churchill put on a stoic public face after his defeat by Atlee (despite his private anguish), and on television on Saturday night Chris Hipkins did the same in acknowledging National leader Christopher Luxon’s victory. Continue reading “It was graphic election night coverage and a touch of déjà vu” →

New snap and crackle in breakfast radio

Santa has already sent my Christmas present, and I confess to taking a sneak peep. I can’t wait to fully unwrap the 2022 Breakfast Battle Royal.

Before we have vacuumed the sand out of the car and packed away the folding chairs, New Zealand broadcasters will be hard at work finessing the line-ups they offer in the most hotly contested and crowded part of the market.

It is the space where not only do the two broadcast television networks fight each other for audience but must also compete with radio stations that are determined to hook morning listeners before they start their commute to work. And, somewhere in that mix, newspaper publishers and news sites also are vying for eyeballs. Continue reading “New snap and crackle in breakfast radio” →

A better foreign owner for TV3 in an uncertain future

It was an open secret that MediaWorks was negotiating to sell its television arm to Discovery. Now that sale has been confirmed. Yes, it’s substituting one foreign owner for another but TV3 will be better off as a result of the sale.

The US-based Discovery group has an established record not only in subscription TV but also in linear broadcast. It is the owner of free-to-air channels across Europe including Norway, Sweden, Italy, Poland, Germany and the UK. Its digital portfolio includes Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery, Travel Channel, Turbo/Velocity, Animal Planet, Science Channel, Oprah Winfrey Network in the United States, Discovery Kids in Latin America, and Eurosport, which carries the Olympic Games across Europe. Last year it signed a partnership deal with the BBC.

Continue reading “A better foreign owner for TV3 in an uncertain future” →