Does anyone know what the Kordia transmission fees are now?
One of the reasons the networks are struggling and the recent Newshub crisis are the exorbitant transmission fees from Kordia which to no surprise is owned by the government. Before digital, stations could own their own frequencies after they were put up for auction and so there was no rent. Some local channels, such as Canterbury TV, have gone off air because they couldn't afford the transmission fee which I was told at that time was $880,000 per year just to hold the channel 40 slot. Furthermore, I was told that is the price a network pays to transmit across the whole country; no discount was given for having a smaller reach. By my reckoning, they should have only been paying about $75,000 as they were transmitting to less than one tenth of the country but anyway...
What are transmission costs today for each channel slot? Over $1M? Think of how many channels each network as. Government greed is destroying private media in this country.