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#3202106 1-Mar-2024 15:45

alasta:

turtleattacks:

I consider myself to be liberal-sided when comes to politics but having an international media company purchasing a local NZ media asset then a year or two later to shut down one out of two NZ's TV news shouldn't be allowed.

As much as I don't like govt intervention to the private sector - this deserves one.

The govt or commerce commission should have stepped in during the purchase and set rules of operation.

It's too late now.

The problem is that if Discovery hadn't bought it then noone else would have, and Mediaworks would have to have shut it down anyway as there were bleeding cash.

Yip, I understand that.

It's just a real shame that they were burning in the region of $25M or so per year. Maybe it's something smaller, the govt could have done something. (i.e. Mt Ruapehu ski fields.)

Wonder if a loan deal could have been organised like Air NZ.... I don't know. It's too late now.

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#3202111 1-Mar-2024 15:53

turtleattacks:

alasta:

The problem is that if Discovery hadn't bought it then noone else would have, and Mediaworks would have to have shut it down anyway as there were bleeding cash.

Yip, I understand that.

It's just a real shame that they were burning in the region of $25M or so per year. Maybe it's something smaller, the govt could have done something. (i.e. Mt Ruapehu ski fields.)

Wonder if a loan deal could have been organised like Air NZ.... I don't know. It's too late now.

What would be the point of the government stepping in? Newshub loses money because of structural problems with the media market, not a temporary effect like COVID. It's unsustainable.

turtleattacks

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#3202113 1-Mar-2024 15:55

Handle9:

turtleattacks:

alasta:

The problem is that if Discovery hadn't bought it then noone else would have, and Mediaworks would have to have shut it down anyway as there were bleeding cash.

Yip, I understand that.

It's just a real shame that they were burning in the region of $25M or so per year. Maybe it's something smaller, the govt could have done something. (i.e. Mt Ruapehu ski fields.)

Wonder if a loan deal could have been organised like Air NZ.... I don't know. It's too late now.

What would be the point of the government stepping in? Newshub loses money because of structural problems with the media market, not a temporary effect like COVID. It's unsustainable.

Structural issues with media industry as a whole or the company itself?

Just a personal opinion that the govt could step in to force them to restructure back to profitability in a certain number of years with a loan.

Why would they do this? So we have more than one TV News broadcaster and it'll save the jobs of 300-500 people.

Just a quick calculation, at 400 people on an average salary of $90k, that's $27,000,000 in salaries per year. Maybe a tad under $10M in income taxes per year.

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#3202116 1-Mar-2024 15:59

Handle9:

What would be the point of the government stepping in? Newshub loses money because of structural problems with the media market, not a temporary effect like COVID. It's unsustainable.

Journalism is a public good that should be publicly funded if it can't be profitable. It is critical to a functioning democracy.

Arguably, public funding at arm's length from the government - i.e. through a statutorily independent authority who receives a big dollop of money that it doles out to news orgs or directly to individual journalists - is better for society than a for-profit model. We all know where the for-profit model leads *cough*Fox News*cough*.

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Handle9

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#3202119 1-Mar-2024 16:10

turtleattacks:

Handle9:

turtleattacks:

Yip, I understand that.

It's just a real shame that they were burning in the region of $25M or so per year. Maybe it's something smaller, the govt could have done something. (i.e. Mt Ruapehu ski fields.)

Wonder if a loan deal could have been organised like Air NZ.... I don't know. It's too late now.

What would be the point of the government stepping in? Newshub loses money because of structural problems with the media market, not a temporary effect like COVID. It's unsustainable.

Structural issues with media industry as a whole or the company itself?

Just a personal opinion that the govt could step in to force them to restructure back to profitability in a certain number of years with a loan.

Why would they do this? So we have more than one TV News broadcaster and it'll save the jobs of 300-500 people.

Just a quick calculation, at 400 people on an average salary of $90k, that's $27,000,000 in salaries per year. Maybe a tad under $10M in income taxes per year.

It's a structural issue with the industry as a whole and it's not getting better any time soon. This was the point WBD made, they can't see a road to profitability. TVNZ just annouced an operating loss of $4.6 million with a 13.5% fall in revenue.

Governments can't force private companies to keep operating. A loan does nothing at all to fix the structural problems, it just provides working capital. What would be the point of that if it can never be a profitable business?

When you do this sort of market intervention all you do is create distortions and delay even more pain. If the horse is dead there's no point in flogging it. It's very different to temporarily supporting a company through a temporary problem.

If they tried to "force" WBD then they would in all likelihood just shut the whole operation down and lose the rest of the jobs.

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#3202120 1-Mar-2024 16:11

SaltyNZ:

Handle9:

What would be the point of the government stepping in? Newshub loses money because of structural problems with the media market, not a temporary effect like COVID. It's unsustainable.

Journalism is a public good that should be publicly funded if it can't be profitable. It is critical to a functioning democracy.

Arguably, public funding at arm's length from the government - i.e. through a statutorily independent authority who receives a big dollop of money that it doles out to news orgs or directly to individual journalists - is better for society than a for-profit model. We all know where the for-profit model leads *cough*Fox News*cough*.

We have that with TNVZ and RNZ. RNZ is entirely publically funded and TVNZ is entirely publically owned.

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#3202134 1-Mar-2024 16:46

SaltyNZ:We all know where the for-profit model leads *cough*Fox News*cough*.

You should get that cough looked at. It might be preventing you mentioning CNN and MSNBC in the same breath. The American market is a perfect example of money driven partisan reporting. It has existed in their newspapers for more than a century, with private owners determining editorial direction. Only thing that has changed is the method of transmission.

When there’s mass redundancies in other industries the news media reports it, says “Oh dear how sad…….Up after the break, Kim Kardashian’s outfit breaks the internet!” When it’s a news organisation, it goes on for days.

As a worker bee in a couple of companies that have gone out of business in my working life, I feel sorry for the employees. At least they should get full redundancy packages because their parent company isn’t insolvent.

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cruxis

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#3202139 1-Mar-2024 16:54

Looks like Meta is walking away from news a well. In a statement, Facebook said its users were not coming to its platform for news and political content and that it would invest its money elsewhere.

I bet there will be cries from the media, Facebook must be made to carry our content and pay us for it. I support Meta move to walk away.

Facebook News: Meta to pull $70 million from Australian news publishers in shock announcement | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

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#3202146 1-Mar-2024 17:06

Handle9:

We have that with TNVZ and RNZ. RNZ is entirely publically funded and TVNZ is entirely publically owned.

Yes, and it works well (except for Winston Peters, who believes journalists are corrupt for taking money from the journalism fund Winston Peters helped setup).

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heavenlywild

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#3202149 1-Mar-2024 17:11

cruxis:

Looks like Meta is walking away from news a well. In a statement, Facebook said its users were not coming to its platform for news and political content and that it would invest its money elsewhere.

I bet there will be cries from the media, Facebook must be made to carry our content and pay us for it. I support Meta move to walk away.

Facebook News: Meta to pull $70 million from Australian news publishers in shock announcement | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing.

Just when the media in AU thought they would have some stable funding... Meta pulls out.

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#3202150 1-Mar-2024 17:13

Relying on Meta, Google and others for funding is vain hope.

These companies only take, take and don't give anything.

MikeB4

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#3202158 1-Mar-2024 17:23

Market forces are something all businesses have to contend with news media is no different. If the revenue is not coming their way then they need to evolve to market expectations or they perish. They way folks seek news is changing and the trend has been obvious for sometime. There will be casualties that is a fact of business life, after all how many wheelwrights, typewriter, video library companies exist now? I don't believe Newshub or TV3 in general will be the last to falter. TVNZ is reviewing in light of falling revenue and this trend is accelerating. I don't believe it is the governments responsibility to prop up sunset businesses.

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#3202162 1-Mar-2024 17:31

Handle9:

What would be the point of the government stepping in? Newshub loses money because of structural problems with the media market, not a temporary effect like COVID. It's unsustainable.

Exactly. The government did the right thing to temporarily support businesses during a global pandemic. Propping up here would be the wrong thing to do.

Bluntj

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#3202172 1-Mar-2024 17:45

freitasm:

Relying on Meta, Google and others for funding is vain hope.

These companies only take, take and don't give anything.

Not quite right eg we all use Google many times a day at no cost. They were the first to offer services such as google maps at no cost. So the advertising revenue they take in has paid for quite a bit.

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#3202191 1-Mar-2024 19:06

Bluntj:

Not quite right eg we all use Google many times a day at no cost.

Thats because you are the product sold to advertisers.

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