TVNZ Heartland broadcast on PAY TV only

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Byrned

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#338551 5-Jun-2010 15:52

Wiseacre:
As New Zealand taxpayers, haven't we already paid for these shows via our NZ on Air taxes/charges?

If the money they make from this was going straight into upgrading their infrastructure so we can get AC3 surround sound etc, that'd be great!

It won't though.

Does that mean as NZ taxpayers we shouldn't have to see any advertising at all? Of course not. As mentioned above, it was deemed that advertising wouldn't viably support this channel.

There are more to broadcasting costs than the cost of the material.

richms

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#338559 5-Jun-2010 16:15

I hope that it makes TVNZ profitable so that it can be sold off.

Richard rich.ms

tehconz

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#338565 5-Jun-2010 16:54

Wiseacre:

As New Zealand taxpayers, haven't we already paid for these shows via our NZ on Air taxes/charges?

If the money they make from this was going straight into upgrading their infrastructure so we can get AC3 surround sound etc, that'd be great!

It won't though.

TVNZ has just invested a big chunk of money upgrading the ingest and playout systems, which should be online by the end of the year. This will enable fancy things like 5.1 audio and the ability to easily play HD shows back to back. Playing HD at the moment is a bit of a nightmare, its not much more high tech than bypassing most of the building and wiring an HD tape machine directly to the transmitter. The soccer world cup will be in HD though, but only stereo sound :(.

As for the shows already having been paid for, that is somewhat true, but TVNZ still has to pay for rights to most of the shows on Heartland. Someone owns the copyright for the shows, and most of the time its not TVNZ and its never NZ on Air. NZ on Air provides funding to companies so they can make shows that would not otherwise be commercially viable. They provide funding so that shows can exist, but not to the extent that they are free. Whether they are paid for with ads, subscription fees or both, they have to be paid for.

Zippity

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#338571 5-Jun-2010 17:10

Well doesn't that suck.

I wonder how many Sky subscribers will toss their toys out of the cot and quit their Sky membership in protest?

geek4me

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#340534 11-Jun-2010 09:45

There is an interesting article in the New Zealand Herald on this that sums up what many comments in this forum are saying: Sky getting all presents at NZ TV's 50th

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10650500&pnum=0

RockResearch

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#340568 11-Jun-2010 11:25

Media Watch on RNZ also covered this issue off making light that funding for these programs came from the taxpayer and the taxpayer has to pay again to watch them on Heartland.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/mwatch/2010/06/mediawatch_for_6_june_2010

Rock Research - NZ's online marketing research experts. We like to blog too.

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bfginger

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#347456 3-Jul-2010 03:14

Linuxluver:
There is no other reason. The FTA vision was Labour's. National don't like stuff that's good for everyone. That isn't a theory. It's a proven fact and you've cited one more example of evidence to support it.

I don't think that is a political statement as much as it is a statement that accurately describes their approach to anything communal - like "Freeview".

Labour was never serious about making TVNZ a public broadcaster. They wanted it to run as a business that paid dividends to the government while giving it a charter that was rendered inert by the former.

I'm sure National would love to privatise TVNZ. A possibility which could've been eliminated if Labour had chosen to turn it into a real respected public broadcaster again.

tehconz: 2) The TVNZ mux, both on DTH and DTT is essentially full, any more channels added to TVNZ's freeview service will degrade the quality of TVNZ's existing channels.

TVNZ is broadcasting TV ONE on their Freeview satellite mux four times over (significantly degrading the quality in the process) to make more money from providing regionalised advertisements.

Unless there is some strange technical limitation preventing TVNZ from broadcasting more than 4 channels on their terrestrial mux, there is nothing stopping them adding another video stream; the reduction in quality to the existing channels from adding another 576i channel would be indiscernable. Did they only broadcast TVNZ Sports Extra while TVNZ6 was off the air?

tehconz

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#347497 3-Jul-2010 13:35

Yes, thats true. Heartland would be pretty much impossible on the DTH mux unless they removed the regional advertising. However, they make far too much money offering these regional ads on TV One that they wont be doing that any time soon. There are a number of ways TVNZ could have gotten Heartland onto the freeview platform, the DTT mux could probably take another SD channel, but I think it would have an effect on the quality of the HD services. Of course TVNZ could simply have contracted to have Heartland put on the Kordia mux on both DTT and DTH as they have plenty of space. Incidentally, Sport Extra was taken off air due to both quality concerns on the mux and lack of content (TVNZ doesn't own the rights to much sport anymore). I'm not sure if that happened before TVNZ6 or not, that was before my time.

As I said earlier the main reason Heartland went to Sky and not freeview was that Sky is willing to pay enough money for exclusive access to make the channel profitable. Thats why they didn't go to a lot of effort to work it onto the freeview platform.

bfginger

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#347535 3-Jul-2010 17:03

They wouldn't have had to stop regional advertising per se, but they may have had to have removed the least used regional satellite stream (Wellington?) and merged it with another. I doubt they were willing to do that.

It makes sense that they would've had quality issues with Sports Extra as sports is the most demanding thing on bandwidth there is. A low bandwidth allocation would've looked terrible. Something like Heartland is the opposite with different expectations and lots of static scenes and old low resolution film and tape.

It all comes down to money and decisions. Two decades of government policy means TVNZ runs on a short-term profit maximisation basis instead of a public service basis. TVNZ also apparently negotiated away their bargining chips of TVNZ6 and 7 away to Sky before looking into Heartland which like the Telecom Tivo may not have been the brightest move. TVNZ can't stand to give anything beyond token publicity to TVNZ6 and 7 because they can't make any money from them within the structure the last government set up. Their unwillingness to promote 6 and 7 and by extension Freeview itself was a large part of why Freeview uptake was looking too bad earlier this year to support another channel. We shouldn't be surprised if TVNZ6 becomes Sky-only in 2020 after their current agreement with Sky expires.

tehconz

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#347564 3-Jul-2010 20:41

Yes, I agree. TVNZ's role as a public service broadcaster is very much a low priority at the moment. Pressure from the government to return a strong dividend combined with dramatically falling advertising revenue has lead TVNZ to do things they would not have in the "good old days". This has affected not only the viewer, but employees as well, as TVNZ strives to do more for less, launching new channels while laying off dozens of operational staff.

Its certain that TVNZ could have found a way to get Heartland onto freeview, they chose not to because Sky offered them a big pile of easy money.

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