Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Duncan Grieve: Media Commentator on TVNZ axing the 1News site and focusing on TVNZ+

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Duncan Grieve: Media Commentator on TVNZ axing the 1News site and focusing on TVNZ+ · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: TVs is One News website is set to be cut
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: from February next year as part of the state broadcasters
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: news proposal to head a thirty million dollar savings target.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Staff have also been told there's a proposal to consolidate
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: some business areas to align with its new strategy, et cetera,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: et cetera. Dunk and Grieve spin off founder and media
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: commentator joins us this morning, Dunk and good morning. Good
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: to have you on the show. Tell me what happens
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: to the website. How important is the website to one News?
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a Brital thing to say, but I
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: don't think it's particularly important to One News. You know,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: the core business of them has always been built around
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: that six pm bulletin, which still has such a large audience,
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: and the news room is rightly or wrongly driven around
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: creating video the news. So the one News website never
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: got the scale of audience to compete with the bigger
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: of text driven websites, and as a result, it's it's
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: always set a bit off the side of my opinion.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: You can tell me that costs thirty million dollars to
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: run the website, right, So where else are the saving
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: is going to come from.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a really good point, you know. I'd
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: say there's probably maybe a couple of million, maybe a
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: bit more in savings associated the website across you know,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: the editors, writers, specialized journalists, development and so on. But
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: thirty million dollars is just an enormous sum for an
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: or slight TV. It represents roughly ten percent of revenues.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: But remember they've got a lot of money that goes
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: straight out the door on buying overseas content or local production.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: So if they're looking to find that within the house,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: you know, suddenly that starts to look like a very
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: large proportion of their spend and a lot more staff
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: than just a website.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: This idea of putting video content on their news video
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: content on there, it sounds like a good one to me.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: They'll be competing with I guess the likes of YouTube.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's more of a local flavor. Do you think
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: it could work.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: I think it could work. I don't think it's guaranteed
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: by any means. It's unfortunate in a way that TVMs plus,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: which you know, in its predecessor of TV in said
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: or demand, has been running for the second of ten years,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: and news has never felt like a priority for it
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: not certainly not the way it does on the linear stream.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: So they're coming from behind to an extent. But even
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: if you go and look at the app now, you
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: know they've got this new John Campbell true crime series
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: prominently place. You can now access individual clips of the
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: news from the home page. You know, it's it's a
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: bit of a sort of stop gap compared to what
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: a fully kind of you know, realized vision of news
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: within TV and Z plus would look like. But it's
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: a start, and that's clearly where they're going to put
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: all the energy now into the digitation when news offering.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: It does sound like it, doesn't it. Hey, this aut report,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I know we've only just sent it to you this
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: morning and it's only just come out, but it's it's
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: essentially saying that the funding that was given to the
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: media during the COVID pandemic, you know, the Public Interest
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Journalism Fund, et cetera, had some unintended negative consequences, which
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I'm I kind of thought was obvious, but they're saying,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: you know, it didn't stop the redundancies. It was paid
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: at a time where private companies were paying dividends and
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: making profits, and it also led to perception problems. You
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: think it's valid.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Not really. I mean like I sort of looked at
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: the study when it arrived yesterday and I was like, yeah,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: a lot of it's captain obvious and essentially duplicative of
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: a U two researcher already exists around the sort of
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: trust issue. But the idea that you that it went
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: to private companies that are paying dividends, you know, if
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: if the government's kind of participation in new means that
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: private companty to stop paying dividends that it can only
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: anticipate in basically not for profit, so therefore only are
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: and Z, So that just seems like a weird thing
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: to single out. And the whole structure of the PIGF
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: was here is some money for you to do something
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: new that you wouldn't ordinarily do, which meant that it
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: was kind of cost neutral. But it did its job
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: on that front. But unfortunately, because of the timing of
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: it and because of you know, the sort of world canvas,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: you know, ways that it approached particular areas, it led
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: to a perception of politicization. But again, this is all
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: sort of quite well known, so I didn't really see
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: what the function of that research was.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: I've got to study something, don't they aut.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Well, the thing that's interesting right is like we have
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: these journalism schools kind of creating journalists, but we also
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: have an industry that is, you know, where this time
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: in February of next year, we'll have two fewer of
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: our five biggest news sites, you know, And so what
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: is the pipeline for, Like, why are we educating journalists
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: because right now it looks like this is an industry
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: that is running to shut down. So, you know, it's
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: weird that they're doing these kind of semi esoteric research
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: projects when the big question is why are we training
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: people at all?
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Don't agree with a great start to your morning. Thank
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: you very much for your time. It's been our founder
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: and media commentator on one News and the State of
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the Media more genuinely. For more from News Talks EDB
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: listen live on air or online, and keep our shows
• 5:35
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