Here’s something we could truly aspire to. Just announced:
The ABC will launch Australia’s first free-to-air 24-hour television news channel in 2010.
The ABC’s Managing Director, Mark Scott, said the ABC’s commitment to quality news and current affairs would enter a new era with the creation of the new digital channel.
The channel will provide live continuous news coverage of major breaking stories from Australia and around the world. Broadcasting around the clock will enable the ABC to increase its in-depth coverage of local, national and international affairs through background features and analysis, combined with the ABC’s unrivalled long-form current affairs reporting.
We do have our own version, TVNZ 7, but it needs a boost and to be taken really seriously rather than be an add on.
TVNZ 7 is a commercial-free New Zealand 24-hour news and information channel on Freeview digital television platform and on SKY Television Digital from 1 July 2009.
Just imagine if we could consistently produce news around New Zealand drawn from New Zealand and overseas across a digital platform that encompassed radio, television and online mediums that was driven by news values and not ratings.
That’s the New Zealand I want to live in.
My colleague Brendon Burns is doing some work in this area and will have mroe to say on this subject.
Hat tip: Mark Scott, ABC Managing Director on Twitter (abcmarkscott)
of course Australia have a significantly larger population to be able to resource such a Channel. As always you neglect with rather wishful thinking to say how much such an operation would cost and who would fund it and what would need to be given up to fund such a service.
TVNZ7 is not 24-hour.
And in general, the 24-hour news cycle is a bad thing, rather than a good thing.
There simply isn’t 24 hours worth of news in a day – watch any 24-hour news channel – whether it’s CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, BBC World, Al Jazeera English, or Deutsche Welle – for any length of time and you will see the same things repeated over and over again and a massive amount of filler.
I also “have a dream” of non commercial news.
When you consider our constitutional arrangement, an informed public is vital, regardless of cost.
I think a 24 hour news channel could work in New Zealand with a production and financial focus around the waking hours, particularly prime time. You could easily get away with running a skeleton crew over night. Add in some Aussie news and possibly a European and Asian update and your done.
Shows that deserve publicity such as Back Benches could do with a plat form like this as well.
A 24 hour news channel is slightly more useful in a country which operates in 3 different time zones (and that’s before the daylight savings is applied in half the country but not the other half.
Also, there’s MASSIVE doubt in Australia that ABC can carry this channel and continue to provide quality programming elsewhere, relying on savings within it’s commercial elements to fund it sans advertising revenue.
Re Brendan & the Commonwealth Games, Prime gets the cream of the Games crop for 12 hours of coverage free to air a day, which will more than likely be equal or better than TVNZ’s coverage in the past, while Sky runs 24 hour coverage. How is that worse than previous Games? And hang on a second, what more work is Mr Burns planning on that subject? I mean, TVNZ announced it was trying to sell the rights donkeys ago (at least September of last yoear when they prematurely announced it’s sale), why wasn’t Mr Burns decrying it then?!
For a spot of balance on that one, I found http://www.janetwilson.co.nz/2009/09/on-your-marks-get-set/ interesting
The situation here is so depressing. To get my news I listen to Radio NZ, and watch BBC/Al Jazeera…
TVNZ 7 is appalling – I remember about 18 months ago they did a live cross to a McCain/Obama debate for about 30 seconds, then proceeded to show a 15 year old documentary about the South Auckland family court. Which was more news worthy?
I too have a dream. It is that our overweight kids and adults get off the couch, stop watching TV and exercise more to save their lives. 24hr news TV would be a counterproductive to this.
Dear Clare,
It’s called the internet – welcome to the 21st Century.
There we go, I just saved the taxpayer another 100 million.
-Peter
It doesn’t have to be 24 hours, it could just be good quality, and fairly regular and be actual news and analysis and current affairs (and programming with local content)
The internet is part of it, but there’s a lot more to it that that. It’s not just about the technology (which is integral) but it’s about the underlying principles.
Let’s take for instance: editorial integrity and independence. That’s what the BBC is based on.
It’s an essential part of a healthy democracy.
And yes, you have to be able to fund it.
Well you had 9 years to create a New Zealand you wanted to live in..it’s just that very few others shared your dream. Most of those who didn’t leave voted you out.
Having worked for TVNZ news for many years I think i can safely say that within TVNZ there will groans of “oh shit, not another politician on a broadcasting mission”. They’re just recovering from the charter whose stupidity showed that politicians love to tinker with broadcasting but are largely clueless in its practicalities. Internet and streaming has ended the dominance of networked TV news programmes. Labour should have let them go digital, instead of dithering for years, and flicked them off in about 2002 and put the money into Transmission Gully or Auckland light rail. Trying to fill a 24 hours news cycle with meaningful and relevant news would be difficult. It might fascinate a steady 5 per cent of news junkies but be largely ignored by everyone else. It would become a Beehive and bureaucracy talking head fest, a la Morning Report.
We have plenty of TV channels (and other forms of on-line entertainment) already – Sky, Saturn TV, + the other channels and the internet. If there are enough people who are keen on establishing an independent, non-commercial TV news channel then perhaps they could form a club, pay a subscription and set one up? Why dip into the taxpayers pocket again to deliver a pale imitation of the BBC channel? If it’s actually the local content production you want then isn’t that what NZ On Air already funds – again from the pocket of taxpayers?
John Spavin said:
‘They’re just recovering from the charter whose stupidity showed that politicians love to tinker with broadcasting but are largely clueless in its practicalities’
Perhaps you’d prefer a TV news environment in which it’s viewers who are left ‘largely clueless’ by the fatuous content of commercial TV news bulletins?
24 hour news? Have you looked at any newspaper lately? There is barely enough news to last an hour, and most of that is filler on some cat that was found after being missing for a month (I’m so glad she came home though, gives me the warm fuzzies…)
TVNZ7 does a perfectly good job of reporting on breaking news. As does the internet, which is increasingly becoming the media of choice anyway. Who has a television in their office to catch up on the latest news about Haiti? Or anywhere interesting?
Actually, if you implemented that it would probably cost the taxpayer another $100m. Internet infrastructure is vastly more complex and expensive than a broadcast tower.
Of course, NACT did promise to spend $1.5b to get present infrastructure at least part way up to modern standards so that Telecom didn’t have to pay for it itself out of it’s hundreds of millions of dollars profit. Labour did the same but it was going to be cheaper.
No, it’s not about local content – It’s about having informative news so that people can make informed decisions. This is rather imperative to a democracy and if we don’t have it we’ll likely to end up with a dictatorship.
To pick up some of the threads here. Nathan, I repeatedly commented on TVNZ’s offer (only confirmed this month) to hand over the Commonwealth Games coverage rights to Sky. See September release – Commonwealth Games free coverage essential – on Labour site. The point being made was that if the Government thought it imperative to have darn near 100% of Kiwis able to see the Rugby World Cup – hence its clumsy intervention against Maori TV with 90% coverage – then why was it silent on 90% Prime getting the Commonwealth Games?
The idea that the Internet can/does provide comprehensive news coverage is, to say the least, ahead of its time. The vast majority of people still get their news from free-to-air television and are likely to for years yet.
We will never have the resources to match what the ABC or BBC does but we could have TVNZ priotise funding to do better than what it currently provides. Example? If live crosses were limited to real news events we might even be able to afford a single Asian correspondent again.
Spav, you might also declare you worked for a Nat Broadcasting Minister who didn’t manage to sell TVNZ! I think Maurice and his colleagues are on-track for another crack if they get a second term. The conditions are now being set. TVNZ has been told its only requirement is improving the dividend return.
Where will that leave us? A television environment where nothing but commercial values rule, rather than the attempt at balance the Charter provided. TVNZ is now unleashed of those constraints. The result will be ever more shocking jocks, sexualised content and banality. Imagine a radio environment without National Radio. We may not be able to afford a TVNZ equivalent but some of us believe that New Zealanders want and deserve something better than where we are heading.
I find myself asking if a 24 hour news channel would actually provide me with the news?
A the beginning of last year there was an article that took up most of the front page of the Herald which had this rather impressive photo of an electrical storm over Rangitoto. The story that accompanied the picture wasn’t about the storm, or Rangitoto. It was about how a photographer employed by the Herald had gone down to Mission Bay to take the photo.
The other night on Channel 3, they had 3 stories. Prince William (split up into Prince William’s shirt, gate crasher at BBQ thrown in Prince William’s honour, public opinion on courthouse Prince William Opened and Prince William opening Court house), Haiti (People still being found alive, orphan girl’s adoption under threat) and the third story being insignificant enough that I’ve forgotten what it was.
TV one – I live in Auckland. My roof is in line of sign of the Sky Tower. Every other channel comes through great. And then there’s Channel one. Which we can’t get decent reception…
At the moment, if I want news, I’m much better off going to the radio and if I want it in visual form, the Internet. Which is a pity because I quite like the format of news programs. Not having to actively seek out the news on portals, which seem to like the cute stuff and anything with the word “sex” in the title gets preference over someone dying…, and not having to rely solely on hearing.
So I’ll add a sigh of my own. If only television (and news papers) actually had the news……
John Spavin,
So I take it you are comfortable with American and British reality TV shows about fat people and DIY filling our TV screens instead of quality documentary programming.