TVNZ is wrapping up further staff cuts in silk stockings with its ‘biggest changes to television news and current affairs in 20 years’ announcement yesterday.
The ‘multi-media’ approach will see reporters become their own video editors and sometimes camera operator, as well as working for programmes from Breakfast through to late news bulletins and the web too boot. All very ‘efficient’, extracting the most from staff as a resource and assisting our state-owned television network to maximise its returns to the government, now the only requirement of TVNZ. The last line of the media release identifies the drive: annual savings of $3m.
And yes, it parallels what is happening in other news operations where falling revenues have seen newsrooms decimated and reporters required to file incessantly for a variety of outlets including web services and blogs. All of these changes are turning too many journalists into churnalists. Where once there was a capacity to dig, do the research, speak to a variety of sources, check the facts – now there is constant pressure to meet another deadline. The head of an aid organisation I spoke to this week complained without prompting that journalists no longer ring and ask her a series of questions – they just want her to voice a grab so they can get it to air or on-screen.
So it will increasingly become with TVNZ. The reporters it still has that could, until now, expect the time to work on a story for a dedicated programme, will now have to file for a range of programmes and platforms. And edit (and increasingly) film their own stories too.
All of this will mean TVNZ scatters its resources more thinly across an increasing range of platforms. My pick is that some core viewers will notice the lesser fare and the audience-pull that TVNZ gets from One News, Sunday, Fair Go will diminish. That ultimately is bad news for TVNZ and for those of us who believe it has a crucial role to play in ensuring New Zealanders are truly well-informed.
“Churnalism” LOL
That’s a good one 
Over working them and stretching resources won’t be good for our news!
Bad of democracy and bad for the general intelligence of the public
It is a pulling of the plug. As the water gurgles down the plughole, there is less and less water to wash the dishes so just a dab here and a smudge there till there is no point in washing the dishes.
National has never really believed in TVNZ and if they were up front and said can/sell there would be an outcry, but if you just let it leak its vitality, it will just be a slow decline.
Oh good more money for brain numbing populace dumbing reality tv.
sorry spud I know you like the dancing but I miss quality programming… I have Sky and almost never watch TV1 2 or 3 anymore.
You’re lucky to have sky. I loved dancing with the stars, and am fond of Neighbours at war
I love good investigative journalism, it’s not fair that they are ruining our state broadcaster!
Brendon should at least acknowledge the ‘churnalist’ moniker is not an original one. Good to hear you’ve read/heard of Nick Davies though. For a depressing view of the world of journalism everyone should read ‘Flat Earth News’.
What is the Labour Party’s solution? Do you propose to fund a State broadcaster through the general fund, or through a licence fee?
I think they should hold a telethon called: Save TVNZ! I’m sure there will be plenty of celebs who will want on the bandwagon!
Johnno, if all these changes at TVNZ are to save a piddly $3M, all Labour needs to do in power is grow our high value export earnings by $10B or so p.a. and we will be able to afford some very good public broadcasting journalism.
And schools, and hospitals, and police cars, and cut income taxes and GST to boot too…
Brendon, we haven’t had quality programmes or decent investigative journalism from TVNZ for years. Time to sell TV2 and concentrate what decent resources are left into making ‘One’ a watchable, elite, if you like, but wide ranging quality television channel. Boy, Sky are getting so far ahead it isn’t funny.
Hey buddy, some of us can’t afford pay tv!
Am I to be left with one channel? 
Richard, agree the pickings are leaner but there still is some good material on TVNZ. Pieces of My Heart, the NZOA supported drama shown last year was the best I can remember; Q+A provides some good interviews, Sunday still from time to time does something significant – Mike King’s visit to pig farms comes go mind; Fair Go has gone glitzy but has done great stuff for years. But with Sunday, Q+A and Fair Go staff are now also required to feed material into other programmes and platforms, the residual quality material dissipates. Don’t believe sale of TV2 would fund a substantially improved TV1 – whole shebang only worth about $200m now. Nor Johnno, is reintroducing a licence fee the answer. What would help is public acknowldgement that we as a nation want and need a television future that isn’t going to become increasingly – if not wholly – reliant on Murdoch and Sky; we can then disuss how this might be best delivered and funded.
Brendon, what on earth is wrong with journalists learning a few extra skills like the rest of the workforce has had to do over the last 20 years? These folks have been feather bedded in their powerful and privileged positions for years. It seems up until now, the restructuring that has aflicted every industry has finally reached the cotton wool wrapped precious souls in TV news rooms. Well, to quote a former Prime Minister, diddums.
jennifer, the problem is not making journos learn new skills, it’s been the steady dispensing with the old skills. They are now required to be twitterers, and bloggers, not investigators, filters and public interest servers.
newsrooms in print and visual have been seriously depleted in the last decade, many fewer being asked to do much more, we see the results around us.
Coldn’t they just get rid of Paul Henry and make the saving that way?
Yeah, they will be stretched doing all the other jobs that don’t involve actual info gathering.
I look at it this way – perhaps we should embrace any change that actually gets the journalists to do some work rather than sitting around dreaming up ‘stories’ to run. Think about it – if Espiner has to spend more time filming and editing his opinion pieces (because let’s get this straight – he does not report the news, he merely gives us his slanted views), it means he has less time to hang about with Duncan “potty mouth” Garner developing their spin on the story of the day.
Hat-tip to Patrick “Brains from Thunderbirds” Gower though. He has shown some promise.
At the end of the day, we just have to accept that news is no longer ‘reported’ in this country, instead we are simply spoonfed what these geniuses ‘think’.
Wow jennifer brings a curious perspective, instead of arguing for the best investigative, thoughtful, impartial journalism and quality news service that we can get – crucial for the good democratic running of the country, and for keeping the Big Players honest, she is arguing that journalists and news rooms should dilute their skill base with irrelevancies.
Oh wait answered my own question.
Brendon offers no solutions basically. Ooh lets go back to the failed charter that made television worse. It was under Labour’s watch that One News and Holmes got cut and replaced with crap.
Tracey, your opinion is based on a false premise, in my view. Anyone who witnessed the debacle that passed as reportage of the recent ‘cardit card scandal’ where actual facts and context and even plausible explanations were cast aside in the headlong rush for tabloid sensationalism, will realise that the old standards of journalism ‘left the building’ ages ago. This is simply about a handful of lazy journalists finally having to work a little harder. The quailty ‘left the building’ years ago.
Sam M, correct, churnalism is not new as a word or concept. It’s been happening across media for some years – but it is accelerating. Ginger, the TVNZ charter may not have been a solution but it was a step in the right direction. Shame TVNZ pushed the envelope and funded some entirely commercial programmes as well as the stuff the charter was designed to support. Rather reflects the culture of TVNZ which now sees it mandated to only be concerned with revenue – and able to make Orwellian claims such as “less is more” with news resources.
Brendon, when will the penny drop with you? You guys set up the TVNZ commercial model. If the Charter didn’t work, then who designed it? If it funded ‘commercial programmes’, by which I guess you mean programmes that people actually watched in their hundreds of thousands, then again, who made the rules? When will you realise that the governance model is yours, and stop blaming the folks who try to actually try to make it work for everyone, despite the inherent contradictions? If you want to have a crack, maybe try the Tories and their gutless Broadcasting Minister. Or would that be too tough for you, being an MP an all?
Jen, get with the programme – see wwww.brendonburns.co.nz for regular cracks at Jonathan Hands off Coleman who has again failed to comment – “operational” – but who demands the dividends which contribute to the “less is more” announcement. The Charter was never on its own going to address 20+ years of TVNZ increasingly getting commerical and forgetting it was also a state broadcaster with other expectations and requirements. The charter was signed off by a parliamentary committee, including Tories, as a step forward. Only big backwards steps since Nov 2008.
“Only big backwards steps since Nov 2008.” Sorry Brendon, it goes a lot further back than that, even before we were paying ‘the mother of the nation’ $800,000 for reading a teleprompt machine.
Jennifer said:
Why not get them to work harder at journalism and not say, carrying bags and washing dishes in the TV studio? I mean, radical idea.
And where did the quality go after it ‘left the building’? To journalism quality heaven?
I’ve never been to journalism or media school but even I can pick up when someone is doing a crap journalism job. Usually its because the story is set up to focus on all the ‘oooohs’ and ‘aaaaahs’ without anything of rational substance.
It must make the people who are trained in this craft hurt in the head to watch some of the **** which gets put on our boxes and gets called ‘news’.
Which reminds me why are all the media and journalism academics so damn quiet about the quality of the media in this country. Is it because they fear upsetting the media mogul powers that be. If so, that’s bad news. Ahem, as it were.
Wasn’t Holmsie receiving something equally as grand? Or do I have my facts wrong?
I liked Judy 
I have to say this definitely brings home (Waterboy’s? GWWNZ’s? Someone else’s?) oft repeated point:
Competition can sometimes make things more expensive and crapper in an overhead laden race to the bottom, and not better like the right wing neo-con NACTs.