TVNZ are in a little spot of financial bother, as we know. Revenue’s down, profits are down (but not hugely when you drill down) and over on the Your Views page at the Herald, much vitriol has been written about whether lots of people should be fired. The tone of many comments suggests only managers should be fired of course, and not ‘the workers’.
Sticking up for the poor saps for a moment; despite the downturn they’re still making a profit, albeit smaller.
When I were a lad, they only had the one channel. Dougal read the news, later it was Mr. Sherry. We watched 5 year old episodes of Coro. The Six Million Dollar Man probably cost about that much per ep to buy first-run, so we saw 5 year old episodes of that too. There was only slightly less advertising then as there is now (about 8 minutes per hour versus 13) but I bet it cost a lot more then than now, relatively. You can imagine, as it was then more government department than SOE the waste was likely worse.
They now have a tremendous amount of competition. Sky TV for example features as much advertising as TVNZ yet also pulls in over $40M a month in subscription fees. Despite the clear advantage of choice Sky has, and the fact they have all the sport (sorry, netball isn’t a sport, kids) TVNZ still dominates ratings. TV3 struggles to make the top 5 in any category, timeslot or demographic, despite now being around nearly 20 years.
Why is that? Are TVNZ really that bad?
You have been spruiked at the mother ship. Best get writing young skywalker.
ReplyDeleteThe pressure is on now. We will be watching.
ReplyDelete