Cam Harland: NZ on Air CEO says Shortland Street financial support can't last forever

NZ on Air has its fingers crossed its financial support of Shortland St won't be forever. 

New Zealand's longest-running drama's been granted 2.5 million in funding for its 2026 season, to help the show transition to the audience's preference of online viewing. 

NZ on Air CEO Cam Harland told Heather du Plessis-Allan that they also provided funding last year, but hoped it would assist the show moving to a more financially sustainable place.  

But he says the economic environment for ad funded media hasn't improved. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Shortland Street is saved. You'll be able to listen to
this a little bit more. It's been announced the show
is back next year, saved yet again by taxpayers. Yep,
we're stumping out our cash, this time two point five
million dollars from New Zealand on Air. Now. Cam Harland
is the CEO of NZ on air, High Camp.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
How are you. Heare lovely to speak to you again.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
It's great to talk to you, and especially in these
you know, in the in these circumstances, this is obviously
great news. But what's happened here tough negotiation or something.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
I wouldn't say a tough negotiation in all honesty, I
guess on the one side, it's a little disappointing that
Shortland Street hasn't yet got to a point where it's
back to being commercially sustainable. I think, as you know,
we funded it last year and we were hoping that
that would be a transitional period for TVNZ and SPP

(00:51):
to kind of work out how they might get the
show back to a sort of a commercially sustainable footing.
The truth of the matter is the you know, the
economic environment for ad funded media has not got any
better and so we saw Shortland Street come back into
the most recent round and we have we have agreed
to fund it for two and a half mil.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Okay, do you think that what is going on with
Shorty Street is are they a victim of what's going
on with media in general or is the Shortland Street
problem that will never be fixed.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
To be honest with you, I think it's the former.
What we're seeing with Shortland Street is definitely audiences engaging
with it. It's still a very very popular show. What
we're seeing is increasing numbers of especially young people, which
is a hard to reach audience for us. So that's
another reason why it stacks up as far as our
funds are concerned. They are engaging with it on demand.

(01:49):
And what we're seeing with most of the media companies
out there is that their linear their linear broadcast or there.
You know, in the case of newspapers, it's the print
is where most of the money is. The digital space
is where the audiences are moving to, but are sort
of trying to catch up in terms of monetizing those audiences. Yep.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
So basically you would expect that once TVNZ figures out
how to get money out of audiences for going online.
This should be okay and they shouldn't need any more
of your money.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
That is absolutely the hope. As I say, though, I
mean the reality is this show for us does stack up.
It delivers a really significant, meaningful audience, and it delivers
on a sort of a cultural element as well. It
does reflect the evolving faces of modern New Zealand and
that's kind of what we're here for. But an answer
to your question, I think TVNZ and SPP would both

(02:44):
say that they are also hoping that they can work
out a way to get the show back to being
commercially sustainable.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
I think we all are and stop costing us money.
Thank you, Cam appreciated. Cam Harland ends it on air CEO.
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