Francesca Rudkin: Hopefully this is a wake-up call for media

The upheaval within the television industry continued this week, with TVNZ announcing cuts to its news and current affairs department on Friday. It’s not just news bulletins proposed to be cut, but also flagship shows such as Sunday and Fair Go.

It’s a devastating time for those involved, and another brutal hit to the industry on top of the shock announcement of Newshub’s proposed demise last week.

I’ve been involved in the media for 28 years, and for 26 years colleagues with more experience have been telling me the industry would soon be unrecognisable.

Admittedly, a lot has changed in those 28 years, especially in television. There have been too many restructures, strategy shifts and changes to programming priorities to list; but amazingly the demise of traditional free-to-air commercial television never quite came the way it had been prophesised. Until now.

I’m amazed at both how long it took - it’s hung in well all things considered – and at the industry’s defiance; which is why I’m a bit taken aback that the hit has finally come.

But here’s the thing. The challenges facing media, and in particular television, have been known for decades. We have known there aren’t enough advertising dollars to support the number of media outlets. We have known that in the digital era, eyeballs are moving to smaller screens. We have known that digital simply can’t be monetised like TV. We have known it’s all changed.

I was never in the heart of all the action, but I can remember over a decade ago there were conversations between TV3 and TVNZ about sharing news resources. These conversations didn’t just start a few weeks ago.

There were conversations about news bulletins, and how many we needed, there were conversations about to compete against streaming services and the need to offer digital streaming services as quickly as possible.

So, has everything moved too slow? Did we hold on to a good thing for too long just because we could and not because we should? It’s been an impossible balancing act, media know they need to be where the audience is growing on digital, they also know that they’ll made less money as their audiences get there. And harder still, the money from television enables the investment in digital services.

Restructures are hugely unsentimental beasts driven by the bottom line - they do not reflect the talent, work ethic or personality of those impacted. And it is concerning to see the journalists and shows that both hold our politicians and others to account and which reflect our unique place in the world have been the target of cuts.

But any business owner will tell you that if your business is not in a solid position when a recession hits then you’re already on the back foot, making the fight to survive harder.

I can only hope, now that the blinkers are off and the brutal state of the media industry has been revealed, that the conversations about the industry’s future leads to action. No more sitting on our hands as advertiser dollars head overseas to Meta, Google and fair payment is made in exchange for content. Let’s speed up collaboration between state owned media – maybe with less consultants this time - and we see a more aggressive transition to being competitive in this new landscape.

A strong fourth estate makes for a strong democracy, and a vibrant, cohesive country. It’s worth fighting for.

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