Stuff steps in to fill gap after Newshub demise
Warner Bros Discovery has done a deal with Stuff to provide news to replace Newshub. It will keep news on TV channel Three from July 6 and help Three retain some viewers. It also means important income for Stuff but will stretch the firm’s staff, finances and technology.
Stuff will provide a one-hour bulletin each weekday and a half-hour on weekends. Stuff will also retain a live Newshub website.
New Zealand head for Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) Glen Kyne and Stuff publisher Sinead Boucher confirmed the arrangement at a joint news conference on Tuesday.
RNZ understands many media companies approached WBD with proposals to provide news after the company first proposed the costsaving closure in late February. However, by the time of the confirmation earlier this month most of those had been rejected by WBD.
Sky TV was also reported to be in the running. It currently runs a Newshub-produced bulletin at 5.30pm each weekday on the free-toair channel Sky Open and would require a replacement. It also had plenty of TV production facilities.
Boucher said a Sky bulletin was not included in the deal, but she hoped there would be talks on that.
Why do the deal and what’s it worth?
The money WBD is putting into the deal is confidential but it is certain to be a fraction of the current cost of running Newshub, which would run to tens of millions of dollars a year.
WBD was clearly determined to carve that cost off its loss-making local operation. The financial benefit for Stuff may not be great taking setup and running costs into account.
Kyne said neither company would comment on specific commercial details, but when asked about the possible profit margin for Stuff, Boucher said: “Both parties are satisfied with where we have ended up.”
But while the audience for TV news bulletins is declining — and ad revenue has fallen accordingly — it is still substantial for TVNZ 1 and Three. The “appointment viewing” time of 6pm creates a viewing peak that the TV broadcasters use to hold viewers for programmes that follow.
Former Newshub chief Hal Crawford said Three’s overall audience could collapse without evening news.
“There’s still a reason that the 1 and the 3 on remotes around the country are worn down. News is the one programme that runs 365 days a year . . . which the schedule is going to rely on to lead into prime time. So the rest of your schedule is going to dwindle. Ratings are gonna fall off and everything is going to go to pieces,” he said.
Why Stuff?
Stuff has journalists in more places around the country than any other news publisher.
Boucher recently told a parliamentary committee it has journalists in 19 locations, even after years of cuts and successive retrenchments.
It also has audio and video production facilities at some sites and some senior journalists with TV reporting and presenting experience, such as former Newshub political editor Tova O’Brien, former TV3 current affairs reporter Paula Penfold and senior journalist Andrea Vance.
But Stuff video ventures have not endured. It launched its own free online video platform Play Stuff in mid-2019. It also hired key former TV3 current affairs staff for its own longform video productions but disbanded the Stuff Circuit team earlier this year.
When the Stuff app and website were refreshed recently, short vertical videos were added as a feature, called Stuff Shorts.
Stuff’s past weakness has been a dependence on newspaper advertising. It was only last year that Stuff launched its first paywalls for online news for three of its mastheads.
Stuff’s main rival NZME has half the country’s radio networks in addition to newsrooms supplying its newspapers and websites. NZME’s New Zealand Herald has been getting revenue from “premium content” digital subscriptions for four years.
Will the new news service succeed?
It depends what you mean by “success”.
WBD is planning for a future beyond linear TV broadcasting and the associated transmission costs. It is possible WBD has done the deal mainly as a gap-filler to hold “rusted on” news viewers while it plans an online-only transition.
If the Stuff / Newshub service is not well resourced it will not compare well with TVNZ’s 1News at 6.
TVNZ’s CEO Jodi O’Donnell recently said the state-owned broadcaster invests $40 million in news annually.
Boucher yesterday said the new bulletin will not be “on-the-cheap” stuff produced on iPhones. “We will invest in proper technology,” she said.
Longtime TV3 news boss Mark Jennings (now Newsroom co-editor) told RNZ,
“You’re up against a sophisticated TVNZ product so viewers will have an immediate comparison. Probably that won’t be favourable for Warner Brothers.”