TVNZ staff await word on cuts

Television New Zealand is understood to have scheduled meetings across its newsrooms today to discuss restructuring.

Redundancies at the broadcaster have been expected.

Asked for comment on the meetings, chief executive Kevin Kenrick said its priority was to talk with TVNZ people first.

‘‘When the time is right and we have something to share, we’ll be happy to communicate that outside our business,’’ he said.

Kenrick noted he had explained last week that the state-owned broadcaster had to create a more sustainable future business.

TVNZ had been outperforming other television broadcasters but would be reviewing all parts of its business over the next three to six months and needed to ‘‘fundamentally lower costs’’, he said then.

Labour’s broadcasting spokeswoman, Clare Curran, said she was surprised there had been no mention of the move when TVNZ last appeared in front of a select committee in December. She did not believe it was a coincidence that TVNZ was restructuring soon after the Commerce Commission rejected Sky Television’s merger with Vodafone.

Coalition for Better Broadcasting spokesman Myles Thomas called on the Government to drop its requirement for TVNZ to pay a dividend to the Crown.

That would ease the financial pressures on the business and ensure it could better live up to some elements of its public broadcasting mandate, he said.

Cuts would mean ‘‘making staff work harder and cutting services’’, he said. Removing dividends, which valued $13.4 million last year, would be an ‘‘easy fix’’ that would allow for a slight improvement in TVNZ’S output and give the broadcaster more financial security, he said.