TVNZ ‘not a good fit’ for merger, says RNZ boss
Wedding bells don’t appear to be in the air for RNZ and Television New Zealand after RNZ’s chief executive, Paul Thompson, said they ‘‘would not be a good fit’’.
Thompson said RNZ was keen to work more closely with other media organisations including TVNZ, but said combining them into one organisation could have some ‘‘really bad impacts’’.
TVNZ chief executive Kevin Kenrick appeared to put a cat among the pigeons last week when he did not rule out a merger of RNZ and TVNZ in response to a reporter’s question.
Kenrick reiterated that position yesterday, but said he was not advocating for such a merger.
‘‘The industry is facing some significant challenges. The responses to that internationally appear to be consolidation of local media players, and we believe the same logic applies in New Zealand . . . Our starting position is to say all players should be exploring all options,’’ he said.
Thompson said RNZ would be concerned about how a merger with TVNZ could impact on its independence – ‘‘not that anyone is proposing that’’.
‘‘RNZ would in no way want to expose itself to the risks around commercial-based linear television broadcasting. That would be a real worry if you did bring the organisations together.’’
The risk to RNZ of being ‘‘subsumed’’ within what was still a commercially focused broadcaster would be immense, he said.
Britain’s public broadcaster, the BBC, and Australia’s equivalent, the ABC, both combine a television and a radio arm.
But Thompson said RNZ and TVNZ were ‘‘just so different’’.
‘‘TVNZ is a commercial beast and rightly so – it does a very good job as a commercial operation. That is in its DNA, and RNZ is almost a mirror image in some ways as the commercial-free public service, with a radio heritage growing into multimedia.’’
RNZ’s news content already appeared on TVNZ’s online platform and RNZ would be open to further collaborations with other media organisations, he said.
It had about 30 content-sharing arrangements with outlets including the and
and was ‘‘very open to sharing our content and collaborating with people’’, he said.
The Government put an extra $15m into public broadcasting in the Budget, the bulk of which is going either directly to RNZ or indirectly to it via NZ On Air.
Newly appointed Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi said that how any further funding boost might be allocated had yet to be decided.
The Government would need to be mindful of the impact on the wider media market, he said.