Sky News Australia is keen to expand on this side of the Tasman, if it can reach an agreement with Sky TV
Sky News Australia is aiming to expand its New Zealand operations. But it is holding intense discussions with its customer in this country - Sky Television - about who will end up covering the increased costs.
Australia News Channel, the owner of Sky News, wants a bigger footprint on this side of the Tasman as part of a refocus on the Asia-Pacific region. The notion has been talked about for years, but now it is nearly under way, say industry sources.
More Kiwi content might make the news service more attractive to customers on the free-to-air channel Prime TV, and on Sky TV's Sky News channel. Prime TV news is under-resourced, operating on a bargain-basement budget, while Sky News has limited coverage of New Zealand events.
Intense talks are taking place over the relative benefits of the New Zealand expansion and how the cost should be apportioned.
News is core business for Australia News Channel, but for Sky TV it is just one of many programme genres. As part of the changes, Sky News operations, at present in Albany, may be moved closer to the Auckland CBD, industry sources say.
Sky TV chief executive John Fellet declined to discuss the status of the relationship with Australia News Channel, but said Sky TV supported news programming.
Australia News Channel is a joint venture of Nine Digital (a division of Nine Entertainment), Seven Media Group and British Sky Broadcasting.
Sky News Australia chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos declined to comment on the Sky News plans for New Zealand.
This week Australia News Channel announced an internet TV joint venture for five news channels that is focused on Australia, but might compete with Sky TV in the future.
Australia News Channel, in partnership with Globecast Australia, will launch Australia Channel, an internationally available subscription service with five channels including news, politics, business and sports.
It is not clear whether there is any prospect of those internet services coming to New Zealand.
Newspapers are turning to advertorial - or "native advertising" - to increase revenue. But it is still not wholly clear how editorial standards regimes for dealing with public complaints will handle the new era of paid content. Advertorial content has been around for years, and is subject to strict standards which require it to be identified as distinct from pure editorial content. The subtlety of the commercial input is a key part of its value to advertisers.
Newspaper Publishers' Association editorial director Rick Neville said the finer points of how standards regimes would deal with the new incarnations of native content were still being worked through.
The matter had been raised by the Press Council, he said.
The Advertising Standards Association chief executive, Hilary Souter, said paid editorial - backed by commercial funding - had generally been dealt with by the ASA. The editorial codes overseen by the Press Council entail more detailed oversight of editorial standards, particularly over conflicts of interest.
Intriguingly, the question over advertorials has coincided with a push to bring bloggers under a more regulated regime. The issue of lack of transparency about commercial links appears to have come to the fore in the Dirty Politics scandal.
The controversial blogger at the centre of that scandal, Cameron Slater, appears to have had a commercial relationship with PR consultant Carrick Graham, with Graham allegedly providing content on behalf of clients which was published under Slater's name. Slater has denied taking money for comment. In the past he has indicated that he intends to join the Press Council and accept its jurisdiction to consider complaints against him.
TV3 head of current affairs Mark Jennings said the furore over Dirty Politics and the hacker known as Whaledump marked a turning point for media and the use of political pundits.
Sky News Australia is aiming to expand its New Zealand operations.
In the past this column has questioned the role of PR consultants on news and current affairs shows, given that the audience does not know who their commercial clients might be.
Jennings said the controversy had been a wake-up call to the media to be careful about using PR people on current affairs programmes. But media could not afford to be wholly dismissive, he said, because they needed people who were intelligent and articulate on screen.
At TVNZ, head of news and current affairs John Gillespie said: "There's no doubt this has given us pause for thought around who and how we use commentators in our political coverage. We think it's important to offer a variety of voices and balance of perspectives so the people watching can make up their own minds - it also makes for lively and well informed debate."
This year Q+A had invited a wide range of people from across the political spectrum to be on the show, said Gillespie: 27 different panellists in 27 programmes - a few PR types, but mostly insiders and people close to the action.
Radio New Zealand has drawn flak in the past for using PR people on The Panel, which runs on weekday afternoons.
RNZ said editorial policies applied to all casual employees. "We are aware that there may be particular sensitivities concerning on-air talent and our expectation is that potential conflicts of interest are declared by commentators and made known to programme producers," said spokesman John Barr.
COMMENT KILLER
Sky News Australia is aiming to expand its New Zealand operations.
Kiwiblog owner David Farrar has introduced new ways to regulate online comments in the wake of the Dirty Politics brouhaha, saying he plans to take on extra moderation of his site. Starting this week, he said, readers could report objectionable comments. Once there were five complaints about a comment, it would be set aside for moderation, he said.
The danger in the 'five strikes you're dead' rule was that it could be used to bully people with opposing views, he said. But people who unreasonably attacked individuals could be banned if they were malicious.
