Morale at TVNZ 'crap', says insider

Morale is reported as low among Television New Zealand news staff after several experienced reporters were told they were facing redundancy.

TVNZ announced on Monday it was axing about 90 jobs and cutting its programme and operating budgets in an attempt to save $25 million following lower than expected advertising revenue.

Up to 17 staff in the news division are set to lose their jobs. They are believed to include experienced reporters such as Owen Poland and Lorelei Mason.

One TVNZ insider told NZPA that morale in the newsroom was "crap"

The source said the loss of very senior reporters meant the quality of the news reporting dropped.

Jobs are also being lost in the finance, legal, marketing, sports, broadcast services and corporate affairs departments.

Prime Minister John Key on Monday defended the Government's decision to maintain its request for a dividend at the expense of keeping jobs.

He said the jobs were on death row anyway and the recession had just sped up the execution rate.

But Labour's broadcasting spokesman Brendon Burns said the Government had an agenda towards gutting TVNZ and selling it to the private sector.

Prime Television also announced this week that it was reviewing its news operations.

However, spokesman Tony O'Brien told NZPA the channel, owned by Sky Television, would not be shifting to Australia, where Prime News was first presented when it began in 2004.

"Prime News will continue to be produced and presented in Albany (on Auckland's North Shore)," he said.

Mr O'Brien would not go into detail on what the proposals were, saying they were still being worked through.

He would not confirm or deny a suggestion by some sources that Prime might get rid of some of its news camera operators and hand cameras to its reporters.

- NZPA