On Wednesday – a couple of days beforethe last-ever bulletin went to air – it seemed like almost everyone in Auckland who had ever worked at Newshub or 3 News or 3 National News or associated news programmes went to the pub.
There were the young ones who’ve been recent faces on the tele, sadly for them, really just at the start of their promising careers. There were the comforting faces that immediately draw a smile because you grew up looking at them. And there were all the people who worked behind the scenes and almost loved the place more than anyone else.
It was hard to be there and not feel the sense of a door in history closing for New Zealand. A familiar old friend for the last 35 years is now gone.
There is something about media that is culturally more special than simply the job it does: delivering news. It is also a mirror to us and a reminder of the way we were.
Newshub is so far the biggest loss in the slow death of linear TV in this country.
It’s a sign that the Government realised the significance of the last broadcast on Friday, that they rolled out their plan to help the media only days before. It was better to do it before Newshub said goodbye than do it afterwards and face the inevitable questions over whether they left it too late to save the product.
The truth is the plan wouldn’t have saved Newshub. And it likely won’t save any media outlets teetering. In fact, it’s more likely to send some to their death.
Forcing big internet companies such as Google and Facebook to pay local news media for using their content is a straight copy of a plan that’s already failed in Australia and Canada.
We have our fingers crossed that it might yet work in Australia, but the signs aren’t good. Facebook’s parent company Meta threatened last week to block Australian news.
In Canada, they already have. In a tantrum Facebook banned all news content from its site in that country.
As a result, some media are reporting a drop off in internet traffic on their sites as big as 75%.
Heather du Plessis-Allan co-hosted the TV3 current affairs show Story from 2015-16 with Duncan Garner.
It’s hitting the smaller news media the hardest. Some say they won’t survive many more months. You can say it’s backfired on the Canadian Government.
What New Zealand media are relying on is that Facebook behaves differently in New Zealand. They’re also relying on Google being as decent as they have been in both Canada and Australia and stumping up the cash.
Best case scenario, it nets $30 million to $50m for New Zealand media to share. Here’s some context: the lower end of that scale is less than half the $70m in advertising revenue projected to drop out of TV alone this year. Not radio. Not print. Just TV.
Worst case scenario, this backfires on National and NZ First and they have to bail out New Zealand’s small media players, which means taxpayers end up paying for this.
To be fair to National, media companies wanted this and they’ve lobbied very hard for it. There is also no other solution. If there was, someone would’ve tried it by now. This is the only bad idea out there.
And because it’s a bad idea – albeit the only idea we’ve got – I would expect more days like Friday where we say goodbye to much-loved media.
