Government to merge TVNZ and Radio NZ

NewstalkZB reports:

The Government has announced plans to have TVNZ and RNZ fully merged by the middle of next year. 

Broadcasting and Media Minister Kris Faafoi confirmed today the Cabinet had accepted the Business Case Governance Group’s recommendations and agreed to set up the new structure. 

“The new public media entity will be built on the best of RNZ and TVNZ, which will initially become subsidiaries of the new organisation,” Faafoi said. 

This is appalling daftness.

Merging a public broadcaster and a commercial broadcaster will result in a hybrid which will be bad at both. We know this from experience. The last Labour Government tried to make parts of TVNZ non-commercial and it was a failure – according to the then CEO Ian Fraser who is a big fan of public broadcasters.

Its obligations would include having to provide public media content to all New Zealanders, including groups who are currently under-serviced or under-represented. 

This might sound good to some, but what it means is that the state owned broadcaster will have its content carried everywhere, which will mean less diversity of content.