Heather du Plessis-Allan: It looks like trouble is not nearly close to being over for TVNZ

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

Yeah, it looks like the trouble is not nearly close to being over for TVNZ, the news out today is that they've made the loss that we were expecting about 29,000,000 bucks and it is not ending there.

They now have to find another $30 million worth of savings to make another 30 million, which basically what they've just done and they need to do that fast. So I would say brace yourself. Because it's almost certain shows are going to be cut again and staff are going to be fired again already the rumours are that breakfast is in the boss's sights and the reason that everybody's worried about breakfast, is because the contracts for that show run out in December.

And to be honest they’ve pretty much made this rumor worse because they've put up an advert looking for a foreign producer for breakfast and in bold in the ad it says this is a fixed term contract until the end of the year. I mean, why would you be hiring somebody? What is it August just through to the end of the year, right, it started. To raise the questions all over again, now TVNZ said this is there's nothing to see here, but you know $30 million worth of savings says there is something to see here and pretty much almost everywhere.

The reason that we can say with confidence that shows have to be cut is because that is the only way that you're gonna come anywhere close to finding $30 million worth of savings. And even then, you're not gonna come close by cutting shows. That's that gets you the closest, but it's still way away. Remember all that cutting that they did with fair go and Sunday and the staff and reducing Shorty St and just everything else. Doing that only saved them $10 million, that's all.

So, as you can see, they're going to have to cut pretty deep this time around and they can't be rescued all that much by trying to find new and income off the Internet streaming service, TVNZ Plus. Because from what I've been told today, sticking anything behind a pay wall there to make money is years away. They haven't got the digital ability to do that yet. So that's years away. They have to find money this year.

So this is my prediction. They will cut shows and the shows that they will cut will be local shows because local shows are way more expensive than foreign content. Maybe they will even cut some of their expensive stars because as I say, $30 million is a lot of money to find all over again.

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