TVNZ sees increase in ad revenue, will pay all staff $1000 bonus
Friday, 24 August 2018
TVNZ employees will cash in on the broadcaster's successful year, set to receive a $1000 bonus after the company reported a $5.1 million profit for the year ended June 2018.
The company screened 18 of the top 20 programmes in the period with the election special 1 News Vote 2017 Leaders Debate the country's most watched programme.
Research out this week commissioned by New Zealand on Air found TVNZ was behind nine of the 10 television programmes with the highest ratings in August that they fund.
The result was an improvement on a $1.392m profit last year, following a massive uptick in its online streaming audience helping to generate advertising revenue.
All permanent employees at the company that do not participate in a short term incentive programme will get the windfall.
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Chief executive Kevin Kenrick said 'TVNZ has had a great year and this payment is to recognise the efforts of all our people who have contributed to the improved business performance'.
'We don't expect to repeat this level of profit growth in future years, but it has created a one-off opportunity for us to thank our people for their contribution and commitment to TVNZ's success.'
TVNZ's live event coverage of the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games reaching more than three million New Zealanders, and TVNZ also secured future sports rights in the year including selected Rugby World Cup matches and exclusive rights to the next America's Cup.
It's profits bounced back after the company wrote $12m off the value of a contract it signed more than six years ago to buy Disney programming.
Chairman Dame Therese Walsh said she was 'incredibly proud' of the shift in momentum, particularly the jump in its online streaming footprint.
The company attributed it increased profits to increased television and online advertising revue and lowered operational costs.
A restructure last year that impacted 30 jobs and let to the loss of 10 jobs has led to the company saving $2.8m in operational costs, the company reported in February.
Kenrick said the company reached two million New Zealanders a day through TVNZ 1, 2, Duke, OnDemand, 1 News Now, its new child-friendly platform Heihei and social media content producer Re:, which reached 30 million video views in its first year.
It's OnDemand platform also topped 100m streams for the year, an increase in audience reach of 15.2 per cent Kenrick said.
The network will also soon see John Campbell come to the company.
The state-owned broadcaster announced that Campbell would move to TVNZ from RNZ in September.
The company secured the rights to America's Cup for the next three years in late May, for what is understood to be more than $3m.
Kenrick said last year its massive profit cut was due to a loss of value to its rights to Disney content after Disney programming had begun to be streamed online by rivals.
In November last year, Kenrick's $1.35m salary was revealed to be only slightly less than the company's profit at the time.
In the 2018 Budget $15m in extra funding was set aside for public service journalism, but Minister Clare Curran has decided $4.5m will go directly to RNZ to extend its service, and $4m to NZ On Air to support local productions, with no direct funding for Television New Zealand.
TVNZ said in a submission to a ministerial advisory group which has been advising the Government on how to spend the money that rather than focus on the health of public media there needed to be a focus on 'the health of the local media industry as a whole'.
TVNZ said it was the only free-to-air television company that wasn't losing money.