Decision made on TVNZ, RNZ merger by the Cabinet, sources suggest

Tuesday, 22 February 2022

The Cabinet has now made a call on whether to fold TVNZ and RNZ into a new public media agency, and there is speculation it has decided to go ahead with the merger, sources suggest.

Ministers had been expected to consider the proposal early this year.

A spokesman for Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi declined to confirm or deny a decision had already been reached at a meeting of the Cabinet on Monday, saying that when Faafoi had something he could say, he would say it.

TVNZ spokeswoman Rachel Howard said it had not heard word of a decision yet.

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* Ministers delay decision on TVNZ, RNZ merger until next year

* Why the Government might want to merge TVNZ and RNZ

**

National Party broadcasting spokeswoman Melissa Lee said she had been aware a decision was fairly imminent and “any decision was better than none” due to the uncertainty hanging over the organisations.

But she said she was concerned about the impact that creating a “government-funded media behemoth” could have on privately-owned media organisations and the media landscape in general.

“We don’t understand the drivers,” she said.

The merger proposal would see TVNZ and RNZ folded into a new agency with a new charter that would receive funding both from the Crown and from commercial advertising.

The media shake-up has travelled along a bumpy road, facing two delays; the first in 2019 when NZ First leader Winston Peters called for more information on the plan, and again last year when a Cabinet consideration of the proposal was pushed back due to Covid priorities.

Sceptics include lobby group Better Public Broadcasting, which has warned strong rules would be needed to preserve RNZ's public media ethos and expressed concern over a lack of transparency over the reasons for the merger.

The Taxpayers Union lobby group called last year for the Government to better explain the thinking behind the merger proposal and to involve the public at an earlier stage in the process.

Concerns are also understood to have been voiced that the new public entity could push more strongly into the online news space currently dominated by privately-owned media businesses Stuff and NZME, with potentially mixed implications for media plurality.

TVNZ chief executive Kevin Kenrick, who will leave the broadcaster on Monday after delivering its annual results on Friday, has also appeared unconvinced by the plan.

He advised MPs in 2019 that “all you are going to get out of a new structure is ‘a structure’”, and told a select committee last year that it was valid to question whether a merger could increase public concerns about media bias.

However, RNZ chairman Jim Mather has expressed strong support for a merger.

In March last year, Faafoi said he would “not go into specifics” of why the proposal was being considered, but said he believed it was possible to have a “better, fit-for-purpose structure for public media”.

One example of a benefit was that the new entity could save money on capital expenditure by sharing its kit and put the savings back into its journalism, he said.

A preliminary business case developed by the Culture and Heritage Ministry in conjunction with consultant PWC in 2020 also gave few specifics but suggested a new, larger entity might be able to produce better quality content than RNZ and TVNZ could individually.

Another consultant, Deloitte, was later appointed to complete work on the business case.