KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand Stock Exchange and Fairfax Media have joined forces to upgrade the NZX website.
The old site has been a conservative but trusty bulletin board that provides an objective view of the market in (nearly) real time.
The days of the "chalkies" and the stock exchange
blackboard are long gone, and now Fairfax has given a lift to what many see as the face of New Zealand business
The"ground-breaking" joint venture that started this week sees Fairfax running the site, which incorporates news and comment alongside disclosure announcements and other data required by regulation.
Fairfax Media will run articles from its newspapers, such as the Dominion Post and Press, as well as from the New Zealand Press Association. It is something of a marketing bonus for Fairfax as it seeks to develop its own business website.
And under the new arrangements, Fairfax and the NZX will share revenue from advertising on the site aimed at retail investors.
The NZX says a lot of its investment decisions are based on what is said in the media. So editorial content smack bang in the middle of its website may be influential and items will be posted on the judgment of Fairfax, an established and respected media company.
But who is in charge?
It seems that Mark Weldon and the NZX will be able to pull articles that they don't like. The NZX is both a part of the market and regulator. Now it has a say on what is published about the sharemarket.
Fairfax Media managing editor of business David Gadd said Fairfax provided content to the NZX.
"But it is their website. They can determine what they do or do not wish to have on their site."
A New Zealand Stock Exchange spokeswoman, Leonie Gordon, said that the NZX relied on the editorial judgment of Fairfax on articles.
But in the end it was an NZX website and it would choose what appeared.
I suggested that investors seeing the Fairfax bylines might assume editorial control was by Fairfax - the backing of its respected brand.
Gordon did not think users would view the site that way.
COMPUTER ERRORS
The question whether NZX would restrict negative market news being shown on its website came under scrutiny yesterday, just a few days after the new site was up and running.
Fairfax's Stuff website and nzherald.co.nz gave full-blooded coverage to the story of Peter Marshall, the former Access Brokerage chief executive who was jailed for three years for defrauding the struggling firm of $4.8 million.
Two hours after the items appeared, the story was still not on the NZX site.
The Business Herald asked Gadd whether it had been kept off the site, but he said that it was simply a case of a mixup uploading the item. Five minutes after the Herald called, the article appeared and was still there when trading closed. Accidents happen. But should the NZX be able remove this sort of story from its site?
APN PASSES ON DEAL
The joint venture seems a smart marketing move for Fairfax. Business commentator and Milford Asset Management director Brian Gaynor has followed the online escapades of the NZX.
He says that in the late 1990s, Herald publisher APN News & Media had a strong relationship with NZX which dissolved after the dotcom crash in 2000. Gaynor said that in the meantime Fairfax had maintained an interest.
NZX communications chief Rowan Macrae said the exchange had initially approached APN for changes to the website, but it had declined. Which is surprising given the way both newspaper giants are so focused on digital growth.
FELLET NO-SHOW
Sky Television chief executive John Fellet has rejected a suggestion that he snubbed the TVNZ 7 programme Media 7 in a Wednesday night debate about anti-siphoning rules for sports rights.
The issue is just one buzz in a hornets' nest of issues that has erupted as a result of the Government review of broadcasting regulations.
Media 7 producer Phil Wallington said yesterday that Fellet had turned down an invitation because TVNZ 7 was exclusive to the Freeview digital platform and he saw it as aimed at undermining Sky. Fellet replied with a typically pithy remark. "That's not it. I didn't go on because there was nobody watching.
"It's not about Freeview - we have most of the Freeview channels on Sky - only a couple of TVNZ digital channels [TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7] are on Freeview only."
DIGITAL BATTLES
The argument about those two channels lies at the heart of the row between Sky TV and TVNZ - with TV3 stuck somewhere between the two. For all the promotions for Freeview and the effort to create a free-to-air platform, it is far from certain it can grow and prosper against the might of Sky.
TVNZ - buoyed by $78 million of taxpayer digital subsidies - argues that Freeview has to offer exclusive content, like TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7, to convince people to buy a decoder.
Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch-controlled Sky - in the homes of 47 per cent of New Zealanders - has argued that free-to-air channels could be accommodated on its platform, making Freeview largely unnecessary. But a Murdoch-controlled firm controlling a big part of the infrastructure is not everybody's idea of fun.
Labour's solution was Freeview and feeding TVNZ ever more subsidies.
TVNZ and transmission subsidy Kordia have most at stake in this battle of the digital platforms.But MediaWorks and TV3 are piggies in the middle. MediaWorks has to fund channels for Freeview, which reaches just 5 per cent of the country. Meanwhile Sky offers to pay for its new channels and reach 47 per cent.
It must be tempting for private equity owned TV3 to put its new channels up on Sky, even if it does slow Freeview.
CHARTER HISTORY
Two things about the debate are intriguing. The first is that the timing could not have been worse for TVNZ. While accusing Sky of being the biggest ogre on the block, it was revealed that TVNZ was up to its old tricks of bidding to take the rights to Fox shows off TV3.
It is the old TVNZ tactic of hoarding shows to keep them away from the competition. At the same time, the Broadcasting Minister, Trevor Mallard, is to remove TVNZ control of $15.1 million of charter money, effectively saying TVNZ could not be trusted to control it.
Mallard's view is as astonishing as it is correct. The fact is that TVNZ is unloved and while it might survive under Labour, the charter will be history under the Nats.
After years of bad behaviour - not least the dysfunctional weirdness of the Ian Fraser era - people can take or leave it and the prospect of a TV environment dominated by Sky worries nobody.
What will worry, though, is a large part of the production industry which gets precious few commissions from Sky. Market commentators have been prone to depicting a white-hatted Sky TV and black-hatted TVNZ. The sharemarket will always favour a publicly listed monopoly against a public broadcaster, especially one like TVNZ that has been mismanaged by both National and Labour politicians.
While other markets argue about the level of regulation, New Zealand argues whether we should have any. It's that sort of simple-mindedness that has got us to the point of swapping the TVNZ television monopoly of 1987 for a Sky monopoly within the next 10 years. While clearing away the damage from the Telecom monopoly, many are suggesting a Sky monopoly would be okay.
