KEY POINTS:
Though it's supposed to be a commercial entity, Television New Zealand suffers the indignity of being hauled before politicians at parliamentary select committee hearings.
The political posturing and point-scoring that often dominates those hearings means its financial results face less scrutiny than its private-sector competitors.
Earlier this week chief executive Rick Ellis broke with tradition and held a briefing with business journalists and financial analysts to explain how the company with $312 million in advertising revenue wound up $4.5 million in the red.
But results are far from transparent and raise the question of whether the company's dual commercial and non-commercial aims hide its problems. Certainly it's not easy to find any independent analysis.
TVNZ publishes interim results but performance updates are written for Treasury analysts, from which advice is then given to shareholding minister Michael Cullen.
But despite the fact that TVNZ is publicly owned, analysis of the performance of the Crown-owned company is regarded as secret.
Media analyst Martin Gillman this week praised Ellis for fronting up with results which he delivered with his four top executives.
Ellis said he wanted to make the company's performance more transparent - not just the financials, but the commercial performance as well.
Monday's briefing was a start but financial analyst and columnist Brian Gaynor was not impressed.
"It was all a bit fuzzy and I wasn't very impressed with those guys, I'm afraid.
"They did not talk much about the figures apart from a few words from chief financial officer Rodney Parker.
"There was a lot of talk - they were in a turnaround, they had turned the corner and the future was good - but there was very little scrutiny of the numbers.
"A key figure was that the company had lost $30 million or 6.5 per cent advertising revenue during a year when competitors such as Sky and MediaWorks had increased their revenue. It was not such a bad year, for advertising.
"No business can afford to see revenue fall like that - it leads to cost-cutting which only temporarily solves the problems," Gaynor said.
Ellis acknowledges deficiencies and wants to improve communications with the business sector.
But he makes no apologies for the way financial results are presented, interchanging between facts and figures and cultural obligations.
"The business model is that we have to do both and you cannot separate them out," he said.
"Our primary reason for being is as a public broadcasting remit but too often the commercial result has tended to overshadow the significant benefit TVNZ delivers through its content."
