Opinion
What do you do with a television network that is seeing its ratings and market dominance slowly eroded? Easy: you get rid of its most valuable asset - the seasoned staff who lend it credibility.
The evisceration of the newsroom at Television New Zealand is the predictable result
of expecting the state broadcaster to answer a commercial remit in an age when broadcast news is becoming increasingly indistinguishable from entertainment. Frothy, young and pretty rules; age and wisdom just don't rate.
Around 150 people have lost their jobs in the latest round of restructuring in the organisation - at least half of those in news, sport and current affairs. Many are the more experienced staffers, on whose collective memory TVNZ relies when it seeks to position itself as the nation's authoritative broadcaster.
Not all of those are leaving because they have been asked to. Some, close to despair at a decade of cost-cutting and dumbing-down, have signed up for voluntary severance packages, reasoning that they may be happier hawking their skills on the freelance market than watching the organisation they have grown up with corrode from the inside out. But whether by omission or commission, TVNZ is losing some of its best. At least one of those who remain has been heard to ask recently who David Lange was.
This week's announcement that veteran sports broadcasters Keith Quinn, John McBeth and Geoff Bryan have been "disestablished" adds to the gloom. Publicly they are being gracious - a wise decision since they will probably be required for contract jobs. But privately they must quail, as we all should, at the future of a broadcaster that seems hell-bent on throwing away its past.
