Newshub to shut down in June - how dire is the state of local media? - The Front Page

High-profile talent such as 6pm news presenters Mike McRoberts and Samantha Hayes and new 7pm show host Ryan Bridge are set to lose their jobs as Newshub closes. Photo / Dean Purcell

The shock closure of Newshub has been described as a “dark day” for the local industry, but it doesn’t suggest immediately that more companies will follow.

Newshub - the newsroom arm of free-to-air channel Three - is due to cease operations by the end of June, it was announced today. It’s part of a wider cost-cutting effort by the network’s US owners, Warner Bros. Discovery, which will see a reduction in locally made content that isn’t government-funded.

Up to 350 people work for the company, with the majority - around 200 - employed within the newsroom.

NZ Herald editor-at-large and Media Insider columnist Shayne Currie told The Front Page, the Herald’s daily news podcast, that the news came as a shock, but Warner Bros. Discovery has been warning of economic challenges for some time.

“Less than two weeks ago, in fact, Warner Bros. Discovery was before the select committee in Parliament absolutely talking about the importance of media plurality and supporting the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.”

He said that Three has been fighting an uphill battle since it launched, up against the government-owned TVNZ.

“Since 1989, most certainly Three’s been the scrappy underdog. It’s gone through multiple different ownerships. It’s been in debt to the government. It’s been in debt to its private owners. It made a $35 million loss in 2022. That followed on from a $21 million loss in 2021.

“So you can see that an overseas owner, even in the scale of a Warner Brothers Discovery, isn’t going to want to sustain losses like that for too long, especially a news organisation at the bottom of the world.”

Newshub’s closure is just the latest major shake-up for the media industry in recent years, after magazine publisher Bauer Media closed in 2020 (though various titles were eventually relaunched under different owners), Stuff was sold for $1 in 2021, and Today FM closed last year after a year in operation.

Currie said that this is a “dark day for us in the media industry”, but believes there are still reasons to be optimistic.

“NZME announced its result last week, it’s still profitable, and relatively speaking going well. Sky had a good result. RNZ and TVNZ are obviously owned ultimately by the public. And so there’s a backstop there, but what we’re talking about here is ensuring that there is that media plurality, that what we can’t get to is having a media landscape in New Zealand where the only two companies left are owned by the public.”

Listen to the full episode for more analysis on Newshub’s closure and the future of New Zealand media.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. This episode was presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined Newstalk ZB in 2016.

You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.