Another $1 deal, another big shakeup for the New Zealand media industry.
Sky TV has acquired free-to-air television channel Three and its associated platforms, with control set to take effect by next Friday.
Host of the Spinoff’s podcast, The Fold, Duncan Greive, told The Front Page he’s not shocked by the move, but he’s excited.
“Because I think this industry needs some dynamism and needs a level of competition. Three and Sky just make sense together.
“I think fundamentally TVNZ has always been number one. It’s always had a huge share of audience, but more than that, it’s even had a bigger share of the advertising market. It makes roughly $300 million in advertising revenue versus around $100 million for Three,” he said.
Sky New Zealand CEO Sophie Moloney confirmed to Herald Now there will be no changes to the programming line-up over the next 12 to 18 months.
She did hint at the prospect of the potential for more locally-made content.
“We think we need more commissioned content here as well, as long as it makes sense and we can make money from it, of course. But, we think there’s a great opportunity in bringing these two entities together,’ she said.
Grieve said that in a very broad sense, Sky probably makes more local content than anyone else already because of the amount of sport it produces.
“We don’t tend to think about that in the production sector, which is where a lot of the drums are beating around Netflix’s commissioned locally comes from. They don’t typically think about sports.
“They [Sky] also, through New Zealand On Air and some other commercial partnerships, make some local content as well, but not nearly so much as the likes of TVNZ, for example.
“Three has massively pulled back from that itself. It used to have multiple news bulletins; now it just has one. It doesn’t make it itself - Stuff manufactures that for them,” Grieve said.
In the past, TVNZ has poached some of Three’s biggest hits. Home and Away was one of the biggest snatches, followed by Grand Designs, and more recently, Graham Norton’s talk show.
“Some of those shows weren’t necessarily poached from Three so much as Three either deliberately or unintentionally botched the negotiation on them. They were all real losses. Some of those, particularly Home and Away, were real tent poles on how they set up their evening.
“In this situation, I think it’s less about Three defending what it has - and it still has a lot. David Lomas Investigates is still a very beloved property for them. Married at First Sight Australia regularly tops the ratings. They’ve got their licence to operate The Block... They do have a strong and proud history, basically comedy and reality TV, as locally made genres were largely driven strategically by Three.
“But, I think what’s more instructive and interesting about this deal is - if you look at the vast library that Sky has, truly it’s one of the best in the world. It might be the best in the world just because we’re a small market with fewer pay TV operators across sports, entertainment.
“[But] what it can do, in terms of putting a sampling of that on Three, and then using that as the top of the funnel to say, if you like that there’s a whole lot more where that came from across Sky’s properties, and then advertising that there once that’s all properly put together strategically understood and executed, that should be a pretty formidable machine for them, setting aside the whole advertising piece of it,” he said.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about New Zealand’s media landscape.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.