Shortland Street future “unclear”
News media in NZ reels from programme closures and hundreds of job losses -but it may not stop there.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
The future of New Zealand soap Shortland Street is currently unclear as local media reels from programme closures and hundreds of confirmed job losses.
TVNZ is “looking very hard” at Shortland Street, and its future is “unclear”, said Kelly Martin, CEO of South Pacific Pictures.
“We have been in conversations for a while,” Martin, whose company produces the long-running TVNZ 2 soap.
“It’s definitely something that’s up for discussion and I don’t know what the outcome of those discussions would be.”
A TVNZ spokesperson said: “Shortland Street is a commercially funded show. Like many businesses across Aotearoa, the current recessionary environment is having a big impact on TVNZ. There’s less advertising revenue going around as businesses tighten their belts, and that makes it increasingly difficult to fund our programming slate and provide our services to viewers. As a result, we need to look at everything across our slate to ensure we remain commercially viable. This includes Shortland Street.”
On Wednesday morning, Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed it would close all its Newshub news operations, including the news website, the morning television show and the 6pm television bulletin, resulting in roughly 300 job losses.
By the afternoon TVNZ had confirmed it would axe its long-running current affairs programme Sunday, consumer affairs programme Fair Go, and stop its midday and late-night bulletins, resulting in the loss of another 68 media roles.
Newshub’s closure means the country is left with just one English television news service, the now pared back state-owned TVNZ.
Shortland Street screens in Australia on 7plus.
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2 Responses
Oh no. Love Shorty!
It does such a great job of representing so many minority communities in its storylines.
Definitely a sad state of affairs in the NZ media landscape. It would be a big loss if Shortland Street disappears; but unfortunately, unlike Neighbours having Amazon rescue it for its UK popularity (Shortland Street also streams on Amazon Freevee in the UK), Shortland Street doesn’t have the same level of international following.
In terms of free TV news services, Sky NZ still airs their News First at 5:30 bulletin on their FTA Sky Open channel (formerly Prime). But it is a seismic shift to the TV landscape to lose NewsHub on Three.