TVNZ’s reporters in future will be filing stories for itsweb site tvnz.co.nz as the company begins a major restructuring of its newsservices. In the process, 31 jobs will be disestablished, saving more thanthree million dollars a year.
The radical move is the latest step for the broadcaster tocut costs, as it continues to tackle the problem of falling advertisingrevenues.
TVNZ Head of News, Current Affairs, Sports, Maori andPacific Anthony Flannery said the proposed changes involved the introduction ofnew technology, training to make staff multi-skilled and a reorganisation ofnews and current affairs gathering processes and practices.
“With TVNZ’s ‘inspiring New Zealanders on every screen’strategy of getting news, information and entertainment on to many screens, agroup of news and current affairs managers have been looking at news andcurrent affairs operations around the world for the past 12 months,” Flannerysaid.
“British, European and North American broadcastingoperations have been changing their news and current affairs gatheringprocesses and practices over the last ten years to create multimediaoperations. This sees news and current affairs reporters and producersexpanding their work across multiple programmes and platforms instead of beinglimited to one as TVNZ currently is.”
He said that after initial consultation with staff, TVNZexpected to have a customised version of this multimedia approach with somededicated staff for programmes plus a pool of reporters, producers, editors andcamera operators.
The proposal is for News and Current Affairs to be groupedinto four areas: Newsgathering, Daily Programmes, Current Affairs andOperations. Newsgathering would get the daily stories and Daily Programmeswould decide how they would be shaped for the programmes and platforms theywere to go on. Operations would do the logistics.
“Instead of a number of different programmes all chasingafter the same story and duplicating resources, a reporter and a producer willsee a story through the whole day across a number of programmes and platforms,”Flannery said. “The story ideas and follow-ups will be driven from and gatheredback to a central hub. They will then be re-purposed for the particularprogramme or platform they are to go on.
“That’s a better use of resources and reflects that TVNZ nowhas more than ONE News @ 6 to service. There’s also NZI Business, Breakfast,Midday News, 4.30pm news, Close Up, Tonight, News Updates, Te Karere, sportsprogrammes, News at 8, the TVNZ 7 hourly bulletins, tvnz.co.nz and news formobile phone providers.
“The current operation was built at a time when ONE News @ 6was the way most New Zealanders received their news. Digitisation has changedall that and people increasingly get their news anywhere and any time.”
Flannery some 150 reporters, producers and camera operatorswould shortly begin a training programme over a six month period to teach themthe skills of editing. In future reporters and producers would be expected tobe able to edit their stories to a greater level of completion, with editorsproviding the final polish.
He said the company would be spending $1.5 million on the implementation,including new equipment and training as part of this multimedia strategy. Infuture, for example, some reporters would have an electronic wireless internet-capablenetbook so they can write, voice and file from the field. This was critical forthe timely transfer of stories for online, mobile and hourly news bulletins.
Flannery said the proposed changes would see about 31 rolesdisestablished, including cancelling seven current vacancies. It would also seethe establishment of about 14 new roles. The net impact of this was about 10fewer roles in News and Current Affairs than now. But because externalpeople would be able to apply for some of those newly established roles it mayresult in about 15 people, including two current affairs reporters andsome producers, editors, camera operators and support staff, losing their jobsout of News and Current Affairs’ 258-strong team.
The staff reductions and changes in work practices oncebedded in would result in annual savings of between $3 million and $3.3million.
