TVNZ is predicting two years of net losses, totalling almost $50m, as it spends up on technology so it can double its digital audience and triple that income by the end of the decade.
Its sister public broadcaster, RNZ, expects to maintain a $1m surplus in coming years and has set out growth targets for its flagship radio show Morning Report and its rapidly growing website, rnz.co.nz.
The numbers are in the two organisations’ Statements of Performance Expectations tabled in Parliament, alongside their four-year statements of intent for the businesses.
This financial year TVNZ expects to bring in $76m in digital revenue and aims to boost that to $94.1m a year later.
But the company is outlining a $20m net loss this year and $28.1m in 2027.
TVNZ forecasts a return to profitability in 2028 and then “sustained profitable earnings” by 2030 once it has left behind its broadcast chrysalis and emerged as a “fully integrated digital-first media platform”.
TVNZ says its 594,000 average nightly audience for 1 News at Six will basically hold steady for the next two years while it takes its weekly streaming audience for the show from 192,000 to 240,000 within two years.
TVNZ’s Digital+ 2030 plan focuses on “inspiring the conversations of Aotearoa” and becoming the country’s number one streamer for trusted news, sport and entertainment.
“Audience attention is currently shifting to digital at a faster rate than advertising revenue. Our strategy is designed to build a sustainable position in the market and offset linear decline by doubling digital audiences and tripling digital revenue by 2030.”
In the statement of intent out to 2030, TVNZ’s chair Andrew Barclay and audit chair John Quirk write: “The increase in competitor platforms, most of which are global, in the NZ market means that a solely advertising-funded revenue model is challenging to sustain. TVNZ is responding by diversifying its revenue beyond advertising in the years ahead.
“The board is confident that the strategy set out in this document positions TVNZ to navigate a complex operating environment and deliver lasting value to its shareholder and the country.”
Will need political intervention
TVNZ emphasises it will need regulatory measures to help level the playing field against the big global players who “do not reinvest meaningfully in the local market” if it is “to maximise long-term commercial sustainability”.
“Over the forthcoming period, TVNZ will continue to work constructively with government to advance a regulatory environment that supports a healthy and sustainable media ecosystem.
“One that protects the prominence of trusted local journalism as a key foundation of democracy, enables New Zealanders to see themselves reflected on screen and ensures domestic operators can compete on fair terms with global platforms that operate without equivalent obligations.”
The broadcaster says maintaining and continuing to improve trust remains core to its operations.
“Over the course of the next four years, TVNZ acknowledges its responsibility to set the highest standards for both itself and industry. We will continue to evolve trust measures and enhance the processes that preserve accuracy and balance in news.”
RNZ’s statement of intent to 2030 warns “a potent mixture of technology shifts and changing audience habits is continuing and is fuelled by another gamechanger – artificial intelligence”.
It says RNZ’s role as a “public media cornerstone and collaborator” will become more important with the country’s media sector under financial pressure and “in a market where audiences must navigate increased advertising, requests for donations and more and tighter paywalls”.
The document, in the name of former chair Jim Mather and former audit chair Jane Wrightson, acknowledges the importance of RNZ retaining key talent and working with top independent creators in an era where there has been a shift to “personality led news”.
One of the corporate attitudes outlined is to be bold. “We think big, we find a way to make things happen, we learn best by doing and we believe that trying and failing is better than not trying at all.”
Like TVNZ, RNZ sounds a warning about the dominance of foreign information sources.
Its statement of performance expectations for this financial year says the global digital giants – Meta, Google, Apple, TikTok and Open AI – “are commanding attention and advertising revenue, fundamentally altering the economics of local storytelling”.
A vital anchor of truth
“By providing news and current affairs that is of the highest quality, fiercely independent and entirely commercial-free, we offer a vital anchor of truth in a sea of increasingly polarised and algorithm-driven content. We remain for New Zealand and about New Zealand.”
On the use of artificial intelligence, RNZ promises to be “pro-human” and embrace the efficiencies it offers for news gathering but “we will never compromise on the human editorial judgment that is the bedrock of our credibility”.
The company says: “We will protect and leverage our intellectual property by controlling its use in large language models.
“We will emphasise human creativity and oversight in our content creation and curation.
“It will be essential to prioritise on-the-ground reporting, original journalism, in-depth conversations, investigations and NZ human-interest stories that cannot be found elsewhere.”
On audience targets, RNZ has a relatively modest aim for the weekly listenership for RNZ National, from 492,000 last year to 520,000 in 2026-27, still a world away from the 700,000 it hit during the pandemic and well off the current 660,000 for Newstalk ZB.
For its website rnz.co.nz, which has rapidly risen to third-ranked after Stuff and the NZ Herald, it wants to see a rise from 1.68m in the year gone to 1.75m monthly unique users in the year ahead.
Morning Report’s radio audience of 336,500 on average in the last year is targeted for a rise by just 16,500, or 5 percent, to 353,000 this year.
In a section on business efficiency, RNZ outlines a cost-cutting measure, the monthly cost of the broadcaster per audience member, which would fall from $1.67 now to $1.60.
In Auckland, RNZ has just moved its operations into two levels of the TVNZ network centre on Victoria St, allowing for what it calls collaboration.
The TVNZ statement of performance expectations promises to report on initiatives “that demonstrate a closer working relationship with RNZ in line with the Government’s expectations”.
“This includes (but is not limited to) initiatives to maximise audiences across both platforms (where commercially appropriate), collaboration on emergency management processes, and other opportunities to increase efficiencies.”
Online audiences
The latest Nielsen monthly online audience measure, for news sites for June, shows Stuff retaining its number one spot on 2.14 m (up 120,000) and 210,000 clear of the NZ Herald on 1.93m (up 30,000), which is still striving to break the two million mark.
RNZ is third on 1.64m (up 10,000) and 1News sits a long way back in fourth on 667,000 (up 26,000).
