Television New Zealand launches its new channel on Sky's pay platform June 1st. TVNZ Heartland will feature 100% local content - classic kiwi shows as well as more recent content. With 50 years of local tv being marked soon, TVNZ has heaps of content and Heartland will bring that to life again. Mind you, revisiting series like Close To Home for example may not necessarily be a good thing!
But when you cut through the spin about "giving NZers more opportunity to see themselves", this is being launched to create another TVNZ revenue stream. And God knows it needs all it can get, given the parent company of the TiVo technology it purchased lost 730,000 consumers this past year (that's a 22% drop!). With speculation TVNZ spent $19 million of our money for the rights, this no doubt helped TiVo's bottom line, whereas TVNZ has only managed to sell about 2,000 units. So it's no surprise that TVNZ is developing deals with Sky.
It's easy to criticise, but these days TVNZ struggles to stay relevant in the digital world, by spending heaps of taxpayers' cash on flash-in-the-pan acquisitions and partnership deals that go nowhere: Bebo, TVNZ Sports Extra, TelstraSaturnDTV...
Don't get me wrong - TVNZ does some great things...on television. Its news service is unbeatable, it has some excellent current affairs programmes, some even claim Shortland Street is good viewing (though I'll debate this 'til doomsday!). But perhaps it needs to decide exactly what it's doing digitally, and stick to it.
1 comment:
Well, I've watched it a few months now, and I kinda like it. Theres alot of "cringe" stuff like old re-runs of "It's In The Bag" which wasn't great even when it was current. But all up, not bad. I loved the one about following the old disused railway lines all over the country.
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