a last bastion of current affairs falls

Updated to include statements from the Sunday and Fair Go teams.

Comment: So radical is TVNZ’s proposed cutting of its award-winning – its only – current affairs show Sunday that sceptics wonder if the move is for real, or to force company executives to think again.

Cancelling Sunday from May 12, with the loss of around 20 jobs, as well as ending the legendary consumer affairs watchdog Fair Go and stopping the Midday and Tonight news bulletins could not be blunter swings of the cost-cutting axe.

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark wondered aloud on X about TVNZ news management’s motivation, asking if the Sunday closure was a form of ‘Washington Monument’ cut – the famed US ploy by officials to put up their most unpalatable (or the public’s favourite) service when directed to find savings.

Unlikely, in this instance. The announced changes are traumatic for the 35 or so news and current affairs staff affected and for the rest of the division and wider TVNZ company. (A total of 68 roles are set to be chopped in this round of cost saving.)

Beyond the silencing of stories and investigations, stopping four shows has implications for advertising forward bookings, for long-term marketing, audience and business plans.

But the choices for cuts are in some ways counter intuitive. Not so much the lunchtime and late news bulletins – which, both in staff numbers and cost savings, will be relatively small.

The surprise element has been in taking out the very high-profile programmes and teams that do what many viewers and politicians might expect TVNZ to be doing.

Sunday’s team learned of the closure from 9am and the Fair Go staff later in the morning. A Fair Go social media post confirmed the show’s fate around 12.45pm.

The full statement from the Sunday team is below.

The timing of the announcement, just a week after Warner Bros. Discovery announced the closure of Newshub and snuffed out the prospect of the planned return of current affairs to Three’s 7pm slot, raises the prospect of zero longer-form journalistic inquiries running on free-to-air TV here.

It is never easy for news managers when corporate executives demand a dollar or headcount reduction. Trimming a little here and there can prove futile when a business like TVNZ has dropped 13.5 percent in its advertising revenues year-on-year and the board and accountants want to remedy that by reducing costs fast.

For example, small changes such as having no presenter on the Sunday show, with journalists introducing their own items, might have once offered up something of interest to the beancounters. Trimming one or two reporters or producers, taking foreign-sourced current affairs stories more often, limiting the travel, the scope and spend of Sunday investigations all would have been considered or already tried.

In times of financial crisis, with millions of dollars needed, a whole sacrifice can sometimes be the only remaining answer.

Four-fifths of TVNZ’s income is from advertising. In the economic downturn and the great digital tidal movement, advertising has fallen like a stone. The business has already made an attempt to cut the jobs of so-called middle management and executives.

Outsiders are not privy to advertising revenues for particular shows or timeslots, but Sunday‘s been able to justify its presence over the years at the end of the weekend, ratings and advertising-wise.

Its issue will have been its total cost line: a discrete sum likely in the millions of dollars a year that would have lit up the eyes of desperate cost accountants looking for amounts to count as savings.

Around 1.30 pm on Friday, after the consultation meetings and an all-staff gathering at the network centre in central Auckland, TVNZ chief executive Jodi O’Donnell said there had been “some incredibly tough conversations.”

“Midday, Tonight, Fair Go and Sunday are programmes with a long and celebrated legacy at Te Reo Tātaki.

“The proposals we have presented in no way relate to the immense contribution of the teams that work on these shows and the significant journalistic value they’ve provided over many years. Unfortunately, we need to reduce our costs to ensure the business remains sustainable. These aren’t decisions we make lightly, and significant analysis has gone into the proposals.”

O’Donnell added: “We remain committed to delivering the most trusted and watched News and Current Affairs for New Zealand audiences, and what that looks like will change as we shift to a digital-first model.”

For a so-called state broadcaster – publicly owned, highly commercial but still thought to exist for the public interest – losing Sunday and to a degree the persistent advocate for the little person, Fair Go, is a bold and controversial response.

Shows that might attract the remaining advertising dollars, the flagship 1 News at 6pm, the Breakfast news and magazine show and the lightweight Seven Sharp have escaped the blunt instrument cull.

They do not obviously answer a public expectation for public interest journalism on the people’s channel. And heads will be scratched at the type of news and current affairs that will survive.

With no Newshub at all, no current affairs on public TV and a lower profile all round for video news, viewers might be reinforced in a view that news no longer matters.

If plans are confirmed, Three will soon have no news. Its advertising executives are already talking to agencies about the merits of what will follow, and the channel’s suite of Australian reality and drama shows.

And if TVNZ’s plans play out, the remaining news on TVNZ1 will be a two-and-a-half-dimensional, protein-depleted service that eventually will surely leave viewers wanting more.

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Statement from the Sunday programme, 2.15 pm

‘The Sunday team was called into a 9am meeting today, and were told that our final broadcast date is to be in early May.  All our roles are to be disestablished

We are devastated at this proposal.

Against a backdrop of sector wide cuts, journalism is in crisis.

This is not just about job losses, which are difficult, but about what we believe is the sustained degradation of the Fourth Estate in NZ.  A healthy democracy relies on the ability of experienced journalists to decipher, in depth, the state of our country, our identity, and to hold power to account.

We are deeply concerned about what these cuts mean, especially in a time when we are facing so many unprecedented local and global challenges.

Sunday has been an agenda-setting and multi award-winning programme for over 22 years, a show on which many of our country’s finest journalists have worked. 

We are proud that our mahi saves lives, changes laws, uncovers corruption and celebrates the best of Aotearoa. 

We are a current affairs programme, the last of its kind.  While there has been much discussion about the costs of longform storytelling and how sustainable the craft is, Sunday retains a massive audience as one of the top 5 TV programmes in the country and is a significant contributor to our 1News website and to TVNZ+. 

We are grateful for the outpouring of love and support from so many, for us and our programme.  Sunday is a committed and professional team and we will keep telling our country’s stories for as long as we can.’