TVNZ announces job cuts

TVNZ today told staff it will axe around 15 news and current affairs jobs in another round of staff cuts.

TVNZ is chasing around $3.3 million in savings through staff reductions.

The latest changes will "disestablish" 31 jobs, including cancelling seven current vacancies – but it will also create 14 new jobs.

Some of the new jobs will be thrown open to external candidates rather than simply handed to existing staff.

The overall  impact will be that 15 people stand to lose their jobs – including two current affairs reporters and some producers, editors, camera operators and support staff. The total News and Current Affairs team is 258-strong.

TVNZ is touting the shake up as "the biggest changes to New Zealand television news and current affairs operations in about 20 years."

TVNZ Head of News, Current Affairs, Sports, Maori and Pacific Anthony Flannery said in a formal statement today the changes involve bringing new technology, training to "make staff multi-skilled" and a reorganisation of news and current affairs gathering processes and practices.

Staff at a meeting called by the state broadcaster today put it more bluntly - behind-the-scenes jobs in editing and production for news and current affairs would be cut and reporters would be required to take over the jobs by "up-skilling."

Flannery said 150 reporters, producers and camera operators would shortly begin a training programme over the next six months to teach them the skills of editing.

He said the company would be spending $1.5 million on the implementation, including new equipment and training as part of this Multi-Media strategy.

In future, for example, some reporters would have an electronic wireless internet capable “netbook” so they can write, voice and file from the field.

Staff at today’s meeting said they were told the company will seek feedback, then confirm who will lose their jobs at the end of two weeks.

"They just told us what was happening in each department. There was reshuffling and some people were going to lose jobs.  They didn’t say "ok, this is how many jobs are going, they went through every department and said what jobs would change," a staff member said.

Flannery said the changes came after a year long study by a group of news and current affairs managers looking at news and current affairs operations around the world for the past 12 months.

"British, European and North American broadcasting operations have been changing their news and current affairs gathering processes and practices over the last ten years to create multi-media operations. This sees news and current affairs reporters and producers expanding their work across multiple programmes and platforms instead of being limited to one as TVNZ currently is."

Flannery said the model would be some dedicated staff for specific programmes plus a pool of reporters, producers, editors and camera operators operating between all the news programmes.

The proposal is for News and Current Affairs to be grouped into four areas – Newsgathering, Daily Programmes, Current Affairs and Operations. Newsgathering would get the daily stories and Daily Programmes would decide how they would be shaped for the programmes and platforms they were to go on. Operations would do the logistics.

"The proposed News and Current Affairs structure is programme and platform agnostic and based on the philosophy of ‘make once, publish many’ and brings our operations into the 21st century. Instead of a number of different programmes all chasing after the same story and duplicating resources, a reporter and a producer will see a story through the whole day across a number of programmes and platforms.

"The story ideas and follow-ups will be driven from and gathered back to a central hub. They will then be re-purposed for the particular programme or platform they are to go on.

"That’s a better use of resources and reflects that TVNZ now has 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, sports programmes, News at 8, the TVNZ 7 hourly bulletins, tvnz.co.nz and news for mobile phone providers.

"The current operation was built at a time when ONE News @ 6 was the way most New Zealanders received their news. Digitisation has changed all that and people increasingly get their news anywhere and any time."

In current affairs the proposal is for SUNDAY, 20/20 and Fair Go to further share resources and there would be more planning and interaction with daily news.

This was not new for some reporters, producers and camera operators who already successfully did their own editing, particularly when overseas on assignment. Many international news and current affairs broadcasters already work this way.

"Modern, internationally employable news broadcasters will need to work this way. We’re keeping up with the best broadcasters in the world."

- © Fairfax NZ News