Warner Bros. Discovery's decision to shut down Newshub was met with mourning within the media - and also concern about what could replace it in the media ecosystem
Warner Bros. Discovery's decision to shut down Newshub was met with mourning within the media - and also concern about what could replace it in the media ecosystem.
Melissa Chan-Green opened the AM Show on Thursday by extinguishing the hopes of her viewers.
"You've likely seen the news by now that our company is proposing to shut down Newshub from June. Some people have been asking 'does that affect AM too? We're all part of the same family," she said. "So yes that does affect AM too."
Her co-host Lloyd Burr added his own eulogy, though he spiced it up with a small, and quite visceral note of hope.
"When the chips are down we get through it," he said. "John Campbell once said we're tighter than a fish's bum."
It later emerged that senior Newshub staff would be trying to save the service, presumably on a fish-bum budget.
The revelation that AM would be part of the Newshub shutdown wouldn't have been news to anyone who had been listening to Heather du Plessis-Allan on Newstalk ZB the previous day.
She got that fact confirmed from the horse's mouth, by Warner Bros. Discovery's Asia-Pacific president James Gibbons, and his revelation left her with one burning question on her mind.
"What are you going to do with all the equipment?" she asked.
Other potential lines of inquiry include what are you going to do about all these people who are about to lose their jobs?
And what are we all going to do about the loss of media diversity and competition?
Journalists, including Newshub's Amelia Wade, did put those sorts of questions to the broadcasting minister, Melissa Lee, who said don't worry about it, audiences have still got Sky.
"There's Sky as well. There's a whole lot of other medias about," she said.
Just one problem with all this though: Sky's news broadcast is supplied by Newshub, which doesn't make it a great alternative to content produced by Newshub.
ACT's David Seymour, a shareholding minister in TVNZ in this coalition, posited one idea for fixing the paucity of competition in broadcast news - weakening TVNZ's market position by demanding it return a larger dividend to the government.
"It may well mean they have to make a return on equity just like every other business in New Zealand is required to do," he said.
Sadly, TVNZ's dominance in free-to-air TV is far from Newshub's only problem…