24 June 2004

TVNZ today strongly refuted comments from National’s Broadcasting spokeswoman Georgina te Heuheu in regards to its alleged “anti-competitive behaviour”.

“We went after the ABC and NBC deals because we are ambitious about our news and current affairs offering and we needed the extra news product for our two channels, especially short segment news items which we currently don’t have,” said Chief Executive Officer Ian Fraser.

“We are committed to bringing the best in news and current affairs from around New Zealand and the world to our viewers and to do that it is only right we consider any form of programme supply.

“We intend to put all the new product we are acquiring to good use. TVNZ does not buy programming to have it gather dust on a shelf.

“TVNZ negotiated in good faith, and on the basis of pre-existing programme acquisition relationships (not dissimilar to the basis on which TV3 added The Simpsons to its other Fox output deal product), for the ABC and NBC news deals. We succeeded on that basis.”

Mr Fraser added that if owning the rights to both ABC and NBC was anti-competitive then, logically, TV3 must have been acting anti-competitively in 2000 and 2001 when it owned the rights to both ABC and CBS.

“For the record, TVNZ screens three times as much news and current affairs as TV3 and our ABC package is significantly bigger than the ABC package TV3 had.”

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>