06 September 2008
Seven’s Coming Home
28 February 2008
By Angela Beswick
TVNZ claims the launch of its second Freeview TVNZ 7 will boost its local content and give New Zealanders a place to shape their views on local and international issues.
The channel is being marketed as a “factual” channel with “top-class programming and thought-provoking documentaries”.
Head of digital services Eric Kearley hopes TVNZ 7 will strengthen New Zealanders’ sense of national identity through commissioning and producing more original local content.
“We are aiming for their hearts and minds, because the heart and mind is where a nation is shaped,” Kearley said at the channel’s corporate launch this week.
TVNZ 7, designed and marketed for an adult audience, will be entirely advertisement-free.
The Government is providing $80 million over its first five years, with TVNZ 7 will be operating at just five per cent of the budget of TV1 and TV2. The funding will be reviewed again in five years.
Locally produced content will make up 70 per cent of programming. Thirty per cent will be news, with a 10 minute news bulletin on the hour, and a full hour of news at 8 pm every night.
The new co-anchor of TVNZ News at 8, Geraline Knox, said: “We intend to bring the best news across multiple platforms, anywhere, anytime.”
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| Russell Brown |
Two new programmes will also screen on TVNZ 7, Back Benches and Media 7. Back Benches will be a weekly political review show, hosted by Wallace Chapman, and Media 7, a multi-media news and commentary series hosted by well-known blogger Russell Brown.
“We will be informative, honest, and just a little bit cheeky,” Brown said of his new show.
At a media launch on Thursday, questions were raised about whether TVNZ 7 would be made available on Sky television, given that Freeview is currently only installed in 80,000 homes around the country.
“From a public service point-of-view, we would want as wide a distribution as possible,” Kearley said.
However, he said, to add value to the Sky package without an adequate licence agreement or regulatory laws like foreign countries have, would be “slow suicide” and there haven’t been offers from Sky that appeal yet.
Shows screened on TVNZ 7 will be available on the TVNZ Ondemand website
