The 1News at six pm is often an hour of doom and gloom. A major part of the news is on war, crime or those suffering in the poorer end of town. For many watching, six o’clock is their dinner hour and while what is being served up on the plate might be appetising, what is being served up on the screen is probably less so. The ease by which food can be enjoyed relies on the lower esophageal sphincter muscle working properly. If it’s not (tightening instead of relaxing), stomach acid can flow back up into the esophagus causing acid reflux.
I rarely watch 1News, but, when I do, I get the feeling that it could also be hindering the digestive process, not to mention the risk of raising blood pressure. It would appear, from reading the Media Insider in the Weekend Herald, that staff working at 1News might also be suffering from similar ailments, albeit for different reasons. Having seen recent staff cuts in the organisation, they found out last week that they themselves could be in the firing line.
They were told the state broadcaster, as part of its efforts to hit a $30 million savings target, will axe its 1News website from early next year. The reaction from staff seemed to be akin to a visit from Greta Thunberg telling them that the world would be reduced to ashes within the same timeframe. They were left reeling and it was described as an ‘all-out assault’ on the TVNZ newsroom. Maybe that has given them an idea of the condition of the ears, eyes and stomach of those masochists who last the news hour, but probably not.
These people spend an hour showing you what’s going on in the real world but are not in it themselves. They are somewhere else, wallowing along in their self-indulgent world of left-wing journalistic activism, involving spite, hate and general loathing of anything to do with the current government – the administration they spectacularly failed to stop from winning the last election. It was a proven failure, but they are continuing down the same path. The viewers are doing likewise and continue to walk away to something more palatable: their dinner.
These people seem oblivious to the fact that they, at least to some degree, are the authors of their own demise. They are ruining the company’s chances of maximising revenue in what should be its most profitable hour by the way they present the news. Those who voted this government in are not going to watch it being lambasted on a nightly basis by self-serving journalists. Cooking up large amounts of left-wing diatribe each evening is not helpful to those parts of the anatomy the audience use to see, hear and digest.
Staff at 1News are being given a taste of the real world and evidently it is not to their liking. It seems it might be similar to the tang of lemons which, come to think of it, most of them are. They need to realise they are part of the reason there is such a deficit. Of course they are far removed from the capitalist world of money (other than ensuring their highly inflated pay cheque arrives in their bank account on time), so the small matter of making a profit is no concern of theirs.
TVNZ is not seen by them as a business; rather, it’s a vehicle by which they can peddle their propaganda and be reimbursed for it. The economics of running the company and having to return a profit to its owner, the government (currently the boil they would like to lance) and its shareholders, the taxpayers, probably never crosses their minds. Why should they bother with little incidentals like that? Doing their best to get rid of the government is their raison d’être.
These people need to wake up to reality, otherwise the situation the company is in will only exacerbate. Who do they think is propping them up? Again, that is not something they think they have to worry about, but they should. Almost every left-wing media company globally is experiencing financial hardship because they are losing audiences because people are fed up with their biases. Their rhetoric is having the opposite effect to what they intend: it’s turning people off. Viewing numbers are down and therefore advertising revenue is down.
That is the reality. The little woke things with hurty feelings will have to suck it up. It’s a harsh world out there in the marketplace and, like it or not, they are a part of it. They are not cocooned from it as they seem to believe. Staff at 1News are part of the problem, but they could also be part of the solution if they presented the news in an objective, non-partisan manner. Then some viewers and advertisers might return and aid the company’s balance sheet. One way or another, the menu has to change.
