Tag Archive for: THREE

Ow’s New Sitcom ‘Homebound 3.0’

The new Kiwi sitcom Homebound 3.0, co-directed by DEGANZ member Hweiling Ow (Incubator 2021), is streaming on ThreeNow.

The series follows the trainwreck schemes of two thirty-somethings still living at home trying to get their parents less involved in their love lives. In exchange for free rent, Henry, a struggling unpublished writer who’s going through a breakup, must go on dates arranged by his parents. But, he may be able to catch a break when paired with the foul-mouthed dermatologist Melissa, played by fellow DEGANZ member Michelle Ang (Incubator 2020), who also faces threats of being kicked out. Together, they must fake a relationship to keep their beds at home and get their parents off their backs. The show comedically analyses adult parent-children relationships and offers new meaning to the cliches of the ‘overachieving Asian’ and ‘helicopter parents.’

The series premiered on NZ Three and ThreeNow on 15 June with the first three episodes. A new episode will come out weekly until the eight-part series is complete.

Watch the first four episodes now!

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Funded Full-Length Documentary to Follow MP Chlöe Swarbrick

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Our congratulations goes out to the team of Being Chlöe, which has received production funding through NZ On Air! The 90-minute documentary will be directed by member Charlotte Evans (DEGANZ Incubator 2020), produced by Letisha Tate-Dunning (DEGANZ) with executive producers Mark McNeill (DEGANZ) and Philippa Campbell. The film will be edited by Simon Coldrick.

Set to appear on Three after the next election, Being Chlöe will explore the political and personal life of Chlöe Swarbrick, currently New Zealand’s youngest MP. The project was earlier on granted NZ Film Commission script development funding.

In the meantime, audiences can watch OK Chlöe, a 9-minute film made by Charlotte and Letisha through Loading Docs, for a taster of the documentary to come.

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TVNZ – RNZ Merger Complicated

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What’s happened to the TVNZ – RNZ business case that Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi commissioned to be ready for mid-year, with presentation to Cabinet by the end of 2021?

You might have, like I did, missed the article about it in Stuff in early November.

It’s been delayed.

Sure, COVID has made it difficult for everyone to stay on track, including Government. However, Kevin Kendrick, the TVNZ CEO has now officially resigned, after a stellar performance taking TVNZ from a loss making entity with no dividend to Government, to an organisation making a profit. No mean feat in a streamer-challenged world.

Kedrick is certainly bailing at the right time for his career, leaving the task of navigating the difficult future to whoever gets the job next.

You’d hope that the TVNZ board is giving due consideration to whatever the new organisation will look like as they work through the job applicants. But do they actually know what’s coming right now? And how many of them will still be sitting on the board once the organisation gets rejigged anyway? They have been a corporate, profit-driven board for so long it’s hard to imagine most of them will retain their positions, or want to, even though TVNZ is supposedly going to maintain some elements of advertising revenue generation into the future.

The changes at Three have undoubtedly made things more complicated for our national broadcaster. Three has gone from being permanently on the edge of bankruptcy to being owned by the largest media organisation in the world, in Discovery. And in the process of setting up they’ve hired former General Manager of Digital Content at TVNZ, Juliet Peterson.

Peterson is now Senior Director, Programming (ANZ) at Discovery, while Vicky Keogh has gone from Commissioner Factual and Unscripted Comedy at TVNZ to the role of Executive Producer, Factual Lead, Discovery (ANZ).

The new TVNZ CEO will have a tougher playing field to square off on with two new free-to-air channels—sorta—in Gusto and Rush, Discovery’s existing digital channels already here, and the launch of streaming service Discovery+ next year.

TVNZ has already locked into its line-up for 2022, as has Three. Advertisers and the industry were given insights at both broadcasters’ programme launches in recent weeks. Reality featured strongly at TVNZ and Three, as did the emphasis on local content, although scripted was notably missing from Three’s presentation.

But it was the announcement from Kris Faafoi that I was more interested in, right now. What shape is TVNZ – RNZ going to take? What’s it going to mean for local content? And will it become a real public broadcaster? The answers are clearly not going to be in the Xmas sock this year.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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New Beginnings

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Mark Jennings, co-editor of online news platform Newsroom, and former head of News at TV3, has penned an article on Discovery’s plans for TV3.

As Jennings writes, after Discovery’s merger with WarnerMedia., TV3 is now part of the second largest media business in the world after Disney. That in itself is a serious game changer for New Zealand.

TV3 has had an up and down history, moving from private ownership into the Canadian-owned hands of media conglomerate Canwest, before shifting to private equity ownership with Ironbridge Capital and then Oaktree Capital Management. It’s financial fortunes also swung about, going from high profitability before plunging twice into receivership.

TVNZ and SKY in more recent times have kept TV3 impoverished but no longer.

Already the owner of NZ’s Choice TV and HGTV and with six of its own channels on the SKY service, Discovery has, as Jennings points out, brought its might to bear on acquisitions by driving down the prices it pays for content for TV3. With staff cutbacks and other efficiencies, AUNZ GM for Discovery Glen Kyne told Jennings that the channel will be looking to more domestic shows as it competes with TVNZ and Prime in the domestic free-to-air market for viewers.

But what kinds of shows are they after? Kyne didn’t exactly reveal what they are looking for.

In April Juliet Peterson, former GM TVNZ Digital Content, was appointed as Senior Director, Programming at Three, while Australian Darren Chau was appointed Senior Director, Production. Chau has been in New Zealand recently having meetings with some New Zealand producers. Undoubtedly, others have been banging on Juliet’s door. They are certainly looking for ideas.

With its merger with WarnerMedia, Discovery has moved from reality and factual into scripted film and TV as well, with an annual US$20 billion commissioning chest—bigger than Netflix’s. There has been speculation as to whether or not the new CEO of the combined organisation, David Zaslav, is going to adapt when it comes to scripted. This could well play out in TV3’s commissioning stance.

Supposedly, Three is looking for NZ content that can travel internationally as well. It will be interesting to see, though, whether or not the network will continue to rely primarily on NZ On Air and NZ Screen Production Grant funding to get content made in New Zealand. Hopefully, they’ll ante up more than low license fees and become equity investors in NZ shows that could go on one or more of the international distribution channels the newly-branded Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate owns.

Will it be new beginnings for NZ’s free-to-air market or just more of the same? Watch this space.

 

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

 

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War of the SVODs World

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Well it’s happening. The SVOD wars have really kicked off.

Apple TV+ debuted in New Zealand on 1 November with 14 original shows. Very much a tortoise approach from Apple, and you don’t have to pay for it for a year if you’ve bought an Apple product recently. Otherwise you’re up for $8.99/month.

Disney+ meanwhile will be off like a hare at the starting gates, launching more than 600 movies and shows from Day 1, being 12 November (19 Nov. in NZ). Expect every household in the country with kids to at least consider adding a subscription at $9.99/month.

NBCUniversal’s Peacock will soft launch in April 2020 with 15,000 hours of programming, while HBO Max comes online in May with more than 10,000 hours of programming.

Netflix is already feeling the heat.

FilmTake reports that Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in the U.S. since they started in 2011. It has likely reached saturation in the market, and we can expect to see the massive international growth of Netflix to slow or halt, or worse for them, decline.

We all thought Netflix was shaking the screen industry to its core, and it has. But it was primarily Google and Facebook that was impacting on New Zealand’s Free-to-Air market, taking advertising dollars away from TV screens.

The initial streaming entities in NZ did contribute to a decline in Free-to-Air viewership, but our Free-to-Air market was still holding up with significant numbers of New Zealanders continuing to watch mainstream TV. But is that going to be the case now with Disney+ and Apple+ in the market, together with Netflix, Amazon Prime, Neon, and Lightbox and with others to come?

You have to imagine that Neon and Lightbox are fretting about their continued existence, unless Neon has done a deal to retain HBO content and possibly keep HBO Max out of the NZ market. Spark-owned Lightbox will most likely be the first casualty unless their strategy has sport and other offerings in the wings. Spark has the All Blacks and cricket afterall. Unlike Peacock, who is mooted to pursue sport, news and live programming, Spark doesn’t have the programming and financial resources of NBC and Unversal to draw upon. It’s rumoured though that Lightbox is for sale. You’d need big cojones to step into that space , or cash+ and programming+. Streamers who don’t have studio majors and/or their parents as backers are really at a disadvantage. With Netflix now paying a premium to license shows because they are losing the content owned by their competitors, you can’t imagine our locally-owned streamers having deep enough pockets to play in the big leagues. And how much longer will our broadcasters be able to access the best of international product?

At TVNZ, Kevin Kendrick is focusing on more NZ content to differentiate its Free-to-Air and OnDemand brands and help to avoid the price wars on the international scene for programming. This is an area they are likely to be able to call their own, as we can’t expect the international SVODs to commission much here unless they are forced to as the Australians are seriously contemplating making them do. With reality TV to undoubtedly feature highly in the offering, is TVNZ really going to be able to keep NZ viewers in good numbers?

What about Three? Only the woman upstairs knows what’s going to happen there. The gossip: it’s going to be bought by… someone.

Kris Faafoi’s decision about what to do with the soon-to-be loss-making TVNZ and with public broadcasting becomes even more critical now.

And just as this is all happening, NZ On Air CEO Jane Wrightson resigns to become the new Retirement Commissioner.

Jane has done a fantastic job navigating NZ On Air through the tumultuous changes that have impacted on broadcasting in the 12 years she’s been at the helm. But has she been prescient?

In this now constantly changing screen industry world, we’ll undoubtedly find out if NZ On Air gets retired before Jane runs her course in her new job. We’ll certainly learn whether or not Netflix will survive. If you are a producer on a multi-year pay down schedule for the content you sold them, you are going to be hoping somebody will buy Netflix out rather than it going under. As of 30 September, Netflix reported US$12.43 billion in debt and they are adding to it to keep the originals and higher-priced acquisitions coming. That US$292 Netflix share price is definitely going to take a hit sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, hunker down and get binge watching. There’s going to be more than enough for everyone with one, two or three SVOD subscriptions… for a very long time.

Tui Ruwhiu
Executive Director

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