Govt responsible for job losses at TVNZ

The Government has no credibility with its calls for employers to tough it out and retain staff when its own policies are causing widespread job losses, said Green Party Broadcasting Spokesperson Sue Kedgley.

This afternoon TVNZ announced job losses attributed to the recession and a downturn in advertising revenue but really caused by the Government requiring a dividend from TVNZ, a Crown owned company, as per usual. As well as 90 staff being made redundant 100 hours of local content has been chopped from the programming schedule.

“This situation is a completely avoidable tragedy for those staff facing redundancy in an ever shrinking media market, many of whom will have worked loyally for decades at TVNZ,” said Ms Kedgley.

Last year under the stewardship of CEO Rick Ellis TVNZ delivered a sizable dividend and an 8.3% return on investment. However due to the global economic meltdown advertising revenue has been in free fall since mid-last year.

“At the recent Job Summit the Prime Minister gave the impression that saving jobs was his number one priority. Sadly some of those covering this talk-fest are now likely to be signing on at WINZ next week,” said Ms Kedgley.

“The Prime Minister pointed out that New Zealand faced big economic challenges and that those at the job summit were not just standing idly by and doing nothing.”

“I dare say when the private sector listened to Mr Key they didn’t think his Government’s answer to unemployment was to speed up the process of job losses by forcing the likes of TVNZ to cough up profits regardless of how many jobs are lost.”

“If TVNZ was a golden goose then right now the SPCA would be called in,” said Ms Kedgley.

Link to the Prime Minister’s speech at the job summit

http://scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0902/S00403.htm

Link to TVNZ Annual report 2008

http://images.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz_images/tvnz/About%20TVNZ/TVNZ_AR_FY2008_web.pdf