Historically the NZ market was never big enough to support a public service broadcasting model tv channel, particularly one that could still provide the overseas content New Zealanders wanted to see.

I think the closest we've come to that is Maori television, but its news abilities were defanged under Pita Sharples when corporate iwi objected to investigative journalism around kohanga reo.

Be interesting to try it though.

RNZ has the sword of Damocles over it most of the time.

[–] deadbeef79000 3 points 9 months ago

Broadcast television died the day the internet became an ordinary household service.

It's just taken the last 25 years for its carcass to start to smell.

The actual broadcast infrastructure was profitable, so much so that the government separated Broadcast Communications Limited (BCL, later Kordia) from TVNZ to stop BCL from subsidizing the non-profitable parts of TVNZ. From then on FTA TV has been circling the drain, a race to the bottom chasing advertising dollars. Now it's just a licensor of Disney and Warner's content.