NZ Herald media writer John Drinnan has a good column reporting on funding for TV3 current affairs show 3rd Degree.

Campbell Live is under threat of closure for falling ratings but apparently 3rd Degree was losing money too and only saved by an injection of $567,000 from the taxpayer. IOW, John Key and the National Party took $567000 out of your collective pockets and gave it to TV3.

There are a number of questions here screaming for answers. One is should the govt be funding the dying medium of mainstream television? Two is why prop up a show that can’t pay its way? If nobody wants to watch it shouldn’t that be the end of the story? Three is if NZ On Air is funding a show, will this make it less inclined to be critical of govt? Important that a current affairs show, especially an “investigative” show, doesn’t have that suspicion hanging over it.

All that aside, the real problem with so called “current affairs” in NZ is that its basically a left wing propaganda front.

The Herald reports-

Peter Thompson, media studies lecturer at Victoria University, told Radio New Zealand this morning that it was possible there would be no current affairs left on prime-time television, and gave warning that broadcasters would shift such programmes to weekend mornings when “no one’s watching”.

When no one is watching??

FOX News is the most successful cable TV channel in the US by far. The O’Reilly Factor has been the leading current affairs show for a decade. IN PRIME TIME..!! It gets no govt funding.

Other US channels and other shows have poor audiences comparatively. I wonder if Peter Thompson has ever studied why that is. Maybe he prefers not to notice the main difference, which is that FOX and O”Reilly don’t cater to the extreme left, whereas all the shows that have small audiences do.

There is a market for current affairs. There’s not a market for extreme left propaganda posturing as current affairs. If they wiped the left wing drivel, current affairs in NZ would have an audience (like FOX) and it wouldn’t need govt funding and it wouldn’t need to be shifted to weekend mornings.

As for NZ On Air and its funding of 3rd Degree, Chief Executive Jane Wrightson said this-

“Investigative journalism is fundamental to a strong democracy and national debate. It is becoming increasingly scarce in New Zealand due to the commercial pressures faced by broadcasters and the news media generally.”

Garbage. No one wants left wing drivel, and that is perfectly natural. And how is a show going to investigate govt when its funded by govt? Breitbart reports–

Ratings for January 2015 show that for the 13th year in a row Fox News beat its left-wing competition at CNN and MSNBC.  Fox is the leader in all areas: total viewers and demo viewers. MSNBC had a terrible January, losing -23% of total viewers and -39% of demo viewers in primetime compared to January of last year. CNN boosted its viewership by double digits but had nowhere to go but up.

FOX news success compared with the failure of MSNBC (like Campbell Live) shows viewers do not want left wing tripe and neither do they want taxpayer’s money used to prop it up.

Wrightson should be sacked and NZ On Air should be shut down and it would be if the National Party was worth spit. Especially when we’re paying $5 billion interest per annum on the money they borrow to prop it and other loony socialist schemes up.

NZ’s television producers need to stop shoving left wing garbage upon their audiences when its clear they do not want it. In a media that is dying anyway, they can’t afford that luxury.