Corporate News from Warner Bros. gets booted out of New Zealand

Usually my attention is focused on the Bigger Picture. However, I cannot ignore what is huge news in New Zealand.

Yesterday, it was announced that the second of only two major television news services is to close down in June.

Newshub set to close at end of June, Warner Bros. Discovery staff devastated

Up to 300 jobs are expected to be lost as one of our biggest commercial media company’s newsrooms – Newshub – is set to close at the end of June.

Dozens of high-profile presenters and journalists such as 6pm news hosts Mike McRoberts and Samantha Hayes and new 7pm show frontman Ryan Bridge are among the hundreds about to lose their jobs.

Up to 350 people work at Warner Bros. Discovery in New Zealand with about 200 understood to be devoted to news, in editorial, commercial and backroom roles. A slimmed-down company might see only 50 staff remain, one source has suggested.

Warner Bros. Discovery laid out the plans to close Newshub at an all-staff meeting at 11am today.

This is how Newshub covered their demise on TV last night

Going but not quite gone: Newshub faces closure after 35 years | Newshub

There is word that one of the major news outlets which has gobbled up many of the country’s newspapers and all local newspapers, stuff.co.nz —

Watching the reaction from the politicians was truly cringeworthy. Of them all, only Winston Peters had something sensible to say – “a challenge to democracy”

Here’s this morning’s TVNZ Breakfast broadcast at 6am, 2024-02-29 regarding the Newshub closure.

Former broadcasting minister, Willie Jackson implies that the closure happened because Labour lost the election and then he pushes the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill that has a clause in it that makes media his Maori propaganda machine.

There also seems to be a realization from the presenters that they might be next.

When I was growing up there was one state-owned television station and many newspapers, all independent and locally-owned. Yet there was no question that news coverage was fair and reflected, by-and-large the views of a conservative population. But the media landscape has changed completely in recent years .

Newshub (TV3) is owned by an international conglomerate, Warner Discovery and one company, Stuff, owns most of the newspapers in the country.

We scarcely have any alternatives. Sean Plunket’s the Platform, gives many of the same talking points as the Mainstream (especially on the covid “vaccines”), only from a right-wing perspective.

This was the reaction of the Platform.

They are part of the Club.

Folk on social media, especially on Twitter X, have a completely different perspective.

While they, in my view, miss the wood for the trees I completely understand the sentiments, especially of the vaxx-injured.

Just have a look at SOME of what they have come up with in recent times.

Remember when Newshub did this story in March, 2023?

The most toxic “journalism” in Newshub is inseparable from Patrick Gower.

This is one of the most cringeworthy “interviews” of all time.

In 2012 the main targets were “right-wing extremists” like Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux.

For once the reasons given for Newshub’s demise – the state of media worldwide, the collapse in advertising revenue and the state of the economy – is largely correct. (ER: We do wonder, however.)

These news outlets are not collapsing because they lie. It is the above reasons, plus, that people are going elsewhere for information and no longer trust legacy media. (ER: Because they lie!)

For 13 years I have been warning about collapse – economic, political, social and environmental.