The Pros and Cons of Commercial and Non-Commercial News Channels in New Zealand

Portfolio Entry #4

It is true that in times of desperation and adversities, most people would prefer to watch non-commercial news rather than commercial news. There are many, however, who would prefer to watch non-commercial news constantly. News and current affairs are prerequisites in any community, but with a system that focuses on ratings and competition rather than content and the broadcast itself, can news channels be genuinely straightforward?

Commercial broadcasting can be defined as the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate companies that rely primarily on ratings and advertisements. Commercial news channels are motivated through monetary recompenses and therefore, put emphasis on stories that they assume their audience will want to watch rather than current events than genuinely need reporting. Commercial news channels rely heavily on advertisements as they are the source of their funding. The more audience they are able to generate means they are entitled to an affluent return. As their focus is on this, commercial news channels often do not report stories they deem as “uninteresting” or “not news-worthy”.

Non-commercial or public broadcasting, on the other hand, refers to television programs and radio programming whose primary concern is public service. They are usually state or government owned and do not rely on profitability. Non-commercial news channels tend to report news based on current events and are generally not biased. As they do not rely on revenue, non-commercial news channels do not broadcast advertisements and are not pressured by competitors to release a news story more rapidly. They, therefore, have no reason to report a story dishonestly in order to gain a larger audience.

Many countries have both commercial and non-commercial news channels, except New Zealand. New Zealand does not provide a non-commercial news service. The news channels in this country provide commercial news that are ratings-focused. This often leads to biased news being broadcasted or several current events not being reported at all. All of 3 News, One News and Prime News (New Zealand’s main news channels) are commercial news channels.

Māori Television news, known as Te Kaea or News Te Kaea, is New Zealand’s first and only non-commercial news show, however, is not widely seen due to language barriers.

For a country’s news to be informed and unprejudiced or unbiased, a non-commercial news channel should co-exist with other commercial news channels.