Shorts Newsletter - 21 February 2023

Thank you to those who took the time to respond to our consultation on the planned Transitional strategy for 2023/24, which we published around the time of the SPADA conference in November.

That strategy was designed to respond to two key environmental changes: the planned creation of the public media entity (ANZPM) and a resulting reduction in NZ On Air’s budget; and ongoing change to the media landscape and audience behaviours.

As we all now know, the former is not going ahead. However the latter is still an ever-present and growing influence on our mahi.

Since the Prime Minister’s announcement just a few weeks ago that ANZPM would not go ahead we have been re-examining our plans. We remain very energised by the strategic shift we had articulated in the Transitional strategy and feel this is still a valid direction, albeit with more funding than was going to be available.

At this stage we still do not have clarity on our actual budget for 2023/24. However we are working with officials closely and hope to have that clarity in coming weeks. So at this stage we just want to signal what we can now, and we’ll come back to you with more information when we have it.

• There will be three funding rounds in the 2023/24 year (This does not apply to Music funding rounds – we will provide a further update soon on Music round timings.)
• The first round for Scripted and Factual is still at this stage set at a minimum of $13.5m pūtea available. We hope that this will increase when we know our budget.
• We will publish guidelines for the April/July round (Tahi) later in March, and this is when we hope we will be able to confirm the funding available.

We are confident that our flexible, future-focused funding strategy (along with other funding and platform partners) will continue to provide the important public media content audiences of Aotearoa need and want, on a variety of platforms they use.

Please bear with us over the next few weeks as we finalise the strategy and confirm budgets – we’ll get back to you as soon as we can with the clarity you are all waiting for.

Cameron Harland,
CEO

NZ On Air is seeking a new communications superstar-in-the-making. One of our team is spreading her wings and heading overseas and she’s a tough act to follow. But this provides an opportunity for someone with huge potential and an eagerness to learn and grow, to join a busy, fun, collaborative team.

If this sounds like you, check out the full job description and apply via Seek here. Applications close Wednesday, 15 March 2023.