Television New Zealand (TVNZ)

Television New Zealand Limited (TVNZ), also known by its bilingual name Te Reo Tātaki TVNZ, is the country’s largest free-to-air public broadcaster. The company traces its current form to the 1980 amalgamation of the state-owned Television One and South Pacific Television networks, and operates under the Television New Zealand Act 2003 as a Crown-owned commercial entity in which the Crown is the sole shareholder. TVNZ operates three free-to-air television channels, TVNZ 1, TVNZ 2 and TVNZ DUKE, alongside its on-demand streaming service TVNZ+ and its flagship news brand 1News, and is headquartered in Auckland. The company employs approximately 750 staff.

Media assets

Television: TVNZ 1, TVNZ 2, TVNZ Duke

Streaming: TVNZ+ (on-demand)

Ownership and governance

TVNZ is wholly Crown-owned, with its Board appointed by the shareholding Ministers, the Minister of Finance and the Minister for Media and Communications, for fixed terms of up to three years under the appointment provisions of the TVNZ Act 2003. The Minister for Media and Communications is currently Paul Goldsmith of the National Party in the coalition government led by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon since November 2023.

The Board underwent significant change during the 2025–26 cycle. Chair Alastair Carruthers, who had been appointed by the previous Labour government’s Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson for a term until 30 June 2026, departed early on 2 November 2025 by “mutual agreement” with the government. He was succeeded by Andrew Barclay, the retiring managing director and CEO of Goldman Sachs New Zealand, appointed for a three-year term from 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2028, joining the Board operationally on 3 November 2025. Minister Goldsmith framed the appointment as providing “continued strong oversight of financial performance and strategic decision-making” appropriate to a commercially focused public broadcaster. The Board also includes Deputy Chair Ripeka Evans (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu, Te Aupouri and Ngāti Porou), Aliesha Staples, John Quirk (reappointed in July 2025), John Fellet, and former broadcaster Paul Henry, whose appointment in July 2025 drew media scrutiny because he was concurrently presenting the TVNZ game show The Chase NZ. Two previous directors, Linda Clark and Meg Matthews, were not reappointed when their terms expired on 30 June 2025.

At management level, Jodi O’Donnell, TVNZ’s first female Chief Executive, continues in the role she took up on 30 January 2024 after serving as Chief Revenue Officer. Her FY25 base salary of NZ$700,000 plus benefits and a NZ$164,500 performance bonus (94% of the available NZ$175,000) was disclosed in the company’s annual report, the bonus tied to the financial turnaround achieved that year. Nadia Tolich was appointed Chief News and Content Officer in April 2025, taking responsibility for TVNZ’s 1News division and content commissioning.

The widely-debated merger of TVNZ and Radio New Zealand into a single public-media entity (proposed by the Ardern Labour government as Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media) was definitively shelved in February 2023 under the Hipkins administration and has not been revived under the current coalition. In a March 2025 letter of expectations to then-Chair Carruthers, Minister Goldsmith nonetheless directed TVNZ to “identify opportunities to work with Radio New Zealand Limited, where feasible, to enhance audience reach and delivery of local content, as well as to minimise duplication of investment, including in digital infrastructure”, a softer cooperation framework rather than a structural merger. The 2026/27 Letter of Expectations for TVNZ was subsequently signed by the Minister on 7 April 2026.

Source of funding and budget

TVNZ is the only Crown-owned broadcaster in the State Media Matrix’s “independent end” classifications that operates without ongoing direct government appropriations: it is funded overwhelmingly through commercial revenue (advertising, sponsorship, production funding, content sales and other commercial income), with only marginal government support through specific contestable funds such as NZ On Air. This commercial-funding profile, with advertising and related commercial income generating more than 95% of total revenue each year, is a defining feature of the broadcaster’s typological classification.

In the financial year ending 30 June 2025, TVNZ reported total operating revenue of NZ$281.1 million, a 2.7% year-on-year decline from FY24’s NZ$288.9 million, against a challenging advertising market environment. Net profit after tax was NZ$25.7 million for FY25, a significant turnaround from FY24’s NZ$85.0 million loss (which had included a NZ$62.1 million non-cash impairment), and underlying earnings (EBIT) returned to a NZ$4.9 million profit from FY24’s NZ$28.5 million loss. The Board declared a NZ$3.1 million dividend to the Crown, TVNZ’s first dividend in four years, and announced an additional NZ$1.6 million interim dividend on its half-year FY26 result of NZ$2.4 million net profit for the six months to 31 December 2025. Digital advertising revenue grew approximately 13% across FY25, with TVNZ+ streaming income contributing more than a quarter of total revenue by HY2026. CEO O’Donnell has signalled that the introduction of a TVNZ+ paywall during 2026 will open the door to premium content options and a hybrid subscription–advertising revenue model going forward.

Editorial independence

TVNZ’s editorial independence is statutorily entrenched through the Television New Zealand Act 2003, the company’s Editorial Standards framework, and its membership of the New Zealand Media Council and adherence to the Broadcasting Standards Authority code framework. Section 12 of the TVNZ Act prohibits the Minister from giving directions to the company in respect of editorial decisions or programme content. Complaints about TVNZ programming are first directed to the broadcaster’s internal complaints procedure, with unresolved matters escalable to the Broadcasting Standards Authority for broadcast content or to the New Zealand Media Council for digital and online content.

No confirmed evidence of direct executive interference in TVNZ editorial decision-making during the 2025–26 review period was identified in the SMM review; the company’s annual reports record no instances of ministerial direction inconsistent with section 12 of the TVNZ Act.

AI and digital policy

TVNZ maintains a digital presence centred on tvnz.co.nz and the TVNZ+ on-demand streaming platform, with the 1News portal as its flagship news destination and social-media accounts on Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. TVNZ published its Artificial Intelligence Principles & Guidance in March 2026, setting out a framework of four principles (Human First, Responsible, Inclusive, and Efficiency & Innovation) that governs AI use across content, advertising, and news and current affairs, with a particular focus on generative AI; AI use in news operates within the 1News Editorial Standards with oversight from TVNZ’s AI Centre of Excellence and guidance from the NZ AI Forum, and the document explicitly commits that TVNZ “do[es] not generate new editorial content for news using AI” and will disclose AI use when it plays a meaningful role in editorial output. No TVNZ-specific adoption of formal content-provenance standards such as C2PA was identified during this review, although the company’s Chief Digital Officer has described internal work underway on systems to authenticate TVNZ-captured footage. At national level, New Zealand has no dedicated AI legislation; the National AI Strategy launched in July 2025, the Public Service AI Framework (January 2025) and the Responsible AI Guidance for the Public Service: GenAI (February 2025) provide the principal cross-sectoral reference points, alongside the country’s June 2024 adoption of the revised OECD AI Principles.

June 2026