Digital Broadcaster | TVNZ Heads Up with Aussie

Television New Zealand has informed Digital Broadcasters Vendor News that Aussie, Anthony Flannery a veteran newsman from Nine Network (PBL:AX) is to head up News and Current Affairs at the Kiwi network from May. Flannery has been responsible for Nine Television Network's highly rated, "A Current Affair" program. He is regarded as one of the most experienced broadcast journalists in the Southern Hemisphere familiar with a variety of news distribution platforms in digital. TVNZ's own website has an insatiable appetite for strong news content. The TVNZ move is a prize catch for them as Flannery has been a Nine Network staffer since 1995 and before that at Nine's NTD8 Darwin TV station, Mid-State Television in Western New South Wales, WIN TV in Canberra and in the mid-1980s, he was Press Secretary to Aussie member of Parliament, David Simmons MP. Digital Broadcasters Vendors News believes that the hiring of Flannery could be misunderstood at a time when TVNZ has cut back on its Newsroom staff to save NZ$10million in salary costs. Television New Zealand in the past decade has suffered as a national institution at the vagaries of governing parties in Wellington. The once invisible flagship news on TVOne and TV2 has recently shown holes in its ratings, challenged by the news output from Canwest's TV3.