When privately-owned free-to-air television finally came to New Zealand on Nov. 26, 1989, it was seen as the harbinger of a new era, and for a while it was.
Television New Zealand (TVNZ), then and still state-owned, was seen as staid and unadventurous. With deregulation that year, the new channel, TV3, ended its monopoly and gave New Zealanders a choice in where they got their TV news.
It was then owned by MediaWorks, which had grown out of RadioWorks, itself a scrappy challenger to government-owned radio’s hold on the provinces.
TV3 brought a fresh approach to news and quickly gained a reputation for breaking stories, but never once topped its rival, which benefited from TV sets “stuck” to TV1 by tradition, and at a time when some televisions still didn’t have remotes….
New Zealand TV Station Sells for $1
