TV3 going under – occasional deputy prime minister warns public “not to read too much into” anything he says.

“We never did”, responds public.

David Seymour, currently this country’s reserve deputy PM until half time when the other guy is forced to take an early shower, has hit out at the media for misunderstanding what he really said about TVNZ , in the wake of TV3 going down the gurgler again.  And again..

According to RNZ, Seymour had wondered aloud (floating high as a cloud above some daffodils) about the state-owned broadcaster’s financial position: “I think there’s a question mark around whether the government’s ownership of one TV channel and the poor returns it’s demanded as a shareholder has actually contributed to an uncompetitive market,” he said.

Seymour said he was merely hyper-pothesising, but went on to suggest that if TV3’s imminent if not unexpected fade to permanent black was a result of there only being room for one tv channel in this tinpot little country (not his exact or any words), then why should the only channel that is kinda successful not be in the hands of private enterprise who have shown repeatedly they can’t run a tv channel (again, not his exact or any words).

Since its inception, briefly, in 1987, TV3 has always struggled in the ratings, consistently well behind the government-sponsored TVNZ and, often, the Weakly Whirled News Audio Visual Unit.

Despite that, over the course of nearly forty years and almost as many restructures, Three management and staff have always put the blame clearly on the state broadcaster.  “We were under-resourced from the outset,” said one staffer, who wished to remain anonymous as it might affect the seven other jobs he has in the media and his PSA super. “TVNZ was funded by the tax-payer, made better programmes and employed people who could spell.  What chance did we have?”

Media pundit Wes Durramoat agrees.  “That’s right,” he says.

“The world has changed,” Mr Durramoat continues.  “People are getting their news from many different sources, not necessarily the mainsream media.  And that’s where Newshub went wrong – if they’d got their news from many different sources instead of repackaging Facebook posts and streams from Whatsapp, they mightn’t have had to resort to contrived and stageout walkouts over the years to retain their audience.”

Other media outlets are reporting that many Three staffers, the ones who aren’t being overly distraught on-air, are currently coming up with plans to rescue the ailing broadcaster and, more importantly, maintain funding for their influencer-based lifestyles.