Broadcasting Corp, records $3.6M surplus

Press, 23 August 1984, Page 3

Broadcasting Corp, records $3.6M surplus

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Parliament

The Broadcasting Corporation has reported an operating surplus of $3.66 million for the year ending March 31,1984, in its annual report tabled in Parliament. This had been done in spite of the costs of extending the second television channel to virtually the entire population as well as a greatly increased capital expenditure programme. The corporation’s chairman, Mr lan Cross, said that there had been a satisfactory level of financial performance, an 8.6 per cent return on assets. Television New Zealand had increased the number of hours of local programmes transmitted, and expanded the services available to viewers and advertisers. New Zealand-made programmes had accounted for 2691 hours (33 per cent) of total television programme transmission time over both networks, he said. During peak viewing times, between 6 p.m. and 10.30 p.m., the level of local content on TVI had been 47 per cent and on TV2 it had been 23 per cent. Television New Zealand had allocated more than $l6 million to the production of local programmes, Mr Cross said. This sum bad been supplemented by more than S2M external finance from both the commercial sector

and Government departments. However, the net surplus of $13.66M had been 16.9 per . cent down on last year’s result of $16.44M. He said that total operating income had risen by $12.59M (7 per cent) and total operating expenditure had risen by $16.93M (10.2 per cent). Television gross advertising sales had risen by 4.5 per cent to $120.79M, radio gross advertising sales had risen by 5 per cent to $42.49M, and gross income for the “Listener” from advertising and magazine sales had risen by 7.9 per cent to $19.70M. Total gross receipts from licence fees had risen by 3.8 per cent to $40.02M, Mr Cross said. Against this, Post Office collection charges had risen by 10.7 per cent from $4.71M to $5.22M. The effect of this on net licence fee receipts was an over-all increase of 2.8 per cent ($944,000) on the previous year. During the year, he said, total licences on issue increased by 21,510 (compared with an increase of 7887 in 1982-83) to reach a total of 943,234. ' Colour licences had totalled 833,804, which was the equivalent of 88.4 per cent of the licences on issue, an increase of 49,321 for the year. However, monochrome licences had fallen by 27,811 to 109,430, said Mr Cross.