Our Year in Review 2024 - 2025

Public media funding has never been more important, as our local media ecosystem continues to experience turbulence and instability. NZ On Air’s funding has been a lifeline to many this year as we saw media outlets laying off staff and making cuts to services and content. With audiences at risk of seeing and hearing less local content we have had to carefully balance competing needs and stretch every dollar further.

Fortunately, the changes to the NZ Screen Production Rebate (NZSPR) settings late in 2023 which have meant domestic screen productions could seek NZ On Air funding alongside the NZSPR, have delivered hugely positive results. You can read more about this here.

The music sector also faces ongoing challenges. The struggle to be noticed on global streaming platforms, alongside a decline in local songs on commercial radio this past year and the rising cost of touring as a way to promote new music, has made for tough headwinds for music artists.

This year we streamlined our Music funding initiatives to be more efficient, and at the same time increased the total amount each funded artist could receive, to keep up with rising costs for music production and promotion. You can read more about this here.

The successful delivery of the second year of the Game Development Sector Rebate (GDSR) resulted in 40 game development studios receiving $22.44m in rebates. Preliminary data from the NZ Game Developers Assocation (NZGDA) has shown game development sector revenue is now tracking 61% higher than when the rebate began. You can read more about this here.

We’ve joined up with NZ Film Commission and Te Māngai Pāho in a Mahi Tahi project to commission detailed research into the Economic and Cultural Impact of New Zealand screen content. This first wave of research will be ready for release towards the end of 2025 and form an important baseline for future sector growth.

Our audience research shows that reaching and engaging young New Zealand audiences continues to be a challenge. This is because they prefer consuming content on global platforms. However, audiences generally continue to appreciate funded content in significant numbers. We invite you to explore in more detail the outcomes of NZ On Air funding and celebrate the wonderful content created, in the featured pages below.

Source: Nielsen TAM pārongo published by NZ On Air is not to be re-published, copied, quoted or redistributed to any other parties.

Source: As supplied by platforms – calculated as total streams divided by number of episodes.

Please note: This Year in Review is not NZ On Air’s official Annual Report. Instead, it offers a more interactive and accessible way to explore what we have achieved over the past financial year. The formal Annual Report can be found here.