The End of the Affair: After 47 Years Netball New Zealand establishes a relationship with a new broadcasting partner

Abstract

The exclusive relationship between Netball , the major women’s sport in New Zealand, and the state broadcaster, TVNZ spans just short of the first half century of television and Outside Broadcast (OB) sport in New Zealand. The relationship grew from intermittent ‘dating’ in the first decade, to earnest entreaty for favour in the seventies, grudging respect leading to a proposal of marriage in the eighties followed by a strict pre-nuptial contract to match the tenor of the times in the increasingly competitive broadcasting market of the 90s. Despite the ‘for better or for worse’ cycles of feeling valued and then sidelined by it’s broadcasting ‘spouse’, coverage of the game on New Zealand television became the envy of the netball playing world. They all wanted what New Zealand had and couldn’t understand how the game had achieved such a privileged media status.