New Caledonia’s Caledonia TV faces bleak future. Photo: Supplied/Caledonia TV
Caledonia TV could be the next collateral victim of drastic budget cuts following New Caledonia's civil unrest last year.
Caledonia was set up in 2013 under a Northern Province initiative to which the other two provinces of the French Pacific territory also participated.
It had since established itself as the only competitor to the state-funded public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première.
Over the years, it also gained in popularity and produces a daily news bulletin, as well as a variety of locally-produced current affairs content.
However, during the vote on its 2025 budget cut on 12 March, its main financier, New Caledonia's Northern Province assembly, explained stringent cuts were necessary due to the fall in revenues following the May 2024 deadly riots.
The unrest caused, among other things, a sharp decline in tax revenues which in turn forced New Caledonia's three provinces (North, South, and Loyalty Islands), to significantly reduce their respective operating budgets for this year.
In the case of Caledonia TV, the Northern Province only granted one quarter of the some 400 million French pacific Francs (CFP, around US$3.5 million) requested.
This leaves Caledonia and its some 30 staff with the very real prospect of closure as early as the end of April 2025, if no alternative funding is identified in the meantime.
Legally, Caledonia is jointly owned by the three provinces (32.1 percent of the shares each), but the main financial contributor is the Northern Province.
The other two provinces, on their part, choose to fund other media, including radio stations.
Staff members told local media they were "shocked and stunned" upon the Northern Province's decision.
"We had no idea, we heard it at the same time as everyone else. There was no debate, not even one word to acknowledge our work during all these years", a Caledonia journalist told NC la 1ère.
"We were doing our job in a spirit of consensus, and a Pacific spirit too", she pleaded, invoking the channel's slogan "the TV that brings us together".
New Caledonia’s Caledonia TV news presenter. Photo: Supplied/Caledonia TV
The Northern Province Assembly, which is ruled by a pro-independence majority, has endorsed its budget by a unanimous vote.
It has not commented on the matter since.
Over the past months, Caledonia was already faced with financial hardships.
Since earlier this month, its daily news bulletin did not involve an anchorperson any longer and only contained voiceover comments with pictured news reports.
New Caledonia's Press Club (Club de la presse NC-CPNC) last week expressed support for Caledonia's staff "who have been playing a key role in informing New Caledonians daily for the past ten years".
"If this channel were to disappear, it would be the second major media to close down in two years, after Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes",
CPNC also cautioned New Caledonia's institutions against the "real dangers this potential disappearance poses" in terms of "democracy and good information of the general public".
In 2023, another popular media in New Caledonia, the French territory's only remaining daily, Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes, closed down its print version, but has however managed to keep an online version produced by a skeleton staff.
