| Horizon Pacific Television | |
| Country: | New Zealand |
| Owner: | Television New Zealand, Ltd. |
| Headquarters: | Auckland, New Zealand |
| Area: | New Zealand |
Horizon Pacific Television was a network of four regional television stations operated by Television New Zealand from 1995 to 1997, with services in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Dunedin on the UHF band. The service carried a mix of local programmes and relays of BBC World. It was later shut down and replaced by a time-shifted feed of MTV Europe with local inserts.
Horizon Pacific Television started on 19 March 1995 (Sunday) at 3pm[1] as part of a diversification of TVNZ's business units post-deregulation.[2] It was created following criticisms regarding the lack of regional programming on TVNZ's channels, and competed against established local services such as Max TV, Mainland Television and Eastland Television.
The network was composed of the following stations:
These stations were joined by a fifth, Christchurch's Canterbury Television, which was an independent television station, in November 1995.[3]
In 1997, Television New Zealand announced that it was going to withdraw the operations of Horizon Pacific due to a lack of financial sustainability to continue.[4] TVNZ replaced it with MTV, which was seen as a more "competitive" alternative.[4] [5] MTV would eventually become unprofitable and shut down less than a year later.[6]
The shutdown led to redundancies at TVNZ, some of which were compensated for gaining new jobs at TVNZ's news and current affairs division.
At launch, Horizon Pacific carried news bulletins from BBC World, documentaries, drama series (such as Hill Street Blues), lifestyle and musical programming, as well as local programmes.[1] From its launch day, BBC World began being carried overnight on TV One instead of closing down.[1]
Although the channel pledged "regional public service television", critics of the service called the supposed statement of the service as an "oxymoron" due to the abundance of foreign content.[4]
After closing, its imported output moved to TV One.[7]