KEY POINTS:
TVNZ chief executive Rick Ellis will today reveal his new-look management team. The role for the head of news and current affairs Bill Ralston will be revealed soon after.
Ralston's job is being restructured out of existence and his future is far from certain in the news operation's upheavals.
Unlike past TVNZ CEOs, Ellis has no background in journalism but it is expected he will remain editor-in-chief of the country's biggest newsroom.
It is also expected that the department will report to head of television Jeff Latch rather than to the CEO as Ralston did under Ian Fraser.
There are those in TVNZ who believe the news division needs its wings clipped now that its ratings have slid so far. But others think some of its news failings have been the result of meddling by the marketing bosses who have branded One News and the Sunday programme into oblivion.
Goodbye to Griff
Will Ralston join the growing number of Ian Fraser appointees to have left TVNZ? They include assistant CEO Stephen Smith, marketing director Sue Brewster, TV One programmer Liz Fraser, programme director Annemarie Duff and, most recently, commissioning boss Tony Holden.
TVNZ political lobbyist Richard Griffin - who was around before Fraser (he suggested Fraser to chairman Ross Armstrong for the job) - is stepping down at the end March, though by all accounts the bosses have wanted him to stay.
It has been seven traumatic years for TVNZ and Griffin is dismissing predictions he will be back. He does not, however, rule out some consultancy work.
A former political editor at Radio New Zealand and commentator on RNZ and Newstalk ZB, Griffin has become something of an institution around Parliament. Silver-haired and with a statesman's air, he was more than once mistaken in his role as prime ministerial press secretary to Jim Bolger for the man himself.
Mushrooms in the DMZ
Griffin has enjoyed a long-time close friendship with many of the great and good in the media and politics, including mushroom millionaire and former National Party Cabinet minister Philip Burdon.
Indeed, Griffin, Burdon and their partners are heading off in March to Crete, Turkey and Cyprus, including the demilitarised zone, as a fond piece of business nostalgia.
It seems that during the early 1970s Burdon and an English business partner bought a large swathe of land including limestone caves for a large-scale mushroom growing venture. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and they lost their land.
Griffin says Burdon still officially owns the land, although because it's in a firing line it is unused.
What's in a name?
Lots, of course, if it is the name of an advertising agency. Take Blue Hat, the Auckland advertising agency that recently merged with Marco Marinkovich-owned Creativebank.
Blue Hat is a relative newcomer to the advertising business and initially had the eponymous brand name Workshop. The replacement Blue Hat was taken from the book Six Thinking Hats written by lateral thinking guru Edward de Bono.
Blue Hat managing director Andrew Clark paid naming rights by arranging a deal with de Bono where he regularly buys a few hundred of his books and gives them away to people. There's some lateral thinking for you.
As for Creativebank, there are some naming issues there as well after the merger. Clark said that because of business registration laws you cannot use the word bank, so the company registered as the Marinkovich agency trading as Creativebank. Now it will be Blue Hat trading as Creativebank.
Win to Anderson
Legal commentator Jock Anderson is claiming victory in his dispute with his former employers at National Business Review over his use of the name Caseload. As an NBR journalist Anderson established a legal affairs column called Caseload about goings-on in law firms and the courts.
Last April NBR suddenly dumped Anderson, who then set up a website called www.caseload.co.nz to traverse and expand law-flavoured news with a sense of humour. NBR, meantime, commissioned former news editor Deborah Hill Cone to continue the column under the Caseload name.
That was nine months ago and the naming row has festered on the outskirts of Anderson's claim of unfair dismissal to the Employment Authority.
We couldn't get comment from NBR at print time but Anderson believes his intellectual property battle may be won.
He noted the first two issues of NBR this year had its legal column under the name Brief Case and wondered if this meant NBR was no longer warning of a lawyer's picnic against the Caseload website.
A publisher replies
Barry Colman has responded to the "A-Z of New Zealand media" in the Business Herald two weeks ago which Q-for-Questioned whether this was the year he would sell NBR.
"Hi John. Thanks for the mention in your column's annual predictions the other week re the possible sale of NBR. As you know, this has become a regular subject of debate so I thought I would let you know personally that there are no plans on my part to divest NBR from my business interests. I've always regarded it as a long-term investment and nothing has occurred to change that view. Trust things are going well for you. Kind regards, Barry Colman."
Billboard wars
Auckland City Council's proposed ban on billboard advertising is already having an impact, with the sector saying advertisers are wary about pre-committing to billboard space for ad campaigns. We have noticed a few empty sites.
Assuming the councillors are successful, we should expect any number of new schemes to get advertising messages into the CBD. The Business Herald reported late last year about a company seeking people to pay to use micro-Mercedes cars as movable advertising hoardings. Now another company - JamMedia.co.nz - says it will pay private car owners $200 a month to use their cars as mobile adverting hoardings. We hear the 2007 Rugby World Cup countdown billboard wrapped around Auckland's Downtown shopping centre is particularly unpopular among councillors planning the ban.
The building is owned by the mall operators and under contract to the billboard operator until 2013.
Westfield says the banning of all billboards from the CBD goes too far. Rather than being an eyesore, it adds ambience to the area.
"We will support any submission by the operator to retain the site for the promotion of events and products and services," said a Westfield spokesman.
Blow for Lowe
More challenges for Lowe Advertising; on Friday the long-time creative partnership of Daniel Crayford and Paul McGreevy packed away their felt-tipped pens and ended a combined 23 years, the past 10 working as a team. Lowe's new boss, Cameron Harland, played it down but said the agency wanted to change its approach from trying to cover a lot of bases to focusing on brand and retail advertising work.
It is understood that Vodafone has been pushing for more retail-style ads. Crayford and McGreevy have played big roles in the Vodafone commercials, including the out-there ad in 2001 featuring a Rolls-Royce being catapulted into oblivion, and helped Vodafone sales sneak past Telecom to take the biggest share of the mobile market.
Alas, part of Lowe's advertising success back then was the failure of Telecom and its ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi to make decent ads. Saatchi pulled up its socks under new management and Telecom resumed its place with the biggest share.
