KEY POINTS:
Relations between TV3's news and sports divisions are strained after a Rugby World Cup segment on the 3 News hour on Sunday night.
The segment was supposed to promote the World Cup, but morphed into a shameless contra deal - swapping TV time for services offered - for a French car rental firm and an apartment company.
3 News journalists we approached were aghast and one senior journalist described the promo as "crap".
Advertisers treat advertorial content inside TV news as a Holy Grail, so the plugs voiced by rugby reporter Hamish McKay were valuable for Peugeot and for the apartment firm.
Mackay named Peugeot several times and said the TV3 team was using the apartments, saying they were "better than hotels".
TV3 sports inserted the free ads to help pay for the travel and accommodation costs of its broadcast team covering the Cup.
TV3 is known for being tight with resources and costs of these events are high.
The Herald faced criticism recently when it took money from New Zealand Cricket to pay for a reporter to cover the Cricket World Cup in the West Indies.
But the plugs on Sunday were pretty tacky for what is TV3's first World Cup.
TV3 journalists said it was a bad look for 3 News.
But they seem to have found an excuse for this breach of news standards.
TV3 news director Mark Jennings said the special four-minute bulletins were listed as "separate programmes".
"They weren't a part of the news, which had signed off immediately before. We have given away five minutes of the news."
TV3 sales and marketing has a more relaxed attitude to lending its news reporters to commercial campaigns.
Last year Campbell Live entertainment reporter Jaquie Brown fronted Vodafone's launch of its new 3G video service.
Jennings insisted TVNZ had looser rules than TV3.
He would not allow news presenters to voice commercials for their radio shows on MediaWorks Radio stations because it affected their TV credibility.
By contrast, he said, TV One sports presenter Tony Veitch regularly promotes Ford car dealers on his Radio Sport show.
Photon connects with NZ
The sorry experience - or not saying sorry experience - of providing public relations surrounding the Mercury Energy disconnection has not deterred the Australian publicly listed marketing firm Photon from expanding in New Zealand.
Photon last year bought public relations companies Blast in Auckland and Presence in Wellington to form Creo Communications, which last year picked up the PR account for Mercury Energy, previously held by Baldwin Boyle.
Creo principal Paul Hewlett declined to discuss the experience, which included widespread criticism in the early days of the controversy that Mercury made some serious missteps.
Hewlett said the experience had been challenging but felt that the early problems had been improved.
Creo's sister company in PR is CPR Communications and it has owned the direct-marketing agency Robbins Brandt and Richter. RBR recently merged with advertising agency Blackwood King AdPartners to form Blackwood Communications Group, 51 per cent owned by Photon. In Australia Photon has around 30 advertising and marketing companies. Its executive chairman since 2004 has been Tim Hughes, who until recently was the chief executive of Macquarie Media Group, part of Macquarie Bank.
Media shake-up
The collapse of the sale process for the Australian Ten Network yesterday has sent CanWest Global Communications back to the drawing board as it walks away from its New Zealand assets.
Having sold its 70 per cent stake in TV3 owner MediaWorks, it is deciding to keep its 56.4 per cent stake in Ten.
In December the Business Herald ran a substantial article looking at some of the changes that might occur around the relaxation of media ownership rules in Australia.
With New Zealand media virtually all owned overseas - particularly in Australia - the new rules created a potential quake. Seven months later the media landscape is looking a lot different and is still being repainted.
There has been much ado about the impact from the Australian changes but the most dramatic development in New Zealand media - the sale of CanWest MediaWorks - is peripheral to the ownership rules.
Take for example CanWest's decision to sell its 70 per cent stake in MediaWorks to the Australian private equity firm Ironbridge. The assets include TV3, C4 and half the country's radio stations.
The Canadians decided to pull out of both Australia and New Zealand after the Aussie media laws pushed up the prices paid for Australian media - though Aussie asset Ten Network has still not sold yet.
But New Zealand has no rules on ownership and CanWest's interests here could have sold at any point. It is still not certain the company will disappear off the NZX.
Ironbridge is now offering $2.33 a share for the remaining 30 per cent - the same amount they paid CanWest. It is still not clear yet whether Brook Asset Management can win support over and above its 8 per cent and reach 10 per cent where it would prevent MediaWorks being taken off the NZX.
If dissenting shareholders reject the offer and it does not reach that 10 per cent it will be intriguing to see if Ironbridge is prepared to pay more to make MediaWorks private. You assume it would ...
Packer watch
In the other big change this year, James Packer has kept just a 25 per cent stake of his media interests through Publishing and Broadcasting Limited, with the majority 75 per cent going to another private-equity company, CVC Asia Pacific.
Initially when Packer sold 50 per cent it was assumed his organisation - with its deeply ingrained culture - would retain control of PBL, whose assets include the Nine Network and ACP Magazines in Australia and NZ. ACP's NZ titles include Woman's Day, More and Next.
But after reducing its stake to 25 per cent there are growing expectations of a shakedown in ACP management. The new company, Consolidated Media Holdings, which includes PBL and stakes in Seek and Ticketek, will have only two directors from the Packer organisation - John Alexander as chairman and Packer himself as deputy.
Another key player on the PBL board, Chris Anderson - once chief executive of TVNZ - has retained a place representing Packer interests on the board of Sky News and at pay-TV operation Foxtel, where he holds 25 per cent.
What does all this mean for New Zealand? Well potentially quite a lot as the private equity boys decide how they are going to squeeze more value out of the company before selling it on in three to five years' time.
ACP New Zealand chief executive Heith Mackay Cruise smartly jumped ship last month when it became clear that his promotion prospects to head office were severely diminished. Will CVC Asia Pacific appoint one of the young Sydney ACP executives to look after NZ?
Or will it - as some at ACP suggest - be reviewing its attitude to the territory the Aussies know as The Shaky Isles?
