KEY POINTS:
A NEW Zealand journalist who started his career in Timaru has been appointed BBC World News' head of news. The global television channel has an estimated 76 million viewers.
Andrew Roy, 49, was appointed to the job after more than 20 years with the Beeb, during which he has run bureaus in Europe and North America.
Before his appointment he held the deputy's job.
The millions of viewers include New Zealanders who watch the overnight service on Television One.
Originally from Christchurch, Roy spent his formative years as a journalist at Radio New Zealand in the mid-1980s, said his brother Simon Roy, a producer for the TV3 consumer show Target.
The BBC World newsroom has had a number of New Zealanders on board, including Kevin Geary. Anita McNaught has also fronted news bulletins.
Though it has a high profile intentionally, BBC World is reputed to have a low profile within the considerable BBC bureaucracy, former staff say.
The appointment made headlines in Britain, though not because of Roy's strong credentials. It was accidentally leaked by his boss on the internet service Twitter and the English tabloid the Sun - which loves to rubbish the Beeb - came up with the headline "Bumbling BBC Chief in Tweet Gaffe".
TRN TRIM
The Radio Network - which runs half of New Zealand's commercial stations, including Newstalk ZB - is planning to make redundancies, some Newstalk ZB staff were told yesterday. The scale of the cuts was not clear.
TRN Talk Radio general manager Bill Francis refused to comment on company plans or on a management meeting with Newstalk ZB staff yesterday.
"I have nothing to report," said the veteran broadcaster. TRN chief executive John McElhinney could not be reached for comment.
Staff were told to keep the layoff plans secret. But TRN insiders said the redundancies would not be limited to Newstalk and would include other radio brands.
It is understood there will be changes in the sales operation. A radio industry source says TRN has a reputation for running on a tight budget but pays its stars and senior staff well.
Radio has maintained a strong market share but, like all media, is experiencing a downturn in advertising revenue and a tougher trading environment.
An Australian Goldman Sachs JBWere report on Australasian media stocks noted that the Radio Network would continue to face tough trading conditions, particularly in Auckland where it had 70 per cent market share.
TRN is half owned by Herald publisher APN News & Media and half by the US company Clear Channel.
OVERDOING IT
A flood of social marketing messages has abated after a period last month when they made up the majority of some television ad breaks.
I moaned that the heavy repetition of these ads - from the likes of the Alcohol Advisory Council (Alac), the Fire Service and the Land Transport Safety Authority - was killing free-to-air television.
Viewers are constantly chided for bad behaviour they would never contemplate and harangued with grim scenes, such as Alac's child-swinging boozer and the drunk who punches out a bar worker and collapses near a blood-splattered toilet.
The heavy weighting for Alac ads may have been part of a deal where TV networks gave some free ad spots to anti-liquor messages in return for a relaxation of liquor advertising rules.
Demand for commercial advertising is down over summer and viewing levels are low, so that was a good time to give away freebies while rates are lower.
One reader has defended the preachy ads and said he would rather see a social marketing message that saved lives than a swathe of commercials for flat-screen TVs and the like.
Alac chief executive Gerard Vaughan said the body had looked at the weighting of ad campaigns and the number of times they were repeated but had not detected a turnoff factor.
One adman, who wanted to be anonymous, said New Zealand advertising suffered from an attitude of "never mind the quality, feel the tarps".
Tarps are calculations on how many people actually see an ad, but do not indicate whether they influence their target market.
So market researchers ask people in surveys if they recognise social marketing ads and their messages, which they do, of course, having seen them a dozen times on TV the previous night, allowing them to tick off a box confirming it was a great marketing campaign.
What is not clear is how many of the type of people who bash barworkers and wind up lying next to a toilet spattered with blood and vomit see the ad and change their behaviour.
Wouldn't the campaign be more effective if it was fresher and not played so often that it becomes very ugly wallpaper?
ADMAN MATT
Trade unionist and left-wing columnist Matt McCarten has moved into the advertising world in an odd couple-up with Employers Federation boss Alasdair Thompson.
The ad, which is set to run on free-to-air channels over the next six to eight weeks, is for website taxrefunds.co.nz, which encourages wage and salary earners to claim what is owed to them in tax refunds.
Director Geoff Matthews says the two industrial relations bosses volunteered their time for nothing because both had an interest in staff getting what was owed to them.
SAATCHI MAN EXITS
The adman who has led New Zealand's biggest advertising account - Telecom - has been pushed upstairs at Saatchi & Saatchi. Dean Taylor is to be managing director of Saatchi in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
As well as leading the $40 million-plus account for five years, Taylor has for the past 15 months been managing director of the Auckland office, answering to New Zealand chief executive Andrew Stone, who was best man at his wedding.
The Auckland managing director's job has gone to Sonya Berrigan, who will continue to head the Westpac and Television New Zealand accounts.
Murray Streets has been appointed general manager overseeing the Telecom account, as well as retaining the role of director of strategy.
Taylor is moving on as Saatchi and Telecom prepare for an advertising war this year to mark the launch of Telecom's new 3G mobile phone network.
The Telecom account is believed to be worth more than $300 million in media spend and is expected to rise this year.
NO OBAMA
RadioLive afternoon host John Tamihere "got bumped at the last second" but nearly got a one-on-one interview with Barack Obama, station programme director Mitch Harris said yesterday.
RadioLive issued a press release last week that Tamihere had got on the list, and Harris confirmed that he got within sight of the President, but was taken out.
TOO SLOW
Faster broadband is at the heart of the media and telecommunications convergence that has led to downloading film and television and will lead to internet Protocol Television (IPTV).
Ensuring a greater share of the market is key to Telecom's recovery after three difficult years.
But a recent query about switching to Telecom begs the question of how much progress it has made fixing its customer services.
Unhappy with slow speeds on my ISP, I noted that Telecom had installed a new "cabinet" at the end of the street.
This means that I was really close to super-fast broadband delivered by fibre-optic cable.
I rang the main inquiry line, where I encountered someone who was not sure I could get broadband and referred to a call centre in Hamilton.
The call centre staffer could not check since the speeds on her internet connection were too slow, because they did not have ADSL 2 technology.
I was referred to a specialist broadband centre whose staffer had even less idea what sort of speeds I could expect if I moved to Telecom.
Maybe it was just bad luck, but it's a surprising reaction given the push to fix Telecom's customer service issues.
I wanted to spend about $700 a year to access the fibre-optic service but several months after a cabinet was installed there is no marketing effort.
