KEY POINTS:
Prospects for investment and a relatively early start to a movie about Sir Edmund Hillary have vanished into thin air.
Promoters for a big budget film on Sir Edmund Hillary have parted company with a Singapore-based money man after investment prospects came to nought.
UK financier Paul Martin recently told the Business Herald that the Hillary movie was progressing well and producers were looking to assign a director - a key drawcard for attracting investment.
But film financing is notoriously high risk and complex. And with the kiwi dollar valued at around the US80c mark it is especially hard to attract investors Downunder.
Writer-cartoonist Tom Scott said production was a long way off and the Hillary film had just one of the four factors in place - his script.
He confirmed yesterday that Martin was no longer involved in the project.
Martin had suggested that the Hillary movie had a budget of around $100 million. But it is understood that Scott and his backers - including key Wellington film industry folk - are looking for $40 million for the project to take off.
That would presumably be on top of the $15 million rebate from taxpayers through the Large Budget Screen Production Grant.
Scott said the project was too large to finance from within New Zealand and there were unlikely to be any developments this year.
"I'm pursuing lots of leads and all those negotiations are delicate," he said. "It was too hard to film in the Himalayas and expensive to film in the hills, but happily the Southern Alps looked the part."
AMBITIOUS MINDS
High-profile magazine publisher Mike McHugh is back in the limelight with the launch of his ambitious new venture Mindfood aimed at "thinking women aged 25-39 and beyond".
The Mindfood.com website launched yesterday and the 256-page magazine will be in supermarkets and other shops from Monday.
McHugh and his business partner wife Michelle McHugh are distributing 42,000 copies of Mindfood in New Zealand and 25,000 in Australia. McHugh insists paid advertising support is strong.
He plans to use New Zealand as a test market for a global empire and in normal circumstances advertisers could be expected to be sceptical about the idea. But as Total Media boss Martin Gillman says, McHugh has an impressive track record as chief executive of FPC Magazines before it was bought by News Corporation, developing great titles such as Delicious.
His first independent magazine was the award-winning Notebook, which he launched in 2005.
As for Mindfood: "We're flying blind at the moment," says Gillman. He has been disappointed at Mindfood's communication with advertisers over issues such as what he said was a delay in the website getting up and running.
He said that the strategy for Mindfood and its global ambitions was being a good aggregator of international content. Did I mention Mindfood was ambitious?
OUT ON A LIMB
DDB has turned another corner in the branding maze for its WRC division - once called Wow Rapp Collins. It has merged WRC with its direct marketing arm Rapp Collins Limb and Walker. Robert Limb is to head the new agency, which will be called Rapp Collins.
WRC advertising boss Murray Reid has left the merged agency, DDB confirmed yesterday.
The new agency will be a combination of the direct marketing and promotional style of WRC. Limb and Walker, who were bought into the fold, have brought big direct marketing clients including Telecom and the ANZ and National banks.
MAVEN HAVEN
New Zealand has become a haven for magazine mavens. Apart from McHugh and his wife we noted recently that Paul Dykzeul had returned from Australia to run ACP Magazines.
And earlier this week the business-to-business publisher 3Media appointed former Pacific Magazines New Zealand managing director Vicki Lee as its new CEO. Pacific said that Lee left because she did not have as much autonomy as she wanted.
PLEASE EXPLAIN
TVNZ bosses may be on safe legal grounds for spending direct taxpayer grants on formerly commercial shows. But using money for shows such as Sunday may be the final straw for keeping largely unfettered control of the $17 million plus, and could see control of the cash handed to New Zealand On Air.
And if the Nats take over later this year you can bet that not only will they lose assured access, the direct cash will also be made available for MediaWorks and Sky programming.
Broadcasting Minister Trevor Mallard told the Business Herald he will be asking TVNZ bosses to explain better how it spends charter money, after the broadcaster revealed its (anything goes) access to direct taxpayer funding for commercial TV shows.
Mallard was wary of being perceived as interfering in the allocation of money to TVNZ - particularly when its latest controversial allocation of $2.7 million is for current affairs show Sunday.
But in a carefully worded statement to the Business Herald he said: "I expect TVNZ to be able to clearly articulate to the public why they are using direct funding from taxpayers in the way they do. Most of the time, this is not controversial and the public can understand the rationale.
"However there are still some decisions that I am not satisfied are adequately explained and I think members of the public will also struggle to understand. I will be requesting that TVNZ take this into account in the future, and will discuss the issue with them at our next meeting."
NZOA BITES BACK
Politicians keep propping up the failed idea of TVNZ having interlinked commercial and non-commercial aims. But it's just natural that the commercial side will suck up taxpayer subsidies and grants.
Politicians and state servants are just scared about giving up control over a mass appeal commercial media company.
Mallard is at least more hands off than his predecessor Steve Maharey who set up a system where TVNZ uses direct taxpayer grants to cover its poor commercial performance.
Penelope Borland of the producer's body Spada said that TVNZ's "surprising" approach appeared to have been okayed by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, which was charged with overseeing how TVNZ accesses the fee.
One TV source who declined to be named said that under the terms of the agreement for taxpayer funding TVNZ had not broken any laws. But use of taxpayer funding for Sunday was "pushing the line".
New Zealand On Air has also hit back at TVNZ claims that it has to use direct taxpayer funding for formerly self-funded shows because it was getting less from NZOA which was giving more to TV3.
NZOA says there has been no cut and TVNZ only got less recently because it did not put forward the right project.
"NZ On Air is surprised at the aggressive way TVNZ is interpreting the contestable funding framework in New Zealand," said chief executive Jane Wrightson.
"No broadcaster has - or should have - an automatic right to these funds.
"It's true that this was a little lower than previous years. But NZ On Air did not decline any significant proposal supported by TVNZ that fulfilled NZ On Air's statutory requirements [for range and diversity]."
