KEY POINTS:
An Army sergeant major and the Swiss bosses of the multinational engineering firm Sulzer Engineering were pivotal for Maori Television chief executive Jim Mather and his early business career.
As a private at Papakura Army base, Mather's mentor as a teenage soldier was Sergeant Major Matt Te Pou, who became a high-achieving New Zealand Maori rugby coach.
Te Pou encouraged him into officer training that led him, in his early twenties, to lead a group of 30 soldiers.
He says his time with the Army artillery instilled a feeling for leadership for his business career.
Later, armed with a bachelor of business studies and MBA from Henley College in Britain, he worked as a financial controller for Sulzer where he was exposed to the Swiss executives' intense focus on getting things right.
But Mather says his choice of a business career, which has led him to Maori TV mixing commercial and cultural aims - comes down to a fundamental belief.
He believed then and believes now that business is colour blind when it comes to race.
"If you are good enough in business you will succeed," he says.
"Businesspeople want the best person for the the job, and where you are from is not a factor in getting ahead," says Mather, who grew up in Mangere and Otara.
After three years as Maori TV chief executive based at the Newmarket studios and with the channel winning good reviews - albeit more kudos than rating points - many believe Mather has proved to be the right person at the right time.
Built on decades of legal challenges on Crown obligations to support the Maori language through broadcasting, Maori TV had a traumatic period up to its launch on March 28, 2004.
There was the debacle over the fake qualifications for then-chief executive John Davies.
There was the departure of chairman Derek Fox and other executives such as programme director Joanna Paul.
After the launch dysfunctional relationships developed between some staff, management and the board of directors and the search for a replacement was delayed several times.
Mather, who arrived a year after the launch, acknowledges problems in the past. But he insists they were due to leadership issues and were not operational or structural.
Affable, polite and reserved, Mather came to Maori TV from funding body the Pacific Business Trust.
That was an unusual appointment as it was a Pacific Island body.
Was it an issue?
"It would have been an issue if the trust had not been effective," he says.
And now, as a trained financial controller at a cultural and creative body, Mather acknowledges he is an outsider again - this time an accountant operating in the media world.
Mather's promoters say his military background has brought solid management processes into the hybrid public service broadcaster.
They say Maori TV has developed by allowing staff a relatively free hand in its increasingly diverse and, some say, brave programming approach.
Critics and supporters of a more cultural role say that under Mather, Maori TV has forgotten its target and years of campaigning have led to the channel making TV for general audiences rather than for Maori.
Mather acknowledges the tension and says it is not a bad thing.
"We have moved from start-up to development phase," he says in an interview at his Newmarket office.
"But we have a much clearer perspective on our strategy. We are promoting language and culture and providing reasons for all New Zealanders to find reasons to watch."
Mather says the approaching launch of its second Maori channel, Te Reo, is a sign of the way ahead - providing Maori-language content and reaching a wider audience with the English-language programming.
Te Reo will run from 8pm to 11pm on the Freeview and Sky digital platforms offering 100 per cent Maori language.
The tension mirrors another within Maori TV between the focus on making television and promoting Maori culture. Despite the cultural aims limiting the potential for commercial audiences, Mather insists there are still prospects to break even.
Last year the Government gave Maori TV $11 million to run the channel and a further $21 million in programme subsidies from Te Mangai Paho.
The Te Reo channel's three hours a night will cost about $3 million a year.
But the luxury for Jim Mather is that he need not be totally focused on advertising revenue.
"We have set modest business targets and achieved the year sales results within seven months.
"Initially our advertising support was from Government departments.
"But we are finding corporate advertisers like Harvey Norman, Pak n'Save and New Zealand Post.
"Commercial mainstream businesses are connecting with us," says Mather, pointing out that Maori TV is also developing a following among Pacific Island communities.
Elsewhere, he says, Maori TV is also getting noticed for its foreign-language fare - from countries as far away as Israel.
Mather confirms that these approaches have been due in large part to the head of programming, Larry Parr, a former television producer who owned the collapsed film company Kahukura Productions.
Parr is as much an insider in the film and television world as Mather is an outsider, and has been involved in many film and television projects.
"Larry has brought a fresh perspective offering sport," says Mather.
"He was architect of MTS Anzac Day coverage - someone who can turn a good idea into a great programme."
Mather credits Parr with much of the kudos for the direction of Maori TV.
As for himself, Mather says his big contribution is his commitment to the channel.
"In my own view you have a lot of transient chief executives around who move from one organisation to another and never put a stake in the ground to say 'I really believe in this company's future'.
"They see it as another assignment and I try to avoid that.
"I want go to something that is meaningful and make a strong commitment."
The New Zealand television industry is close-knit and Maori broadcasting is a small subset of that. So the industry is riven with issues from the past. Mather has avoided that.
"It was a big advantage to come with no background in television and provide a more objective view looking at things than an experienced insider might."
JIM MATHER
* Maori Television Service chief executive.
* Aged 44.
* Married for 19 years to Susan with two children, James, 17 and Daniel, 11.
* Education 1989 to 1997: Open Polytechnic of NZ.
* 2000 to 2003: Master of business administration at Henley Management College, Britain.
* 2007 to present: Part-time PhD studies in Maori economic development at AUT University
