Former TV star Peter Williams - he was once described as having opinions that were 'seldom upsetting or divisive'. Photo / Greg Bowker
Welcome to the Herald’s new Media Insider column, compiled by Shayne Currie, who this week started a new role as NZME Editor-at-Large, after eight years as NZME managing editor and before that, stints as NZ Herald and Herald on Sunday editor.
Peter Williams has always been an intriguing character. A regular fixture on television screens from the late 1970s to 2018, he consistently featured as one of New Zealand broadcasting’s most engaging personalities. He’s held many jobs from fronting and commentating on sport, through to newsreading. He was inoffensive, hugely popular and authoritative.
I recalled this week an incident in 1999 when Williams was caught drink-driving on his way home from a wedding in Auckland. We’d heard about the incident at the Sunday Star-Times, where I was news editor at the time, and tenacious reporter Rachel Grunwell was on the case. In those days, print deadline was king, and we sat on the story until Saturday morning, knowing that as soon as we called Williams, the TVNZ PR machine would kick into gear.
Grunwell rang Williams, who not only fronted up but revealed a staggering detail – he’d pulled over after seeing a stationary police car and essentially handed himself over. He had thought the officers had signalled him to pull over; they had no idea why he had stopped. He underwent a breath test and was done.
After Grunwell called him, Williams posed for photos for the newspaper at a bus stop, on the basis he’d be using public transport for the next little while. It was front-page news the next day. We admired his honesty and chutzpah.
Later, Williams would marry a colleague, and I came to know him more personally. There were always amicable conversations.
In 2016, my colleague Greg Bruce wrote a profile on Williams for Canvas magazine. “He has opinions, but few people know them; they are seldom upsetting or divisive,” wrote Bruce.
Fast forward seven years and all that has changed.
Williams, now 69, has returned to the air and is being promoted across billboards and in publicity leaflets for the new ‘Reality Check Radio’ platform. Reality Check Radio has a holding company, NZ Media Holdings, with three shareholders - Voices for Freedom founders Claire Deeks, Alia Bland and Elizabeth Jonson.
In the murky world of who funds VFF, there is big money behind the marketing campaign, and indeed the platform itself.
It’s very anti-establishment, very anti-media, and clamouring for audience from the likes of The Platform, the internet-based audio platform set up by Sean Plunket.
While Williams says he’s not available for interviews, his comments during an introductory segment on Reality Check Radio this week give an indication of his stance on various topics. For example, Williams describes the New Zealand education system as non-existent: “We have an indoctrination system.”
VFF has, of course, leaped on the opportunity to exploit those views and is using Williams, former Act Party leader Rodney Hide, conspiracy influencer Chantelle Baker and broadcaster Paul Brennan, who’s moved across from The Platform, front and centre of its marketing campaign.
Williams says he quit his role as talkback host on the Magic Talk radio station in 2021 because he felt he was being silenced after expressing concerns about the Covid vaccine’s efficacy.
During his introductory segment on his new channel, Williams said this week that reading the news on television was a “piece of cake” compared with hosting talkback radio.
“When you’re on radio, you’ve got a three-hour blank canvas every morning, and you have to fill it. You have to hope that people ring you up to have conversations otherwise you’ve just got to talk and talk and talk.
“I picked up something early on, and I don’t know what set off the spark in my brain, about the concept of vaccination mandates. That to me just went against the grain of what I thought as an individual because I’m a believer in freedom of association, freedom of speech, of democracy. I believe you know best how to spend the money you make. This Government has decided it knows better.”
Williams said he espoused on air “some arguments, some theories about the efficacy of the vaccine”.
He claims Magic Talk management at the time told him to stop promoting those theories and his concerns about the vaccine mandates, as his programme was becoming known as “anti-vax central”, and that there would be “financial implications for the company, for the station if you don’t change your thinking”.
“And I thought, well, there’s only one thing to do here, so I quit the next day,” said Williams.
He said he’d been willing to work out his notice, but Magic Talk let him go that week. It was, he said, a weight off his shoulders.
During this week’s discussion, some of Williams’ fellow hosts - including Hide - suggested it was the Government itself that played a part in pressuring MediaWorks given its advertising spend on the Covid vaccine at the time.
Williams said: “Never in my experience had there ever been a blurring of the lines where the advertiser - and even worse the advertiser was the Government here - was actually dictating terms about what was being said on air.”
It’s an extension of the tired and thoroughly wrong claim that newsrooms and content decisions are somehow influenced by the Government, whether that’s through advertising or the NZ on Air public interest journalism fund.
It is disheartening to see Williams now in the midst of it all.
At the time of Williams’ departure in 2021, then MediaWorks chief executive officer Cam Wallace said the veteran broadcaster had signalled for some time he had wanted to finish up. “I’d like to acknowledge his significant contribution to Magic Mornings over the past three years – there have been plenty of engaging and lively discussions. MediaWorks wishes Peter all the best.”
Williams’ latest career choice is a curious change in course – especially for someone who could be spending a well-earned retirement playing his beloved sport, golf, in central Otago, where he now lives. Listening in briefly this week, Williams’ own show was a mix of talk and music, including Ella Fitzgerald and Marvin Gaye. Media Insider hopes he is able to avoid the rabbit-holes, both on and off the golf course.
It’s been almost four years since the NZ Herald launched its Premium digital paywall and other industry players are finally starting to follow suit.
While NZME’s digital-only subscription numbers have soared past 113,000 (there are 209,000 subscribers in total, when taking into account print-activated digital subscriptions and print-only subscribers), the likes of Stuff have remained, until now, steadfast in maintaining an advertising and donations-based digital business model.
Allied Press’ Otago Daily Times turned on its paywall six months ago – and is understood to be pleased with progress – while the Listener is advertising for a newly created digital editor role, an indication that Are Media, which purchased the Listener, Woman’s Weekly, Woman’s Day and Australian Women’s Weekly from Bauer Media in mid-2020, is ready to unveil a new digital endeavour.
Stuff is also understood to be close to announcing digital subscription plans, with the likelihood of paywalls for some or all of its nine regional website URLs – including The Press in Christchurch, Dominion Post in Wellington and Waikato Times – while keeping the overarching Stuff website free.
If that model is indeed confirmed, there are likely to be some interesting internal debates. For example, when The Press breaks a great story – does that stay behind the paywall or get freed up for the mothership?
Over the past six months, Stuff has hired former NZME executives Matt Headland and Laura Maxwell, who will have intimate albeit outdated knowledge of the Herald’s digital subscription strategy. It is understood Stuff has been looking at a basic pricing plan of around $5 a week for access to one of the regional sites and $7.50 for access to all nine or 10 (the Sunday Star-Times being the 10th), with special deals likely to be offered.
The Herald put a list of specific questions to Stuff earlier today, and it has come back with a one-line statement more than two hours later through its communications director, Candice Robertson, to say: “The information you have is factually incorrect and inaccurate and does not reflect our current plans.” Media Insider has asked Robertson if we can expect more detailed answers to our questions in due course.
Meanwhile, the Herald has maintained a healthy overall digital audience – just under two million people in February, according to Nielsen. It and Stuff remain the two leading news websites, by quite some distance, with the Herald ahead in Auckland, and Stuff leading in Wellington and Christchurch. It will be interesting to see any impact on those Stuff audiences if paywalls are implemented for The Press and DomPost URLs.
The Newshub and 1 News sites are neck and neck in third and fourth spots for news audiences for February – 1.072m and 1.043m people respectively – while RNZ has had a drop on its February 2022 news audience but nonetheless still enjoys solid numbers (944,000).
The drums are beating about the future of Today FM. The departure of the widely respected Dallas Gurney – the Director of News and Talk at MediaWorks – has only ramped that up further, especially with no successor announced.
The station has some strong broadcasting talent, led by the likes of Tova O’Brien, Rachel Smalley and Duncan Garner. All three are journalistic powerhouses but that has not translated to strong broadcasting audiences.
It’s no secret that many on the radio music side of the MediaWorks stable have been in disbelief at the marketing and talent resources that have been poured into Today FM, especially as the business now faces big cost cuts. The next radio ratings are due in late May – the question is whether Today will be yesterday’s news by then.
The King of NZ’s radio airwaves, Mike Hosking, is off to the UK in late April and early May to cover King Charles’ coronation. He and fellow broadcaster (and wife) Kate Hawkesby will be hosting their respective Newstalk ZB shows live from London in the week prior to the coronation.
“London is a wonderful place in the spring, but even more so when there’s a major royal event happening in town,” Hosking tells Media Insider.
“It’s been 70 years since the world saw any royal event of this magnitude, and I know it will be exciting not just for the people of the UK, but also the millions of Kiwis who will follow the magnificence of the coronation itself, and the years to come of King Charles III’s reign.
“Kate and I are excited that we’ll be on the ground to witness the start of a new era for the monarchy, and to bring the sights and the sounds of the build up to New Zealanders on-air and online.”
A big change in advertising agency land, with Group M CEO Chris Riley leaving the business. Riley became CEO in mid-2019, and had little time to have his feet under the desk before the global pandemic hit, causing massive disruption.
In the usual swings and roundabouts of the agency market, the company lost a couple of big accounts – notably Vodafone and BNZ – but lured Lion Nathan across.
Riley’s past roles have included DDB NZ chief operating officer, OMD managing director, and Head of Digital at MediaCom (London). He’s on gardening leave and didn’t wish to comment on his departure.
Meanwhile, there are also changes at the top of FCB with Paul Wilson now the CEO of FCB Auckland and Sean Keaney the CEO of FCB Wellington.
Broadcaster Rachel Smalley certainly didn’t hold back in taking a swipe at one of the public relations professionals who Guyon Espiner wrote about last week in an RNZ investigative series. For context, David Cormack and his Wellington firm Draper Cormack have been involved in assisting Pharmac with its public relations strategy, while Smalley has been instrumental in the fight to have certain drugs funded by Pharmac.
Some of the best ideas for columns are borrowed. One of the best and most high-profile media launches in the US last year was former Buzzfeed editor-in-chief and New York Times media writer Ben Smith’s Semafor. As well as a swag of exclusive stories across a suite of newsletters and on the Semafor site itself, Smith’s media newsletter features a weekly text exchange with a leading light or newsmaker.
Media Insider has shamelessly copied the idea - this week, our exchange is with Smith himself...
* With apologies to Semafor and Ben Smith
What the hell does an Editor-at-Large do, someone asked me the other day. I had to tell that someone - my wife - that it was a very important role, but one that would hopefully now stop me waking up at 4am each day. When you’re leading a newsroom of more than 330 people there’s an ‘always on’ aspect to the role. It’s a little daunting - but invigorating - to be back on the frontline and writing again. I’ve edited many stories over the past decades; now the onus is back on me directly.
I’m also back on the floor of the newsroom – The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive was telling me he had done the same with his own recent change and was loving it. I am, too. Newsrooms are special places. Back with the workers! said Simon Wilson the other day. And Guyon Espiner – kudos to him for his series on the political lobbyists this week – jokingly offered to give me some investigative reporting tips when we bumped into each other at Cam Wallace’s farewell last week.
* Each week, we’ll bring you news and inside detail from the world of media - journalism, advertising, and marketing. Have you got a topic that you feel needs covering? Please email story suggestions and confidential tips to shayne.currie@nzme.co.nz
The event is described as a series of aggressive sales pitches.