Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch and MAFS couple Ellie Dix and Jonathan McCullough.
Exclusive picture: Rupert Murdoch looms in the NZ media landscape - one of his most powerful execs meets PM; Jailed radio host starts new podcast; Trolls target MAFS Kiwi bride; Xero ad account up for grabs; NZME eyes earnings growth; 9 Questions with RNZ’s Guyon Espiner.
The distinctive Australian accent was unmistakable.
“I thought, I know that voice,” says a Media Insider source who was sitting down for breakfast at one of Wellington’s top hotels on Wednesday morning.
At a nearby table - a window spot at the InterContinental Wellington restaurant - Paul Whittaker was in full flight, regaling his breakfast companion with tales and anecdotes referencing Kevin Rudd, Barack Obama, Lachlan Murdoch and trips to Washington.
Whittaker is one of the most powerful and influential figures in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation empire - he is the chief executive of Sky News Australia, the 24-hour rolling news channel, infamous for its heavy menu of conservative commentary amongst coverage of breaking news and deeper issues.
Whittaker’s dining companion was another big Murdoch empire name - Greg Sheridan, the Melbourne-based foreign editor for The Australian newspaper and website. Sheridan was in the country this past week, speaking at a New Zealand Initiative conference.
Whittaker, who is also chair of The Australian editorial board, has a direct line to Murdoch - over several months, he has been reportedly interviewing the 93-year-old media magnate on camera for a special series to air later this year. According to reports in Australia, nothing is off limits and Murdoch is in “fine form”.
The access to Murdoch plays to Whittaker’s status in the company - he is widely considered the heir apparent to eventually take over from Michael Miller as News Corp executive chair in Australia.
In a masterful profile in the Australian Financial Review last year, Whittaker - nicknamed “Boris” because he loves tennis and has a passing resemblance to Boris Becker - is painted as a “man on the rise... an executive with unrivalled influence at the company and through it, Australian politics and media”.
As a former editor of The Daily Telegraph in Sydney and former editor-in-chief of The Australian, he’s viewed as someone who has brought down Prime Ministers and inflamed political tensions within left-wing parties, the Australian Financial Review reported.
Sources insist Whittaker’s visit to New Zealand had been long-planned but - by coincidence - he was here for what turned out to be one of the darkest days in this country’s media history.
Later on Wednesday morning, Warner Bros Discovery executives confirmed the closure of Newshub and other cutbacks across its operation, with the loss of almost 300 jobs. A couple of hours later, TVNZ confirmed its Sunday current affairs show would close in mid-May, following a similar announcement for Fair Go and its Midday and Tonight news bulletins. More than 60 jobs will be lost at the state broadcaster.
While the timing of Whittaker’s visit was indeed coincidental, I have no doubt he witnessed first-hand the big opportunity to build Sky News Australia’s profile, audience and revenue in New Zealand.
The Australian Financial Review profile last year painted a picture of Whittaker as a man who loves to talk. That was certainly the case at breakfast on Wednesday, as he held court with Sheridan.
“Paul was talking about how Sky News Australia is enjoying success with uploading content to YouTube that is returning significant revenue,” said Media Insider’s source.
“He said that things they compile in a couple of days make as much as a documentary that they spent $200k producing. He said their subscriber base means this is their strategic focus.”
This was backed up by the Australian Financial Review profile, which talks about Sky News Australia’s deeper push into YouTube, generating millions of views by broadcasting “polarising content about the Bidens, Meghan Markle and wider culture wars”.
“Under his watch, critics say, Sky has turned into an antipodean Fox News for the streaming age,” the Australian Financial Review wrote.
By the time Media Insider caught up with Whittaker on Wednesday afternoon, he was less keen to chat.
“How did you get this number?” he inquired, a slightly odd question coming from a renowned media boss and award-winning former journalist.
“I’m actually sitting in our studio at the moment speaking to our [New Zealand-based Sky News] correspondent before he goes live on air, so I can’t really speak right at the minute.”
Asked if he was here as a result of all the changes in the New Zealand media landscape, he replied: “I’ll have to give you a call back. Give me 10 or 15 minutes.”
That call, as I expected, never eventuated - although Whittaker was good enough to send a follow-up text about his visit to New Zealand.
While I can’t quote a text sent on background, I later discovered he had omitted an important meeting at Parliament - with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
“The PM did meet with Paul Whittaker yesterday, along with [Media and Communications Minister] Melissa Lee,” said a spokesman for the Prime Minister on Thursday.
“It is for Sky News Australia to speak to its views on the New Zealand market, however this was a long-scheduled meeting which was unrelated to any recent announcements by New Zealand media companies.”
After Whittaker texted me, I sent him a set of questions, asking him if he saw opportunity for Sky News Australia in New Zealand, in light of the Newshub closure and TVNZ cutbacks.
I also asked him if Sky News Australia was in any negotiations with Warner Bros Discovery about providing a news service for the Three channel - as in a 6pm-7pm bulletin to replace Newshub.
As Media Insider revealed this week, Warner Bros Discovery has been seeking a lifeline for its news endeavours, so as to retain as much primetime TV advertising revenue as possible. That includes keeping a pared-back 6pm bulletin.
Stuff and New Zealand’s Sky TV - which screens Sky News Australia on one of its channels but is otherwise completely unrelated to the Australian company - are understood to be leading contenders in these discussions with Warner Bros Discovery.
It’s not inconceivable that Sky News Australia has also been kicking the tyres around a news service for Warner Bros Discovery. After all, senior Newshub correspondent Michael Morrah confirmed to the Herald this week that Warner Bros Discovery had spoken initially to about a dozen potential news partners.
Quite whether Warner Bros Discovery executives and/or advertisers and/or audiences are ready for a Murdoch-style conservative primetime news hour in a market the size of New Zealand is another question. Right-wing audiences would argue it’s overdue; left-wing audiences would simply switch off or promote the channel’s content on X/Twitter.
I have no doubt that a packaged news hour could be fashioned to focus on news, rather than opinion. One advantage Sky News Australia has over local contenders is its experience in producing high-quality TV news.
Personally, though, I don’t think Warner Bros Discovery would risk bringing on such an openly political news partner in New Zealand.
But I also have no doubt that Sky News Australia sees a huge opportunity in this market - building more of a New Zealand audience through YouTube and its traditional 24-hour channel on Sky New Zealand - to sweep up as much of Newshub’s audience and revenue as possible.
Sky TV confirmed today that its chief executive Sophie Moloney met Whittaker during his visit.
There’s also another big market for Sky News Australia - the almost 600,000 Kiwis who live across the Tasman.
It is understood Whittaker appealed to Luxon to make regular appearances on his channel’s shows. The pair are understood to have also discussed Meta/Facebook’s withdrawal from news and monetary agreements in Australia and New Zealand’s own Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.
Meeting a ruthless media executive from the Murdoch empire might have been one of the more tranquil moments of Media and Communications Minister Melissa Lee’s week.
She’s had a shocker of a week - well, a month really. The industry deserves far better than meaningless buzzwords and hollow promises.
Lee is either being poorly advised - both Mike Hosking and Heather du Plessis-Allan ran rings around her this week - or she is simply struggling to get her head around myriad critical issues facing the media industry.
While she’s only had the reins for six months - and the problems for media extend well before that - Lee has the power to introduce meaningful, effective change.
She is undoubtedly a good and smart operator but her political performance has been poor and her word-soup media comments have been simply baffling. She has been guilty of several missteps.
Her performance is causing angst around the Cabinet table and the wider industry.
Some are now wondering what might come first - the much-promised Cabinet paper which will apparently offer solutions for the industry, or the removal of the Media and Communications portfolio from her responsibilities.
The announcements out of TVNZ and Newshub this week have been devastating.
Both networks have a deep well of journalistic and broadcasting talent and I have no doubt NZME, Stuff, RNZ, Sky TV and other media companies will be snapping up as many great people as they can afford in the current climate, and as budgets and vacancies allow.
Aside from that, and as the dust settles, there are some strong strategic opportunities.
Here are six reckons:
The incredibly popular Married at First Sight Australia season wraps up on Three and ThreeNow on Sunday and Monday, with a fiery cast reunion dinner and final couch session with the “experts”.
It’s riveting television - I can’t keep my eyes off it - but just how much of it is “reality” has been called into question this week. I wonder, as well, why anyone would want to put themselves in the hands of the editing decisions of some of these Australian TV producers.
As the most recent Married at First Sight Australia episode earlier this week revealed, a bombshell is about the drop this weekend - one of the “grooms”, Jonathan McCullough, is now partnered up with one of the other “brides”, New Zealander Ellie Dix.
The pair were matched with other people when the series started on our screens two months ago and they insist they only started seeing each other once both of their original relationships collapsed.
In real life, and as of today, Dix and McCullough are besotted with each other - they are living together on the Gold Coast and even talking to some media outlets about future family plans.
But Dix, in particular, has been targeted by trolls this week after the two final episodes were screened in Australia earlier this week. New Zealand’s Three is a week behind Australia and those two episodes screen here this Sunday and Monday.
One of Dix’s close friends, Tahli Passeri, has told Australian media that Dix is distraught about the way the final two shows were edited.
“It’s extraordinarily concerning, the differences between what actually occurred during filming to what managed to reach screens and what viewers saw,” Passeri told Yahoo Lifestyle.
Trolls have also targeted a Gold Coast plastic surgery business where Dix, a cosmetic nurse, has worked as a subcontractor. They’ve sabotaged Google reviews, leaving fake, one-star ratings.
“It is disturbing the hate and revolting comments Ellie is receiving,” said Passeri.
“She is extraordinarily traumatised and as someone who has known her for 18 years, I have never seen her so upset.
“She is one of the kindest, most genuine, loyal, compassionate and loving people I know, and to see her receive so much hate and derogatory comments based on a substantially edited television show, is saddening and troubling for the people in today’s society.”
Dix and McCullough said the show was “so distorted it’s not funny” and told the Gold Coast Bulletin this week that “not even 1 per cent” of the reunion dinner episode reflected reality.
“It’s ridiculous,” McCullough said. “We’ve got so much hate over something that isn’t even true.
“People are that mad about a TV show. Everyone knows they edit MAFS to the hills and they still believe it.
“I thought there was a possibility of looking bad in some way with an edit – but not evil and made to look like horrible, disgusting people.
“Married at First Sight really shouldn’t be able to put themselves in the category of reality TV. They should make a law that reality TV can’t be edited.”
The situation has now reached a point where McCullough’s original “bride”, Lauren Dunn, posted on social media, calling for critics to back off her former husband and Dix.
“To everyone trolling and attacking Ellie at her workplace, please stop immediately. What you see on TV is only a small portion of what goes on.
“Regardless of what you saw on TV (filmed six months ago), I have no problems with Jono and Ellie and neither of them deserve to be harassed or bullied.
“Please can everyone let them be happy and let’s all move on x.”
Former radio host and jailed money launderer Nate Nauer is returning to the airwaves, with a new podcast featuring him and his good mate, Mai FM breakfast host Nickson Clark.
The Herald’s Joseph Los’e revealed in September last year that Nauer - sentenced in May after pleading guilty to six money laundering charges - had been granted home detention after serving five months of a two-year, nine-month sentence in jail.
Nauer was imprisoned after the courts heard he laundered $420,000 for the Comancheros gang, mainly via paying cash for luxury vehicles. The cash was the proceeds of the sale of Class A drugs.
His lawyer Ron Mansfield KC previously described his sentence as “inappropriate and excessive”.
Mansfield said Nauer lost his livelihood as a radio host and many close friends and family distanced themselves from him after he was first charged.
However, he’s now served his time and is on the verge of a media comeback.
Nauer was back in the Mai FM studio this week, promoting his new Spotify podcast Nickson and Nate, the first episode of which is due to be released this Sunday.
The subscription-based podcast is set to lift the lid of some of Nauer’s darkest periods - including wild times as the former Mai breakfast host.
In comments this week, he indicated he’d sometimes start a shift on the radio having come straight from a strip club.
“... I was at my absolute worst,” he told Clark and Mai breakfast co-hosts Tegan Yorwarth and Fame Teu.
“I would be stumbling in here with my sunnies on. I’d just come from a place where women like to dance and sometimes it gets really hot and sometimes [they] take their clothes off.
“I’d walk in and Tegan would be like ‘Where’d you come from?’. I’d just have no answer. I’m hungover, I’m doing the show.”
Nauer described Nickson Clark as his “brother”.
“And you use that word in good times and bad times. You gotta be able to fight with your brother.
“I remember when I got his phone number approved so I could call him from jail. He picks up and he’s like: ‘Yeah, what do you want?’ But I would talk to him every night.”
I asked MediaWorks, owner of Mai and employer of Clark, about whether it was supporting the podcast financially.
A spokeswoman said the podcast was “completely independent” of the media company.
She confirmed the podcast would be recorded at MediaWorks. “Our MediaWorks studios are available to hire and as such we have multiple independent podcasts that are recorded on our premises. I can confirm this podcast is one of them.”
It will be interesting to see whether MediaWorks uses the podcast to test public sentiment for Nauer, and whether that could eventually lead to a new radio gig.
Another of his friends, BBM charity boss Dave Letele, told the Herald last year that he was confident, that once Nauer had completed his sentence, he would make a good contribution to society.
“Nate knows what he did was wrong and stupid and has certainly learned his lesson from his time in prison,” Letele said.
“Everyone deserves a second chance if they make a mistake.”
At least three agencies are believed to be pitching for the big Xero advertising account.
Media Insider understands incumbent MBM, PHD and an Australian agency are involved, although a confidentiality clause prevents any of them from speaking publicly.
I was in contact yesterday with Xero’s country head Bridget Snelling who referred me to head of communications Natalie Weber-Benning.
“We’ve actually put things on hold at the moment... I can get back to you when that changes,” said Weber-Benning.
She said Xero was “working through some further details before resuming the RFP [Request For Proposal process].”
It would be nice - when the pitch does resume - if Xero kept the marketing budget with a local agency, given its own Kiwi roots and the pressure on the local media industry.
I popped downstairs for NZME’s annual shareholders’ meeting yesterday afternoon. After a period of reporting on the seemingly endless round of closures and job losses in the media community, it was nice to hear some positive news.
NZME is expecting earnings growth in 2024, with 4 per cent growth in advertising revenue already in the first quarter this year, compared with 2023.
Pleasingly for the company - the owner of the NZ Herald - its 5-year-old property portal OneRoof is contributing to the earnings, with a strong start to the year.
OneRoof’s Ebitda for the first quarter was $1.4m – “a significant improvement from the loss in last year’s first quarter and full year”, said NZME CEO Michael Boggs.
While Boggs said the company remained cautious because of the challenging operating environment, NZME expected total 2024 Ebitda in the range of $57 million to $61m. Ebitda in 2023 was $56.2m.
Aside from the numbers, there were some colourful moments as shareholders got the chance to question Boggs and the NZME board.
The three directors up for re-election, Carol Campbell, David Gibson and Guy Horrocks were all easily re-elected, although Australia-based media analyst and shareholder Roger Colman was keen for a real estate vertical specialist to come on to the board, to help OneRoof’s growth and strategy.
Colman, a colourful character, made several points at the meeting, including questions about the future growth of OneRoof and further closing the gap on TradeMe.
“I didn’t fly over here at 4.30am in the morning to let you guys relax,” said Colman.
NZME chair Barbara Chapman later responded: “I don’t think there’s anyone on the management team or the board feeling comfortable and relaxed. We are all very driven towards optimising our strategy and delivering value.”
Colman: “Thank you.”
Another shareholder asked the board about declining levels of trust in media, following the release earlier this week of the AUT Trust in News survey.
Chapman said the board had a “vibrant” discussion about trust and bias at its meeting earlier on Thursday.
Boggs said the Herald - considered in another study as the least-biased news company in New Zealand - was set to make “labelling improvements” around opinion articles.
“I’m up for improving that in our business but I’m not sure I can improve it for the whole industry.”
This week we catch up with Jamie Mackay, host of The Country radio show. On Thursday, he celebrated 30 years as host of The Country and its predecessor The Farming Show.
One of our most versatile and talented broadcasters and journalists, Guyon Espiner, is back with a new, 30-minute interview show on RNZ channels next week. I caught up with my former Evening Post colleague this week.
Guyon! Congratulations on the new gig. I assume the first show, at least, is in the bag? Who’s in the spotlight first up? What can you tell us about the interview?
Kia ora Shayne! Yes, we’ve got a couple in the bag – which is a good place to be, given we’re just a few days out from launch! First up is Dave Letele. What an extraordinary life he’s led, growing up around gangs and bank robbers, tipping the scales at more than 200kg at one point and managing to fight his way back into helping others lose weight, get motivated and steer their lives back on track. His views on whether the government’s approach to social problems such as suppressing gangs and introducing youth bootcamps – and also his relationship with the PM – should make for pretty interesting viewing.
I’ve read recently about your love of the 1-1 interview. What is it about this form of journalism that you enjoy?
I love the whole process of the interview: researching it and learning. Watching other interviews they have done and trying to do the chess strategy thing of how they might react when you make this or that move. You come up with this detailed question line which then you might have to totally abandon because the interview darts off in a different direction than you anticipated.
How have you developed your own interviewing skills and techniques over the years?
I began doing long-form interviewing on a show called Agenda (long forgotten now!) on TVNZ in 2006 and then on Q+A when me and Paul Holmes launched that back in 2009. For me, it’s all about structure. Like, where are you going to start? How does the interview build into a point of tension? Where does the personal background fit in and how do you end it? It’s a way of thinking that an interview has to have that structure of a story, rather than being just a series of questions. It doesn’t always work but that’s the idea!
What’s one of the best interviews you reckon you’ve done in your career? And one of the ‘worst’ - or one that might stand out for other reasons? Why?
I do come back to the Winston Peters interview I did for RNZ in the lead-up to the 2017 election – which was audio and video. Near the start of the interview, Peters took issue with me saying that he’d been sacked three times as a Minister and claimed he had a document in the boot of his car that proved his case. I invited his staff to go and get it and before the end of the interview, one of his handlers brought this document into the studio which he claimed made his case – although he refused to hand it over!
As for things going wrong. Once I left my phone on the interview desk at Q+A because Holmes was doing a panel segment and I went out into the TVNZ newsroom to watch. I looked around for my phone and thought I’d lost it. So I picked up an office landline and rang my number. To my horror, the phone rang on air! Matt McCarten (the ex-Alliance president and political commentator) picked the phone up and pretended it was an angry punter or something and played along – but yes, phones to silent please, major fail!
RNZ tells me it will be a warts-and-all, 1-1 encounter each week, with no editing of responses. How will you weave through any potential legal minefields?
It will be uncut, unedited. So that gives us the tension of a live feel and also in a time of declining trust in media we are saying: what we record is what you get – we haven’t cut things out or manipulated it in any way. Yes, that means challenges like legal issues – but you’d get those with live interviews too right? – so it’s all manageable and it’s a key part of the show.
I spotted you running near Great North Rd this week. I gave you a toot but you were very focused on the job at hand. Aside from running, how else do you relax away from work?
Running is my time to let my mind wander and de-stress – I run for the health of my head as much as my heart! I love live music and hanging out with friends and am a huge consumer of stories in any form – media, film, books – and am having a stab at writing a couple myself!
It’s nice to be talking about a new product launching in our fraught media landscape. What do you make of the TVNZ cutbacks and Newshub closure - you’ll have a lot of mates at both networks, I’m sure. What are they telling you?
Yes, it is a bit of a survivor-guilt thing and I was a little worried whether people would say ‘Why are you launching this when others are getting cut’? But the reaction has been the opposite, with media people – and people generally – saying, ‘Good on you, we need this type of in-depth interview show’. Yeah, I worked for TVNZ and for TV3 and have a lot of friends at both networks, including those who are losing their jobs. It’s deeply sad for them, for the media and for New Zealand generally. It’s hard to explain to people what society would be like without a strong media because when you start saying democracy is under threat people think you are elevating your own importance. But that threat is real – I’ve taken to saying to people, well you might not like the ref, but how do you think a game of rugby would go without a referee!
It’s been 30-odd years since we worked together at The Evening Post. What are your memories of those days? You were the media/broadcasting reporter and you’ve obviously adapted your skills across most media disciplines since that time. What’s your favourite?
My enduring memory was walking across The Evening Post newsroom floor towards the chief reporter’s desk. You might have been deputy chief at that point and you had a landline phone cradled in your neck and were talking to a reporter in the field as well as editing another story on an Atex computer (which is probably in MOTAT now) and you still had space to talk to me as the new junior reporter – and I thought only women could multi-task!
I love newspapers and I still love writing. Radio is very different again – it’s really intimate that relationship you have with the audience. And returning to a TV studio again (we’re filming 30 at Whakaata Māori) is like getting back on the bike. TV has a gravitas and power which sets it apart. So I love all the elements of media and to survive in this landscape you need a few strings to your bow.
Finally - and this is a little bit twee, sorry - but if you had 30 minutes to interview yourself, what’s the one probing question you’d ask Guyon Espiner?
Why did you agree to this interview!
Many in the media community are mourning the loss of another great human, with the untimely death of Pam Neville at the age of just 73.
Pam was a friend - the wife of one of my mentors and close mates Rick Neville - and an all-round top person. Fun, smart and constantly curious, with a love of travel, tennis and journalism. She was a devoted mum and grandmother.
While Rick held a number of high-profile media and executive roles in New Zealand and Australia, Pam was equally talented as a super writer who always had a great nose for a story.
The pair met when they studied journalism in Wellington in 1968. Their skills have been passed through the generations, with two of their daughters, Sophie and Alice, talented journalists in their own right.
Pam will be farewelled at 1.30pm today at Narrow Neck on Auckland’s North Shore.
'I can imagine people being outraged that TVNZ signed a deal with me.'