The Casketeers stars; RNZ's Corin Dann and Ingrid Hipkiss; Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking and Three News 6pm newsreader Samantha Hayes.
TVNZ says it learned of potential Casketeers issue in late 2023; What’s eating RNZ’s traditional radio audience? TV3 6pm news audience drops - what WBD CEO says about Stuff-produced bulletin; NZ Herald reviews AI policies; Well-known name set to join TVNZ board; Top agency wins big retailer pitch.
TVNZ has removed an episode of The Casketeers from its on-demand TVNZ+ platform, following allegations involving a star of the show.
The state broadcaster has revealed it was told in late 2023 that Tipene Funerals – the company at the centre of the popular reality TV show – was investigating a “potential issue with correct processes for interment”.
But TVNZ said it did not have specifics at the time and it was made aware by the production company of the full nature of the allegations on July 23.
“When these allegations came to light, TVNZ proactively removed one episode from season 1 of The Casketeers on TVNZ+,” a TVNZ spokeswoman told Media Insider.
She said the episode “dealt with one of the cases where allegations have been raised”.
A now-former funeral director of Tipene Funerals – and a star of The Casketeers show – Fiona Bakulich allegedly swindled grieving clients by placing their deceased relatives in plastic bags, rather than coffins they had purchased, in the public mausoleum at West Auckland’s Waikumete Cemetery.
Episode six of season one is no longer available on TVNZ+ but according to one synopsis, it features Bakulich overseeing a Samoan burial at a mausoleum.
As the allegations swirl, production continues on the latest incarnation of the series, in which Tipene Funerals’ two owners, Francis and Kaiora Tipene travel the world, looking at overseas funeral customs.
Francis Tipene earlier apologised after the allegations involving their former worker came to light. “A huge amount of trust was placed in her, both by Tipene Funerals, myself as director and the families she was taking care of.”
Bakulich does not feature in this latest series and the TVNZ spokeswoman said it was a different premise from the earlier six seasons of the show.
Its production and screening would not be impacted by the allegations, she said.
The show – which has more than $1.5 million in taxpayer funding – is due to air sometime in 2025.
“These are deeply distressing allegations for the whānau impacted,” said the TVNZ spokeswoman, echoing earlier sentiments from funding agencies Te Māngai Pāho and NZ on Air and production company Great Southern Television.
“We have been saddened to learn of these and extend our full sympathies to these families.
“We are very saddened for the families affected by these upsetting allegations. Ultimately, this is an employment issue between Tipene Funerals and their former employee.”
Radio ratings for RNZ and its flagship breakfast show have tumbled in four years, according to data that the public broadcaster has finally agreed to release. It is also at pains to point out that they do not paint a full picture of its audience performance.
RNZ National’s overall cumulative audience has fallen from a high of more than 700,000 in early 2020 – at the height of the first Covid outbreak – to 529,800 in the most recent 2024 survey. Where it once held a lead of almost 100,000 over commercial radio rival Newstalk ZB, those positions are now reversed, with ZB ahead by more than 100,000.
That loss of audience is reflected in the performance of RNZ’s flagship Morning Report show, according to the ratings data that the broadcaster has now agreed to proactively release, after Official Information Act requests and an Ombudsman complaint by the NZ Herald.
In early 2020, Morning Report had a cumulative audience of more than 500,000 – a lead of more than 100,000 over Newstalk ZB breakfast host Mike Hosking – but its audience is now down to 376,500.
In the same period, Hosking’s breakfast ratings have risen from just under 400,000 to 445,300.
ZB’s overall dominance is most pronounced in Auckland, where it has 277,900 listeners – double the audience of RNZ.
RNZ has a happier time in Wellington – it’s ahead of ZB by more than 40,000 listeners – while in Christchurch, the stations are virtually neck-and-neck, with RNZ holding a narrow lead of 2100 listeners.
In response to Media Insider questions, RNZ reiterated that its content was now distributed across a wide range of platforms – including its website, app and podcasts – and that it’s important to consider audiences beyond traditional radio channels.
Nevertheless, chief executive Paul Thompson said last August that he expected Morning Report – then with a reasonably new pairing of Corin Dann and Ingrid Hipkiss – to increase its ratings over the next 12 months.
It has yet to do so – although it has been stable for the past three surveys, with an overall cumulative audience of 380,152 and 372,400 in the last two surveys of 2023 and 376,500 in the first survey of 2024.
Thompson said: “We are very pleased to see the bump Morning Report had from the previous survey and that it’s holding its own in a difficult market. Over the same period, the overall audience for radio slightly declined from 3.661 million to 3.648 million, suggesting a stable rather than growing market”.
He cites Morning Report as an example of RNZ’s expanded delivery platforms – its content helping lift RNZ’s website traffic, while audiences are also streaming it live or listening to a dedicated Morning Report podcast.
“This means that live radio ratings provide an incomplete picture of the audience for Morning Report’s work.”
The question still arises – given almost every major media company can make the same convergence argument – why have RNZ’s traditional radio audiences fallen since 2020, and ZB’s numbers have risen?
Thompson: “During the Covid-19 lockdown period, RNZ enjoyed unprecedented audience numbers, due in part to the need for public information, the numbers from 2020 and 2021 are not reflective of the long-term trend in radio.
“What we are seeing now is a return to that trend of slow change. People are consuming media across the board differently and it offers both opportunities and challenges for us all. For example, audio consumption is higher across platforms but it’s not necessarily all via live radio means any more.”
For context, he says RNZ content now reaches more than 70% of the population, compared with 15% only 15 years ago.
He says “more New Zealanders are consuming our content than ever before”.
RNZ also has content deals with more than 65 partners, which helps further distribute its work.
Of its 70%-plus reach, “live radio now makes up about 14%, which is why we believe simply measuring radio ratings for comparison with private radio doesn’t reflect our strategy, the inherent change in the sector and audience behaviour, and where the taxpayer gets the value from the investment in public media content.”
But that still doesn’t explain why ZB has outperformed RNZ over the traditional airwaves in the past four years.
Whatever your opinion of Hosking, it seems clear that his relentless approach in questioning the Government’s response to Covid 19 saw him attract and retain a stronger audience, especially as the pandemic evolved.
Many New Zealanders believe he held then PM Jacinda Ardern, Government MPs and public officials to account more strongly than other broadcasters.
ZB also has the benefit of stability – since 2000, it has had two just breakfast hosts, Paul Holmes and Mike Hosking - and radio insiders believe that has helped play a part in its ratings success.
The co-hosted Morning Report has had significantly more names in the same period, including Geoff Robinson, Sean Plunket, Simon Mercep, Guyon Espiner, Susie Ferguson, Dann and Hipkiss.
Other ratings requested by the Herald and now released by RNZ show Nine to Noon has a cumulative audience of 286,600 – compared with an audience of 294,800 for Newstalk ZB at the same time (Kerre Woodham, Nick Mills and John MacDonald).
And RNZ’s Saturday Morning show, hosted by Susie Ferguson and soon to be joined by Mihingarangi Forbes, now has a cumulative audience of 211,100 compared with an audience of 224,300 for its last survey of 2023, when Kim Hill was host.
The ratings release
RNZ holds a privileged position in the New Zealand media landscape – whereas others are under relentless cost pressure, the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster has received a hefty, annual financial boost.
Under the previous Labour Government, it received a $25.7 million budget injection and the National-led coalition Government recently confirmed RNZ would continue to receive this boosted level of funding.
So, while all other commercial media firms face cutbacks, RNZ is under scrutiny to ensure it does not blow a golden opportunity.
The NZ Herald initially sought, under the Official Information Act, specific ratings for several individual RNZ shows – beyond topline results – last December.
That request was refused on the basis that RNZ could not release specific data because of its agreement with other radio broadcasters and survey company GFK.
The Herald urged RNZ to reconsider its position, given it is owned by the public, that it is fully funded by the taxpayer, that it had received a big injection of public funding, and that it used some of its funding to measure ratings.
RNZ stood by its position; the Herald appealed to the Ombudsman in April.
While awaiting a response from the Ombudsman, another radio survey was completed, and the Herald made a similar OIA request for updated ratings.
RNZ finally released to the NZ Herald a breakdown of its ratings on Tuesday this week. Coincidentally, on Wednesday, the Ombudsman’s office wrote to the Herald, saying it would investigate its complaint from April.
Thompson outlined why RNZ had reversed its earlier decision.
“Simply, we thought about it and decided it wasn’t the way we wanted to approach it as a public media organisation,” he said.
“So, we took the time to go to our industry and GFK partners to see if we could get the information released. Helpfully, they agreed.”
The attempted assassination of former US president Donald Trump has had a noticeable impact on ratings for the first month of the new-look 6pm TV news battle.
TVNZ experienced its biggest 6pm audience of the month on Sunday, July 14, driven by regular live updates throughout the day on TVNZ 1, including its initial breaking news report from Jack Tame on the Marae show.
Three, on the other hand, had nothing about the assassination attempt for eight hours, until the 6pm Stuff-produced news. It was essentially coming to the news cold.
And even then it had just eight minutes of coverage in its 30-minute bulletin; TVNZ had a total of 21 minutes across an hour.
That, along with TVNZ’s extra news resources in Paris for the Olympics, has led to TVNZ opening a ratings gap on the Stuff-produced Warner Bros Discovery bulletin.
Results for the first month of the new-look news highlight the challenge that lies ahead for Stuff and Warner Bros Discovery.
From June 1 to July 5, the former Newshub at 6 bulletin had a daily average audience (all ages 5+) of 228,600; from July 6 until August 4 – the first month of the Stuff bulletin – that daily average audience dropped to 190,900.
In the critical 25-54 age bracket, Newshub at 6′s average daily audience was 75,200 whereas its successor’s daily average audience in the first month was 57,200.
In both age brackets, TVNZ increased its own daily average audience.
Group M business intelligence head Harry McFall confirmed the Trump assassination attempt had given TVNZ a boost.
“It appears as though 1 News has secured some of the ThreeNews audience off the back of that eventful week.”
McFall said TVNZ also received a huge boost from its 5pm lead-in show, The Chase.
“It’s a ratings draw in its own right, delivering larger audiences than a significant portion of peak time programmes. Against all people 25-54, it averages around 59,000 viewers nightly compared to the 14,000 that Three delivers.”
McFall said Olympics coverage had also “skewed” normal audience patterns, in favour of Sky TV, over the past week and a half.
He added: “TVNZ’s ‘share of voice’ in the broadcast news and current affairs space is significant now that WBD only offers a 6pm news service. With programmes like Breakfast, Q+A, and Te Karere, TVNZ reaches a larger daily audience, effectively promoting its core show, 1 News, and strengthening its news brand.
“The Donald Trump incident demonstrated TVNZ’s ability to leverage multiple news touchpoints throughout the day.”
When asked how advertisers might respond, McFall said: “The way the New Zealand market buys TV activity is shifting to audience trading, where advertisers pay for a guaranteed number of viewers across multiple stations and programs, so this makes the performance of individual shows less relevant.
“However, an underperforming programme schedule can impact the reach potential of campaigns, making the network less attractive to advertisers and limiting its ability to increase their rates.”
WBD NZ and Australia head of networks Juliet Peterson said she was pleased with the first month of the new-look bulletin and was “certainly not panicking” about the numbers.
“I would expect them [ratings] to come down for lots of reasons – school holidays, Olympics... and it’s a new product. It takes time.”
WBD had previously seen, when it revamped the likes of AM, that it took time for ratings to bounce up.
“We are certainly not panicking and I never had any intention of making any judgment this close.”
Asked when she would be making judgments, she said: “I think most things, particularly when they are long-running, everyday deliverables like that need several months.
“I think they probably need a little bit longer than that if they’ve been through a period of instability and viewing behaviours, like we’re seeing of the scale of the Olympics.”
She said the bulletin had started strongly “and there’s already been some great improvements”.
“Like everyone and everything we do, we’ll keep working to evolve it and make it better.”
She said the virtual set was working well; the line-up of talent in front of and behind the screen was “impeccable” and a number of original Stuff workers were contributing strongly to the bulletin.
“We had to make sure that we kept enough familiarity that we didn’t alienate too much of the audience. But also that there was enough newness – that this was something different. We were never trying to replicate Newshub.”
She was also urging the team to not be afraid of promoting mobile journalism – using tools such as the iPhone – where the storytelling was strong enough.
“We were doing that anyway for Newshub. I don’t think it’s a massive deal. Improve the ability to utilise it as a tool. Don’t be afraid of it. Embrace it ... it’s an art right?”
It’s all very well looking at the ratings for traditional platforms – radio, TV and newspapers. In most cases, executives will be keenly focused on their digital audiences and strategies.
Monthly Nielsen audience data for June – the most recently available – shows NZ Herald went ahead of Stuff for the first time in years as the country’s number–one news website. NZ Herald now has a digital audience of 1.99 million; Stuff 1.96m.
Newshub, in its final month of operation, was the country’s third biggest news website with an audience of 1.276m while RNZ had a monthly unique audience of 1.274m, and 1 News 841,000.
The biggest question is where that Newshub audience will end up.
The overall July numbers will be released in mid-August.
Daily numbers for July show NZ Herald was ahead of Stuff in audience sessions, but Stuff - likely on the back of more video from its 6pm news bulletin - enjoyed more views.
Stuff will be champing at the bit to try to reclaim top spot; RNZ will be hoping to be a clear third.
In terms of traditional print results, NZ Herald’s daily newspaper readership for the 12 months to the end of March is now 525,000 – up almost 1 per cent on the previous quarter and down 5.1 per cent on the previous year. The Herald on Sunday’s readership is 320,000 – up 3.9 per cent on the previous quarter and up 7 per cent year on year.
Both papers’ readerships are still up significantly from the 12 months ended March 31, 2020 – they have retained a significant portion of readers who turned to the papers during the pandemic.
A familiar face is understood to be in line for a long-held vacancy on TVNZ’s board.
Former Sky TV chief executive John Fellet – a respected executive and a godfather-like figure in New Zealand broadcasting – is believed to be a frontrunner for the role.
Approached yesterday, Fellet did not wish to comment. A spokesman for Media Minister Paul Goldsmith said the minister would not comment on speculation “and will announce the successful candidate in due course when he’s ready”.
It’s unclear why it’s taken the Government so long to fill the role – perhaps the switch in ministers (Goldsmith took over from Melissa Lee in late April) has delayed timing.
Whatever the case, if it is Fellet, he will supercharge the commercial acumen on the board at a time TVNZ is facing unprecedented financial challenges.
Just last week it was revealed it needed to find $30 million on its balance sheet.
There are fears of more job losses and show cuts.
“We’ve been transparent with our people and publicly that we need to deliver $30m in savings (through revenue generation and cost reduction) as we work towards our Digital+ 2030 strategy,” said a TVNZ spokeswoman last week.
“This is not a proposal and no decisions have been made. In this challenging media landscape, we must consider all options to ensure TVNZ is a sustainable media business.
“We don’t have the answers yet and it’s something we will work through as a business with our people over the coming months.”
The NZ Herald says it will review and further tighten artificial intelligence protocols after reports an editorial was written to a large extent by AI and with a lack of “journalistic rigour”.
At the same time, it says AI will play an increasingly critical role in its newsroom and others around New Zealand and the world – including for simple spelling and grammar checks, other writing assistance and for helping journalists identify angles and questions.
AI tools would soon also be able to help construct articles from standard press releases – such as a police report or a sports result, NZME editor-in-chief Murray Kirkness told an editorial staff meeting on Wednesday.
Another NZME website, BusinessDesk, already has an AI tool to help rewrite basic stock exchange press releases.
Addressing concerns from staff about the recent editorial, Kirkness said critical issues were the level of human oversight, that the organisation was transparent with readers and that policies were continually reviewed and updated.
RNZ reported last week that the editorial – published in the Weekend Herald and on nzherald.co.nz on July 20 – contained elements of what appeared to be passages created by AI, such as truncated sentences and repetition of key words.
RNZ said it had run the editorial – a piece focused on the All Blacks’ midfield position – and a sidebar editorial about UFC star Israel Adesanya “through AI detection tools and several returned positive results”.
Kirkness earlier said: “Like many media companies, we use AI as a tool in our newsrooms, as indicated in the footer of every article page. Any piece of content that uses AI is reviewed, edited and has journalistic oversight. In this particular case, we accept more journalistic rigour would have been beneficial, and we will communicate this to our team”.
NZME has since appended the editorial with an editor’s note saying: “AI was used in the original production of this column. It was edited on July 31 to provide more journalistic oversight.”
Kirkness told Media Insider: “We held one of our regular newsroom meetings [on Wednesday] which covered several things including performance updates, content highlights and the use of AI.
“As we’ve previously said, like many media companies, we use AI as a tool in our newsrooms and will continue to do so. We are open in an article, published on nzherald.co.nz, about our use of AI. That article is linked to on the footer of every page.
“We have approved tools and protocols around the use of AI, including the importance of human oversight, and we’ll continue to review our policies and protocols around use of AI and other publishing processes.”
Kirkness told NZME’s newsrooms it was important to be careful and cautious about AI, but not to shy away from it. He agreed poor use of AI risked undermining trust and credibility and he understood people’s concerns.
OPINION
As I opined in the Media Insider column last Friday, AI offers many enhancements – fixing spelling and grammar, transcribing interviews, suggesting headlines and ideas – but this case is a timely reminder that the humans need to maintain control.
Who knows where AI will eventually take us? Individual reporters may well have the opportunity one day soon to use tools that help them craft articles, using a machine learning bot that has adapted to their unique style of writing.
I certainly understand why it seems scary to some, and why there are concerns. After all, I don’t think AI could ever replace the writing style of a Steve Braunias - this piece was one of the best I’ve read this year - or any number of brilliant writers here and in other newsrooms.
But for simple news reports? There’s definitely an argument for it, with human oversight.
Whatever the scenario, it will be critical that policies continue to keep pace with the rapid level of change.
And as I said last week, we certainly need to be transparent with readers, ensuring they are clearly informed if AI has played a tangible role in our storytelling.
This week, we converse with ChatGPT*.
* This is an AI response.
GroupM’s EssenceMediacom has had a significant and welcome victory – retaining Specsavers in New Zealand and expanding its media agency work for the company into Australia.
The announcement follows a four-month pitch process.
“All agencies came with passion for our business and presented quality work which highlighted the strength of Australia and New Zealand’s media agencies,” said Specsavers’ marketing planning director Shaun Briggs.
EssenceMediacom – which has worked with Specsavers in New Zealand since 2010 – will extend media services for the brand into Australia.
“Throughout the pitch process, the team showed their strategic thinking, media expertise, and data and tech capability. They combined their intelligence with a passion for our business that really resonated with our team,” said Briggs.
The appointment takes effect from March 1, 2025; with the account run out of EssenceMediacom’s Melbourne and Auckland offices.
The agency takes over in Australia from IPG Mediabrands’ Initiative.
In a column dominated by ratings, it’s nice to finish on a high.
The Brokenwood Mysteries - now into its 10th year of solving out-there murders - is enjoying a ratings resurgence.
“The 10th anniversary season of the show played on TVNZ recently, attracting a viewership of close to 1.5 million New Zealanders to date, tracking at around 7% higher than season nine,” says a South Pacific Pictures spokeswoman.
Head writer and producer Tim Balme said growing a linear audience in a competitive market was “nothing short of extraordinary”.
“Brokenwood remains appointment viewing and continues to exceed our expectations as its popularity grows both overseas and at home. Brokenwood was always a show made for Kiwis to enjoy. The fact that it became such a huge TV export has been an added bonus.”
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.
'I can imagine people being outraged that TVNZ signed a deal with me.'