New TVNZ chair Alastair Carruthers: "I'm a total geek." Photo / Ted Baghurst
The new chair of TVNZ hasn’t officially been inducted and his board meets for only the first time next week but they are already facing a decision he says will be their most important for the next five years.
Alastair Carruthers officially became chair of the state broadcaster three weeks ago. He’s already been dealing with conflict-of-interest protocols around his role as chair of the Film Commission, and he has a stack of briefing documents to work his way through before the first board meeting next Friday.
As if chairing a media company wasn’t already one of the biggest challenges in business, he and the board have a critical priority – finding a new chief executive.
Simon Power left the business three weeks ago, and recruitment for the position has yet to start. The broadcaster’s head of legal and corporate affairs, Brent McAnulty, has stepped up to be interim chief executive.
“It’s probably the most important decision the board is going to make in the next five years,” Carruthers told Media Insider.
He expects interest will be high, and while the best candidate “might already be here”, the search could extend globally.
“It is funny how many LinkedIn pings I’ve suddenly got,” he laughs.
He praises both Power and previous chair Andy Coupe for the strategic, all-of-business transformation about to be unfurled at TVNZ and says the new chief executive will play a critical role in leading the strategy.
That involves major digital transformation – upgrading technology – as well as a big piece of cultural work to ensure staff understand and are on board with the changes.
All are designed to ensure TVNZ maintains and builds audiences in the digital space while meeting its commercial and public broadcasting obligations.
“Andy Coupe and the outgoing board did a fantastic job at setting strategy, and ensuring the strategy can be resourced,” Carruthers says.
“I think the number one job is to find a leader who can build a team to execute it. It’s all about delivery of the new strategy.”
He hopes a new CEO will be in place by the end of the year, following a likely two- to three-month search and recruitment process.
Wellington-raised Carruthers himself is no stranger to the C-suite. He has been the boss of two law firms – including Chapman Tripp for more than 10 years – and set up the Homeland restaurant and food business with his partner, chef Peter Gordon, in 2020.
As well as chairing the Film Commission, he is also a former chair of the Arts Council.
There are concerns among some in the industry that he has no screen, media or content experience, but he points out that governance is about helping the executive do the best job possible, rather than running the business yourself.
While partners pull the business strings in law firms, Carruthers said as CEO, he was working with clients all the time. “You’re there to resource the organisation to be successful and to help it to be successful. My work was all about ensuring the clients were happier every month than they were the month before.”
He is an avid viewer – mainly, like many of us, through streaming. His favourite shows are diverse and stretch beyond TVNZ.
He lists Ted Lasso (Apple TV+), Te Karere, Sunday, Educators, Almost Never, Creamerie (all TVNZ), Rūrangi (Neon), Head High, Seven Days (both Three), RNZ Morning Report and Waatea News, among his top broadcast shows or programmes.
In Britain, where he and Gordon lived, he loved Gogglebox.
“I could not understand the United Kingdom when I got there. My first breakthrough moment was to watch Gogglebox and to realise the diversity of England – reflected in the way that they saw themselves on TV. It’s just absolutely fantastic.”
He reiterates it’s not his job to be involved in programming.
“It’s up to the executive to work out where audiences are and how to reach them.”
He adds: “I’m not a tastemaker.
“It’s very important for you to know that in governance, you’re not there to make taste or to choose taste, you’re actually there to ensure that you’ve got a really high-performing organisation that meets its targets and doesn’t run at a loss.”
As Media Insider reported last week, TVNZ expects an operational loss of $15.6 million this financial year, because of the huge investment in foundation work for the digital technology to upgrade the likes of TVNZ+.
“It’s easy to fetishise operating losses or surpluses,” says Carruthers. “They’ve got a really strong balance sheet and for some time they’ve been building up cash.
“There are times when companies need to draw down their nest eggs, this is to reinvest in the future. And that’s what we are walking into right now. It’s well considered.”
He believes the personalisation of content, delivered digitally, will be a big focus.
“That’s the phase of digitisation that we’re going through now – that personalisation and customisation. Anytime, anywhere, suit me, my voice, my profile to a point where content is being fed to people in a highly personalised way.”
He says TVNZ’s work is “really impressive”. “I have been just so impressed by TVNZ+.”
“It’s also being monetised with really strategic advertising that doesn’t feel intrusive.
“Of course, this is new territory but I’m really proud of what they’re doing in this space. It would be a very brave board to change strategy right in the middle of implementation.”
He says in the limited time he’s been exposed to the TVNZ operation, he has noticed its future-focused approach.
“It’s very much in the present, yesterday’s already gone.
“It’s not a culture that looks back. It’s constantly in the now and in the near future, and ‘where are we going?’
“It’s quite different from lots of other cultures in law firms. They were always in the past they’re going, ‘what’s the precedent?’”
He believes people love the TVNZ brand and trust in the broadcaster is high, a point he says was often overlooked in the debate over the planned – and now cancelled – merger with RNZ.
He says the same of other broadcasters such as Three and RNZ.
“But is everybody tuning in? That’s the big gap in the trust equation that everybody’s got to look at.”
He also believes TVNZ is already performing a lot of the public-service broadcasting duties that fell into the draft charter of the merged broadcasting firm.
He says he’s a “total geek”, and has been poring over the various pieces of legislation that govern TVNZ, as a Crown company set up as a commercial enterprise while balancing its responsibilities as a public broadcaster.
“This is a really contemporary brand, it’s invested very heavily in the Treaty relationship.
“I think we could see more diversity on screen, I think obviously [the] more Māori the better.
“But broader than that … I was reading some statistics about Australia recently and I think nearly one in five people identify as having some form of impairment or disability. Where are those people on screen? Where are our Asian communities?
“Where is our really diverse new migrant population, especially in Tamaki at the moment? A lot of them are consuming media of their own language. They have all sorts of media that is created both locally and overseas that connects them to culture.
“I’m not sure that we are reaching all of those audiences at the moment.”
Carruthers was a somewhat reluctant interviewee – he firmly believes the chair should be in the background.
“The chair shouldn’t be in the news. This might be the only time you get me. Well, unless there’s a crisis in which case governance does need to get involved.”
But he sat down with the Herald, in recognition of the huge public interest in the state-owned broadcaster.
We were due to meet over coffee at Homeland, the restaurant he and Gordon set up in 2020, but a burst water main put paid to that, while repairs were being carried out.
He said he had not put his hand up for the chair; someone (he won’t say who) asked him to put his name forward for the selection process.
As well as his CEO roles at Chapman Tripp and later Kensington Swan, Carruthers’ working life has been diverse – from rolling ice creams at 14, to studying and teaching music. He has a great love of writing, a skill and passion that he has used throughout his career.
In the 1980s he attended a short-writing teaching course, run by a Fulbright professor in North Carolina, and when he returned to New Zealand in 1988 he wrote speeches and worked as an executive assistant to then Cabinet Minister Phil Goff.
“In many ways it crystalised a set of relationships with people from all political stripes,” he told the Herald in 2015. “It gave me an inside perspective on power, systems and the individuals engaged in it.”
As the Herald reported in 2015, he was ultimately happy to leave politics. “I was near the action during the replacement of a Prime Minister when Geoffrey Palmer was replaced by Mike Moore. And by the end of my year there, I was glad to get out.
“But I learned not to be afraid of anything – or at least to pretend to not to be.”
He is excited about working with a new TVNZ board, who he describes as “wonderful”.
Alongside him will be a new deputy chair, Ripeka Evans, two new directors, Linda Clark and John Quirk, and two reappointed directors, Aliesha Staples and Meg Matthews.
He has been meeting each of them in the lead-up to the first board meeting.
Carruthers said Gordon had encouraged him to take the new TVNZ role. He admits to feeling “slightly daunted”.
“It’s a huge responsibility. There’s a massive amount of public trust that’s involved.
“There’s a lot of commercial nous that you have to bring to the table. But, of course, all of those resources are already in the system.
“They’ve got a really great executive and a really good board.”
Given his partner is one of New Zealand’s greatest chefs, I asked him why cooking shows don’t feature high on his list of must-see TV. “I’ll be pretty interested in my boyfriend’s second series of Bake Off!”
Local content will continue to be at the core of TVNZ’s strategy.
“This thing about being relevant to and enjoyed and valued by New Zealand audiences is really an interesting test.
“Finding those emerging voices is really interesting. I think we’re doing really well. The amount of content that’s been made through the Covid investment funds has been staggering and fantastic.”
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