An emotional Lineup Producer for Today FM Host Tova O’Brien said the staff were "gutted" with the proposal. Video / Michael Craig
OPINION:
Wendy Palmer’s fast action at Today FM looks akin to throwing sandbags out of the Hindenburg in the hope it stays airborne.
Leaked information suggests that the acting chief executive has admitted to staff that she wouldn’t have taken on the role had she known how dire the financialsituation was at MediaWorks.
The finances meant that Palmer wasn’t going to wait around for Today FM to continue a dismal run of form, in which the station desperately clings to 100,000 weekly listeners.
Garner, Tova O’Brien, Rachel Smalley, Lloyd Burr and the rest of the team will now await the outcome of a staff meeting that will determine whether there is any further need for their services.
“We’re all going to lose our jobs,” said O’Brien in response to what would be one of the most brutal media cuts since Bauer Media shocked staff by shutting shop in the middle of Covid.
MediaWorks interim CEO Wendy Palmer tells Today FM staff that had she known how bad the financial situation at MW was she wouldn’t have taken on the role.
Staff at Today FM will feel particularly hard done by given they were sold a five-year project when signing on to join the team. The idea was that they would build something from the ground up.
Tova O'Brien was the face of Today FM when it launched just over a year ago.
The writing was on the wall almost immediately, with talk boss Dallas Gurney making his way to the exit door shortly after the departure of Wallace.
Speculation was rife that Today FM’s days were numbered, with hot takes summarising the station’s fate as a case of “going woke and going broke”. But as I’ve written before, that was a gross oversimplification of what went wrong here.
The brand was shaped to challenge the long supremacy of Newstalk ZB - or at least that’s what we were told in the press release. The problem is that the path to that destination wasn’t clear, given that Today FM was opting for an entirely different audience to the masses so loyal to the likes of Mike Hosking.
Today FM has struggled to get the cut-through it was hoping to achieve, with the station attracting only 100,000 weekly listeners in radio ratings tracking listenership between June and November. This was down 14,700 from the previous survey - and leaves the station desperately clinging to its six-digit audience. Newstalk ZB meanwhile attracted 692,000 weekly listeners, sliding 8300 from its previous high.
The station operators spent an enormous amount of money bringing in top talent to offer listeners what was described as “a more balanced mic”. But that lukewarm promise completely missed what listeners tune into talkback radio for in the first place: a good dose of conflict.
O’Brien, Garner and Smalley did the best they could within the remit of a product that was shaped to offer this balance, but the odds were always stacked against them. No talkback station has managed to shake the foundations of Newstalk ZB - and Today FM will simply go down as another brand that went down in a ball of flames, while Hosking is no doubt somewhere swilling his chianti and saying “happy days”.
Today FM hosts have been given only a matter of hours to make submissions, which in corporate parlance indicates that the decision is already set in stone.
TVNZ, NZME or RNZ might be options for her, but the threat of an upcoming recession makes it unlikely that she’ll be able to command the hefty salary that she was paid as a morning breakfast host on a radio show. That said, media companies would gladly open the door for O’Brien to return to the press gallery if she were that way inclined.
Acting MediaWorks chief executive Wendy Palmer says she wouldn’t have taken the role had she known how dire the financial situation was.
The brutality of this move also casts a shadow over Palmer, who has quickly introduced herself as someone not afraid to make tough decisions and crack a few egos. It’s unclear how much of an impact this will have on morale across the business.
Ultimately, no one likes to see their colleagues yanked out of their jobs with little to no warning.
On the other side, this also sends a warning across the media industry. If your programme is not delivering on its audience promise, then it’s probably dispensable in the current economic climate, which isn’t quite as gracious as what we’ve had in recent years.
While Garner and his scorned colleagues might cry “betrayal”, Palmer and the MediaWorks management will be quick to point out that this is just the cold, brutal reality of capitalism - and that applies whether you’re woke or not.
