Paul Henry shares his Breakfast television triumphs and failures in an interview with Hal Crawford. Photo / Michael Craig
Paul Henry shares his Breakfast television triumphs and failures in an interview with Hal Crawford. Photo / Michael Craig
Paul Henry has revealed two of the biggest frustrations during his career as a broadcaster.
The former host of Three's Paul Henry show admitted it "was entirely possible" for that show to be better than it was.
And in 2012, he relocated to Sydney to host Network Ten's morning show Breakfast - which he calls both his "greatest frustration and greatest satisfaction" in his career. At the time there were reports of the former Radio Live host clashing with co-hosts and an executive producer, who abruptly quit during the show's nine-month stint on air.
Former Newshub chief news officer Hal Crawford published a podcast interview on Monday with the controversial broadcaster recorded two years earlier, and Henry admitted one of his strengths is not caring whether people like him or not.
When asked about a draining people problem he had encountered in his career, the broadcaster referenced his time on the Paul Henry show, which was simulcast on Three and Radio Live.
"I knew how I wanted it to run and I'm a perfectionist," he told Crawford.
He clarified he didn't expect others he worked with to share the same ideals. "But if you're working on my show, I expect you to at the very least understand that I am a perfectionist, and understand what I want to achieve. I describe it very well: people don't always listen.
"One of the biggest frustrations I had was the inability of people working for me on that show to understand the nuances of it. To understand how vital it was that we were making a radio programme on television. That was the secret to it. That was always going to be the secret of success.
Paul Henry's Australian breakfast show was axed by network bosses. Photo / Ten
"And yes - that I was compromising the ability for it to be a much faster pick-up from a television point of view, but that what was special about it was that this was a multi-platform show, and it was entirely possible for us to have done it better than we did."
When asked what the best thing he's ever done in his career, he said it was without a doubt his nine months presenting a breakfast programme in Australia.
"Poisoned chalice"
"The number of impediments that were placed in my way and other people producing that programme were staggering."
He said that was perfect example about him not caring about being liked.
"The saddest thing is that essentially at the end of the day, the view was the programme was a failure because Australians didn't like me. Or didn't like a New Zealander.
"If that were true I'd be okay with that, but we were so far away from finding out whether Australians liked me or not. Because we were conquering so many enormous internal management production problems."
He said because of that, "we never gave it a fair shot."
"That is probably my greatest frustration but also my greatest satisfaction."
He said at best the show had an audience of about 60,000, but that it was tracking up.
"As things were peeled out of the programme, we even lost the studio and we were doing it from the reception area. The more they peeled out of the programme the better it became."
When asked if the network wanted him "to bomb", he said yes.
He claimed all of the people at Network Ten who has invested in his show had gone by the time he arrived and that was a big reason for the show's demise.
"The programme was handed over like a poisoned chalice before it even started to a new management team who didn't want to do the programme, who didn't believe in doing the programme but more importantly knew if the programme was successful, it wouldn't be their success."
Henry recently teamed up with MediaWorks to help the company launch their new station Today FM. He worked as a consultant and will voice the station's promos.
