Holmes blasts 'desperate' duo

BY DAVID FISHER

Broadcaster Paul Holmes has labelled TVNZ boss Ian Fraser and news head Bill Ralston "desperate people" as the bloodletting continues in television's messiest public battle.

Holmes' outburst comes after his former bosses claimed the veteran broadcaster's best work was behind him and it was basically time for him to move on.

An angry Holmes retaliated yesterday saying: "I guess I flushed them out for the people they are. Why can't they be gentlemen?

"They were perfectly happy to thrive for years on the massive audience numbers and the millions of dollars my 'unique personality', as Ralston so derisively calls it, bought in. All they had to do over previous months was talk to me.

"This week has been about very stark commercial realities. The old duopoly of TVNZ and TV3 might well be shaky."

He pointed to the cancellation by Charlie's orange juice of its contract with Holmes, and said other advertisers were watching closely.

"Fraser and Ralston don't have any answers. They are headlessly bechooked. This is not about journalism. This is about commerce, numbers, revenue. They lost the prize because they got careless with it and took it for granted."

He said Holmes producer Phillipa Keane had also been lost to Prime because TVNZ under-estimated the bond between them.


"They are truly the kind of comments I expect from desperate people," he told the Herald on Sunday. "The comments appalled me and I'm not going to play that game. I'm appalled by the comments. I thought they were smarter. If I wasn't commercially viable, they wouldn't have said that."

Holmes' claims have the backing of his new partners in New Zealand current affairs, Australia's Nine Network, who say "management problems" at TVNZ are to blame for Prime's coup.

John Westacott, a director of Prime and head of news and current affairs, said: "TVNZ appears to be a fairly sedentary, moribund outfit or they wouldn't have let a talent like Paul across the road.

"It's reasonable to assume that this is just the first shot of the war. We're not here to lick stamps. Nine doesn't go into these things to come second and it's a hell of a task to take on such an entrenched and successful outfit as TVNZ.

"But you have to be looking at them and asking: How do you lose a bloke like that and how do you let a bloke like that go if it isn't indicative of other problems in the management of the channel?"

Holmes said he could not stay at TVNZ on the one-year contract he was offered. "There was no discussion even about the money. The money, what do I say to the money? The money was great, of course it was great.

"The trouble with a year is it is very difficult to attract to the programme some of the best people because, if they thought they were coming for a 12-month programme they were coming to a programme that could end in a year.

"They tend to think they are coming to a programme that management is not committed to for any decent length of time.

"With all that speculation I know how unsettling it is for the people on the programme. They didn't know where their lives were going. If I'd accepted the 12 months, it was entirely the wrong signal to send to the staff and the marketplace," Holmes said.

"It caused me too to start wondering about the commitment to me and the programme. What it does is, when you go out to see people and do the interview, they ask you 'are you finishing at the end of the year?'. That would have carried on. Personally and professionally, that would have been intolerable."

Holmes said the negotiations over the contract were going ahead "in good faith" when he met Prime chief executive Chris Taylor. About a month after meeting, Mr Taylor suggested he shift channels.

"The more he talked, the more I saw he was really quite serious. So increasingly I became interested and quite excited by the challenge he was laying out."

The negotiations over the contract were stalled and about two weeks ago Holmes made a commitment to himself that he would move to Prime. "It's a bold move, of course it is. It's going to be tough, man, it's going to be hard," he said. "I am determined to make it work. We will make it work.

"Prime in New Zealand is a small channel but Prime has at its beck and call the huge resources of the leading network in Australia."

Holmes issued an invitation to his former television colleagues to join him on Prime.

"The people who come and the people who join me on that programme will be appreciated and work as a brilliant team making something new," he said.

- THE HERALD ON SUNDAY