Speculation grows over Jones' dismissal

TVNZ news and current affairs boss Bill Ralston has conceded the move away from personality-driven news may have been a mistake.

The admission follows a fall in ratings for One News and the unexplained departure of newsroom executive Melanie Jones on Friday.

Yesterday Ralston admitted the editorial marketing policy he drove, which removed the focus on personalities, "maybe wasn't right".

The departure of Jones has already increased tension between experienced staff in the newsroom and Mr Ralston. They claimed Mr Ralston was seeking increasing support from a small group of TVNZ staff.

As an example, they pointed to recent business class flights to London by Mr Ralston, Close Up presenter Mark Sainsbury and Agenda producer Richard Harman. Yet when Paul Holmes' successor Susan Wood flew to Rome to cover the death of the Pope, she flew economy.

"Bill has surrounded himself with blokes who agree with him," said one experienced staff member. "He's been pushed to make changes to One News and never done it."

Some staff were baffled at Ms Jones departure, an experienced journalist renowned for demanding high standards. "I don't really think anybody knows why," said one source. "It was like a whim. It's a pretty bewildering sort of thing. I'm amazed at how legally they can do what they have done."

The staff member described Ms Jones as a scapegoat. "If things are really that bad, shouldn't they go right to the top? There are issues with One News but none of them can be sheeted home to Melanie."

Mr Ralston planned Ms Jones' departure from Thursday afternoon, alerting staff there would be an announcement on Friday at 11am, and summoning her to a meeting an hour earlier.

The meeting, in which she was told she no longer worked for TVNZ, took no more than a few minutes.

When Mr Ralston appeared in the newsroom to make the announcement, he told those gathered that when he arrived at TVNZ he wanted people to have fun. He did not consider that was happening.

Yesterday, Mr Ralston refused to link Ms Jones' departure with the drop in ratings, although he would not explain why she had left.

He said of the ratings slump that there were "a lot of factors outside of the mix", including programming and marketing.

"The audience is quite fickle too, I've noticed. The days of bonded loyalty to the One News brand is gone.

"The marketing strategy is something we have to take a long look at. The classical way people advertise a television news show, the way TV3 or Prime do it with just the face of their presenter up there, and 'watch us' ...

"Maybe we've pushed with a lot of promotion around the stories ... whether that's actually worked is a matter for debate."

He intended reorganising the management structure before advertising Ms Jones' job.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY