KEY POINTS:
In making this appointment, we are not taking a 'business as usual' approach." With that phrase Television New Zealand embarked on an experiment.
The statement comes from TVNZ's June 30, 2003 announcement of the appointment of Bill Ralston as head of news and current affairs.
Ian Fraser was TVNZ's new chief executive officer and Ralston was his man. Their objectives were to meet the charter obligations of boosting local content and to improve news and current affairs to put the broadcaster in a good position to face rising competition.
Last Tuesday, Fraser's replacement Rick Ellis, on his second time around at TVNZ's helm, announced Ralston's departure to staff complete with the cliche, "to pursue other interests". Ralston had led during "a very challenging three-year period", Ellis said.
Gone in those years too was chairman Craig Boyce, whose board publicly fell out with an emotional and frustrated Fraser.
Also gone from view are many familiar TVNZ faces: Richard Long, Mike Hosking, April Ieremia, Paul Holmes, Eric Young, Judy Bailey, Susan Wood. Managers in key news positions - Trish Carter, Melanie Jones - went too.
The many changes were not restricted to personnel. The worthy but low-rating Assignment current affairs programme was axed and news staff exhorted to "liven up" their stories, make them more engaging, add spontaneity and sparkle to make them more like TV3's.
The change that mattered, and most probably spelt the end for Boyce, Fraser and Ralston, however, occurred in 2005 when TV3 displaced TV1 as the popular choice for viewers of the 6pm news.
During the past three years, TVNZ's share of the national newstime audience aged 25-54 fell from 50 per cent to a new low of less than 30 per cent, about five percentage points below TV3. In the crucial Auckland advertising market, TVNZ trailed by twice as much.
Ralston had the consolation of his team beating TV3 for the Qantas Best News Award. When ratings go south, so does revenue and that is what will be cited as evidence of the Fraser-Ralston experiment having failed.
It is a black-and-white conclusion which doesn't fully take account of the difficulties the old monopoly faced in a still-young age of energetic competition. The Government also tasked its board and executives to deliver on both sides of the knife edge - local programming and profit - a perilous task. Fraser noted this, saying the job was to deliver the charter without screwing the business.
Local content has remained around 38 per cent across TV One and TV2 but there may have been an increase in programmes regarded as core charter, such as documentaries on historian Michael King and former Prime Minister David Lange, the latter being the year's second most popular programme after Dancing With the Stars.
Three years on, One News' audience is at an all-time low and up to 200 jobs may be cut as savings of $10 million are sought.
Paul Norris, head of the Broadcasting School at Christchurch Polytechnic, suggests the past three years may be renowned for good journalists failing to become good managers.
Fraser's strength was as an ambassador and champion of public broadcasting, says Norris. "He took on board the requirements of the charter and was articulate and persuasive in articulating them. How far he was able to influence the culture within TVNZ is another question because he was perceived as not being there ... "
Fraser delegated day-to-day running to his number two, Stephen Smith, and news and current affairs to Ralston, whose philosophy he probably shared, having wanted the "bit of mongrel" Ralston would bring.
"The trouble was that Bill may have brought a bit too much mongrel," says Norris. "Bill was a very good journalist and stood for strong journalism but unfortunately I don't think he was able to deliver on that in terms of the output of TVNZ news and current affairs."
Norris cites the axing of Assignment which, he says effectively ended in-depth current affairs. Though Ralston indicated some topics would be allocated an hour in the Sunday programme, it occurred rarely. He set up an investigative unit which we saw little of. "I think it's a case of the performance falling a little short of the promise."
The departure of so many key people didn't help, particularly when the process of their "leaving" was often accompanied by public controversy. It didn't stop at on-screen personalities. The departure of executives Carter and Jones weakened the news team, says Norris.
"Part of the problem is Bill simply presided over too many incidents which looked like they had been badly handled. There is a list of presenters who went, often unwillingly and with some considerable damaging fallout for TVNZ public relations."
There were well-publicised employment court hearings in the case of Wood and Jones. The exit of Holmes was damaging in that it created the opportunity for Campbell Live which has been a resounding success for TV3.
"You might argue that he was just doing his leaders' bidding but the trick is to carry out those orders in an effective manner and that is what I think is questionable," says Norris.
With more choice available than ever, it was inevitable viewers would migrate from TVNZ. The question is whether management slowed or enhanced the process.
While noting the difficulty of attributing particular reasons for a ratings decline, Norris offers three:
* Campbell Live. TVNZ gave its main rival the opening to launch the programme and allowed viewers to sample current affairs on TV3. Some liked it and there was a backflow into 3 News.
* Failure to have a strong lead-in to TV1 news. "TV3 played a strong card with Home and Away which Bill attempted to match with Headliners, and that patently didn't work." Headliners was an attempt at entertainment news which was assumed would garner an audience of the young. "I think there was a problem with that assumption and, again, it was not well handled in the execution."
* Negative publicity impacts on ratings. Among those to defect were older, formally loyal viewers who wouldn't shop around unless given good reason. Some found the reason in the revelation of Judy Bailey's salary and Richard Long's axing.
"If your audience is getting older and dying off and some are choosing to sample 3 and many of the younger audience have either moved to 3 or never really considered One, you are facing a series of factors that are all against you."
There was also a problem of declining newsroom morale. The initial welcome that Ralston's desire for harder, deeper news received from TVNZ journalists faded. The investigative unit hit a bump - and litigation - in the form of its inquiry into an alleged scampi rort and didn't quite recover. His exhortations to break more stories and to make the storytelling livelier and more spontaneous came to be seen as criticism rather than encouragement and an indication that Ralston preferred the news style of their rival.
As ratings slumped heads rolled, News executive Jones was sacked. She won a payout reportedly of $200,000-plus and a public statement from Ralston extolling her skills.
Ralston became a cult figure at 3 with his brand of Gonzo political journalism on Nightline, an innovative, pioneering late news and entertainment show. Although he may not have been able to transfer the same edginess to the screen at TVNZ, he brought his flare for danger.
"I think Bill is accustomed to living with a degree of danger," says Norris, who long ago as head of news and current affairs himself, reportedly told Ralston he had no future on screen. "You could say that's what mongrels do, but if you live in that vein, you may die by it. That may well be what's happened."
Ralston's time co-incided with a markedly changing media market. "It was not restricted to television," says Jim Tully, head of Canterbury University's journalism school. "There was a proliferation of magazines and the arrival of alternative information sources on the internet and to some extent [TVNZ] were frustrated in their hopes of moving into digital much sooner."
Tully suspects TVNZ came late to the realisation TV3 was no longer Cinderella - and when it did it didn't have the right people in the right positions. Fraser didn't assert a visionary leadership and Ralston didn't have the necessary manager's eye for detail. "He's an ideas man, a front man, I don't think he's the hard-grafting sort to get his nose down and pay close attention to all the minutiae of management."
But he also encountered an established bureaucracy and entrenched office ethos. "I wouldn't be one to dump it all on Ralston. He was reporting to a chief executive ... and a tendency to blame Ralston and Fraser tends to diminish what TV3 has accomplished. It's like when you lose a test match, you say it's because they played badly and forget how well the others did."
The reaction to the three-year Boyce-Fraser-Ralston experiment has been a pendulum swing to a new conservatism, a steady-as-she-goes management. Chairman of the board is publicity shy former banker Sir John Anderson. Ellis, with a solid business background in aviation and technology, is back and this time has the Government commitment that he lacked when he wanted to drive TVNZ into the digital age in the late 1990s.
Two digital free-to-air channels, a home channel this year and a 24-hour news channel in 2008, both of which the Government has said it would fund, are to be introduced in the next two years. News channels, in particular, are expensive and it will be interesting to see how it is established in view of TVNZ's budget cuts.
Digital is the delivery system of the future but it can't save content, points out Richard Griffin, TVNZ's political lobbyist. "I don't think anyone would argue that the only critique of a television company is what is on the screen, not how it is delivered."
There were aspects that could have been better handled, he says, but Ralston and Fraser remain unique talents. "I don't know where you find another Bill Ralston, or, if it comes to that, where you find another Ian Fraser. You can't run a television channel on new technology alone."
Ralston knew his position was at least in jeopardy once Fraser resigned. If he didn't, Ellis gave enough signals. Soon after being appointed CEO, Ellis issued senior managers with behavioural guidelines: long liquid lunches on the company credit card were out, managers were expected to lead by example. No names were mentioned but Ralston is a famous luncher.
In September, Ellis delivered a public rebuke after Ralston colourfully abused a newspaper reporter. It was, said Ellis, "very serious" and "quite unacceptable behaviour, fullstop."
For the first time in three years Bill Ralston rose this morning as plain Bill Ralston. Yesterday was his last as Bill Ralston, TVNZ head of News and Current Affairs. Chances are he enjoyed a good wine last night and may this morning be at a favourite Ponsonby cafe reading about himself.
Ralston declined to be interviewed but his older brother says he will be relieved.
"With any stressful job like that, it's relief," said Jack Ralston, a former executive with Nike and Sanitarium Health Food. "In time they will look back and be proud of what they achieved, despite the ratings, which was always going to happen, I'm sure."
His brother can take the flak, he says.
Public television can be brutal and brutalising. Fraser wouldn't disagree. He's not spoken publicly since citing boardroom meddling and quitting abruptly two Novembers ago, and politely says he's not about to now. "There's a lot I'd like to say," he tells the Weekend Herald, but he restricts himself to this: "I'll miss Ralston; he's a good man."
- additional reporting by John Drinnan.
