We're down, but not out, Prime bosses insist

Prime boss Chris Taylor and Paul Holmes. Picture / Adrian Malloch

Bunches of flowers and messages of homage have been flowing into Prime's Albany headquarters this week - much to chief executive Chris Taylor's bemusement.
Since the announcement that Paul Holmes, the country's best known television presenter, had failed to capture viewers, the mood out in Albany has been at best subdued, at worst funereal.

"I've seen tributes pour in all day as if he's gone. Holmes is not gone. Paul is a pretty resilient fellow. He's been in the doldrums before and picked himself up," says Taylor.

Media commentators think otherwise. It may not mark the death of Holmes' career - he still has his radio show, they say - but it is a major blow to a man who for so long could not be touched.

But as Taylor points out, it is not the time for he or Holmes to be thinking about themselves. They both have jobs. In fact, with watertight multi-year contracts, sources say the six-figure salaries of Holmes, producer Pip Keane and co-presenter Alison Mau are safe. In fact, they probably receive the same pay for arguably less work.

For 14 others - half of the team working on Holmes - allusions to funerals must seem apt. They were made redundant, their departures effective immediately, with Taylor saying "it is a shame to lose such good people."

They were told of their fate last week during a 45-second announcement by a grim-faced Taylor at the team's morning boardroom meeting. "I just came in and told them. It was not nice to face them. I feel I let people down. I have let people down." He uses words like "horrible" and "soul-destroying" to describe it.

The decision was made quietly by Taylor, programming director Andrew Shaw and Holmes last Sunday after hidden discussions over the previous week. There was no pressure from the board, no urgings from the executives over at Nine Network, just a phone call and a decision to announce it officially before staff and media heard the rumours over blue cubicle partitions in Prime's box-shaped offices.

The Holmes team were given a choice to put the show on until the end of the week but did not see the point. Given its dismal ratings, it wasn't as if anyone would miss it, one joked.

At one point Holmes pulled in just 16,100 viewers in the 5 and over age bracket. When Holmes was at TVNZ he consistently had an audience of more than 500,000 viewers.

A month ago the baby-faced Taylor, who is just 33, did not appear fazed by the numbers.

The network was prepared to wear the losses while the show bedded in, he said.

But maybe the hint was in hislast line: "It's 2 1/2 hours out of 50 prime time hours. There's somuch other good stuff."

After all, even had Taylor known the show's fate, he wouldn't have told an inquiring journalist.

"What would you have wanted me to say at the time? As I say, we were committed to the programme and I was prepared to go on with it if Paul had said to me 'mate, we should keep going, we will get there'. And in a television network you do need to give things time, but I guess we got to a point where we thought time wasn't going to help."

Those who have been kept on at Prime will be employed to work on the new one-hour current affairs show - to be called, imaginatively, Holmes - and as reporters, as the network embarks on beefing up the local content of its 5.30 Prime News, which is one of the channel's star performers. Shows like the news, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Top Gear and England's top rating show of the season, Dr Who - the "good stuff" Taylor urges people to take notice of - are testament that the network can pull viewer numbers to rival TV3. But the year has, admits Taylor, been a grind. To add another pinch of salt to the wound left by Holmes' demise, media commentator Michael Carney pointed out this week that Prime's average peaktime viewership had steadily dropped since the previous year despite all the hoop-la and hype over its new line-up.

Taylor disputes the statistics, saying average audiences have been down across all networks this year, and in terms of the share of the television viewers, Prime had remained "fairly static".

Despite the fall in ratings, Prime's market share of advertising revenue has gone up a point - that's worth $6.5 million, says Taylor, and that's because of the Holmes factor.

"We've got so much more exposure, we've got so many more people spending with us and that's very much due to Paul."

Advertising experts tend to agree: Clemenger BBDO media director Nigel Keats says the fall of Holmes is unlikely to see advertisers who have to fight for space on the main networks up sticks and leave Prime.

Taylor has several explanations for why ratings have not improved with the new line-up. Overseas product on other channels like Desperate Housewives, Lost and Dancing with the Stars has been formidable. The Olympics in August last year saw a bit of a dip. And like all good things, it takes time for viewers to warm to an all-new programming schedule.

"We emptied the bath in terms of programming and started again. I think we've got programmes with more potential. I hope - no predictions - that the next six months will be far rosier. I think we'll really start to see the benefits of what has been a grind of a year. The tide will turn in August." However, Taylor adds, he "might be wrong".

The one thing he stands by is his belief that Prime could be the number one network in the country - at least, he adds, in some way, shape or form - in five to 10 years' time. If a lot of things go right, it's possible, he slips in at the end.

Taylor qualifies anything approaching confidence with a warning that he might not be right. Perhaps it is the result of a year of being lambasted for being loud-mouthed and brash. Just this week, Taylor has been described by various media commentators as "all pants", "a strutting bantam" and his personal favourite, "most New Zealanders' idea of the worst kind of Australian".

But Taylor maintains that luring the country's best-known broadcaster over, that was big.

"I feel I have personally - andthe network has - been mislabelledunfairly. I have said all along we were going to run our own race. This was about growing our own channel. It was the other guys that were getting all jumpy and saying things that perhaps they would have preferred not to. In essence, they gave a network they had never paid any attention to a hell of a lot more credibility than we perhaps have deserved at this point."

The next year will see more changes: Taylor is still pushing for the Australian Prime to be dual-listed on the New Zealand stock exchange; the option for PBL to take up 50 per cent ownership of Prime could be taken up anytime from now; and developments in digital television could see UHF fall into oblivion.

Taylor is well aware that TVNZ head of news and current affairs Bill Ralston is sitting back in his state broadcaster's office thinking the score is Ralston 1, Taylor 0.

"But it's a five-set match. Yeah, we're one set down, but there's four to go. It was fun when we got Paul. But it hurts like hell that we've lost that battle. It will one day be Ralston one, Taylor one."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY